What I’d like to do is to be able to test our system end to end, with real payments out of my own pocket, before I subject our customers to it.
That is, I want to purchase an account using my own credit card, see the money arrive in our account, see my credit card is correctly debited, receive all the emails, see our server receiving all the INS calls … in other words, I want to check that the complete customer and seller experience is exactly the way it should be.
However, I was told the following by 2CO support staff:
“The fraud department here at 2CO.com just this past monday(14th) stated to you to not make or create test sales over $5usd. Test sales cannot be paid out to the supplier. You cannot run an entire test sale through to your bank receiving the funds off of any test sale.”
So in other words, I have to start marketing our site without having seen that our purchasing system works from end to end - in particular, whether the recurring INS callbacks happen.
What am I supposed to say when a potential customer says to me “before I on-sell your service to my hundreds of clients, I want you to demonstrate to me what happens when I purchase an account?”
Currently, all I can say is “Oh I’m sorry - we haven’t tested that. I hope it’ll all work out alright for you but frankly I have no idea. Hopefully our system is properly integrated with INS - if we’ve got it wrong your accounts will be cancelled after the first month but hey, that’s not such a big deal is it?”
The _only_ reason I’m still with 2CO at this point is that 2CO is the only company offering recurring payments by credit card; PayPal offers recurring payments but customers outside the US must first sign up for a PayPal account, which creates an unacceptably complicated purchasing workflow (mind you at least it’d be testable …)
To be fair, 2CO support have been very prompt in replying to my enquiries. It’s just a shame that the system they’re supporting isn’t actually testable 
The very idea of going live with an e-commerce system I can’t test end-to-end keeps me up at night.
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Hi duncanbayne,
I apologize, but you appear to have received some incorrect information. Test orders are acceptable as long as they are kept to a minimum, and are entered for less than $5 each. Not all of our vendors wish to allow their test orders to fully deposit, because they do not want to have to pay transaction fees for them, so as a courtesy we will sometimes pro-actively cancel test orders. However, if you wish to allow a test order to deposit so that you may become familiar with the end to end process, you may do so. To help to make certain that your test orders do not get canceled, please open a support ticket and provide us with your test order number immediately after placing the order.
Our fraud detection systems are sensitive, and multiple test orders may produce a red flag. If you will be placing multiple test orders within a short amount of time, you may wish to phone our Fraud or Risk departments and alert them. This will help to prevent them from canceling any of the orders.
In the meantime, I would like to make some notation on your account that will reiterate to any 2Checkout representative reviewing your account that you have been approved for test orders. Please open a support ticket , reference this post, and provide me with your vendor number and I will notate your account accordingly.
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Note that all test orders that are allowed to deposit are subject to our standard transaction fees, and that not all new accounts are immediately approved for test orders. If you are a new vendor wishing to place a test order, and you are receiving a parameter error, please open a support ticket and request testing consideration.
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Thanks for the prompt response - I’ll open a support ticket tonight so we can get a test purchase through. The $5 thing is a bit of a pain but we can easily modify our app to support a $5 price during testing. I’m _greatly_ relieved that I’ll be able to do proper end-to-end testing! Thanks