I just tried to join a site on the CCBill processing network, a $29.95 membership. I used a very valid company visa card, gave the correct number, correct cv2 code, and all correct address data, etc. On the first try, got the response “Card declined at Pre Auth”. This response code means that the banking network didn’t even see the transaction and that the denial came from CCBill’s internal scrub. I then went to CCbill’s FAQ area to find out what generates this response code and found that this code is given in response to cards that are
“considered high risk based on address verification, usage patterns and history. Make sure that the address you listed corresponds to your billing address with your credit card company. A history of chargebacks and refund requests will result in your card being blocked for many Internet sales.”
Now, this card is rarely used for membership site purchases, even more rarely on the ccbill network. The address I used was exactly correct with the billing records. There have been no chargebacks to CCBill, or anyone, on this card, so I double checked all the information. It was again, correct. I tried again. Same response.
I then changed cards to another company visa card, and entered all the correct information for that card as well. I received the reply “You have submitted too many times recently”.
Well, gosh, I tried twice with the first card, and then I get this response on the third attempt with a different card?
If ever there was proof to me that CCbill’s scrub is set too high, this is it for me. I can use the cards in this attempted transaction on other websites, and just did so with the same card using a competitors processing platform on a competitors website to the one I wished to subscribe to.
I get a ton of denial emails from people trying to sign up so I’m taking the advice from others and making epoch cascade to ccbill under CCBill’s program.
Don’t think so. I’m using a california IP Address for access through a VPN connection. The bank for that card is California and my address for that card is California. I wouldn’t think that should be a problem.
I see the scrub on since Sunday… I tried joining almost 10 of the sites that I promote with a Visa card and with Mastercard and got declined on 8 of them… I have never done any chargeback on these cards and one of them is only 3 months old…
So yes, there are days when I can join sites with no problems and then there are days when I keep getting ‘card declined’ message…
They are certainly doing something but not giving out any information. Statsremote still does not work because for some reason they are doing changes (upgrades?) to individual affiliate accounts. What they are doing who knows.
I am sure someone from CCBILL will jump later in this thread and say that they see no problems on their end, but they can look into your account if you send them an email…
Yeah, but that’s the point. There is no reason for it to be. Black lists should be reserved for chargeback abusers, stolen cards, etc. My card has never had a chargeback, never been stolen, and rarely used at all for membership sites, and even less often on ccbill sites… so it has no reason to be on any black list. If that is the case, the question should be to ask how in the heck they come up with this black list because it’s keeping good customers who want to buy products from doing so.
I think the solution for me at this point is to put epoch in front for a while and see what difference that makes on conversions.
[QUOTE=Intense_Lloyd;82244]Tom,
It sounds to me like that card is on the blacklist for some reason. Join the club. I have one on the blacklist as well. No idea why.
I think that CCBill’s scrubbing algorithm is entirely screwed. Lots of perfectly legitimate cards are declined on a daily basis. One would think that in this day and age, when every sale and customer counts, they would try to optimize their scrubbing only to the bare essentials…
BTW. I can’t buy any paysite membership through CCBill with credit cards issued in my country. I always get that same error (“Card declined at Pre Auth”) which means they probably put my country on the list of their banned countries. That was perhaps understandable in 1996, but not in 2010 when everything has changed.
yep, some countries, infact lots of them are on blacklist and webmasters need to pre-approve those themselves… I have written to several webmasters telling them that cards from my country have been blacklisted by default by CCBILL and later they enabled them in webmaster admin…
Maybe somehow it is a geographical issue. God only knows if they can detect someone coming through a VPN or not. This is why I prefer merchant accounts over billing companies in general. You can control your own scrub. Keep in mind that Epoch has a blacklist as well. I have said for years that the blacklists that the billers have are keeping perfectly legitimate customers from joining paysites. But, it’s all about risk management. When you are a huge company processing millions of dollars of transactions a day it makes sense to have tight risk management as at the end of the day it is more beneficial to the company. They can afford to err on the side of caution. But, when you are a small company and are forced to deal with a tight scrub, it really hurts. The main issue with all billing companies as I see it is that it’s a one size fits all type of deal. But, in reality the scrub level that program A needs vs. program B are two entirely different things.
Take a system like Nats and put in a few billers, add your own merchant account, as well as local billing and someone to handle the 900 and you will see a huge change in what gets through with very little affect on your CB ratio, assuming you know how to manage the risk.
[QUOTE=Ben;82262] Lots of perfectly legitimate cards are declined on a daily basis. One would think that in this day and age, when every sale and customer counts, they would try to optimize their scrubbing only to the bare essentials…
[/QUOTE]
In my first job out of college I was an actuary and dealt with risk management. When you are a big company processing millions of dollars of transactions a day, a tight scrub doesn’t affect the company anywhere near as much as a tight scrub affects a small company. Big billers have to have an almost “one size fits all” approach to scrubbing when in fact that is not the reality at the program level. A tight scrub doesn’t affect the billers as much as you would think.
I’ve been suspecting CCBill’s scrub policy for some time now. Especially for this year since a lot of changes have taken place with them. I send 1000’s of hits to some sites and the ratios just don’t add up at all. I mean there is nothing wrong with the sites I’m promoting. I’ve reviewed most of them, so I know.
As a result, I will be going with Epoch when I finally launch my straight pay site. From talking with many people, Epoch doesn’t seem to have half these issues we see with CCBill. I’m just saying, not trashing CCBill at all. I just wish they’d work out all these obvious kinks. It leaves a bad taste in a future sponsor’s mouth.
After coming across some hacking sites/forums that discuss how to hack CCBill and also buy stolen CC info, I couldn’t imagine the crap they have to deal with to stay in business and make a profit, not to mention continuing to operate within the Visa fraud guidelines.
A pre-auth decline is a decline issued by CCBill. There is always a reason for our system issuing this decline and we can always look it up and tell you why it is happening to you or your customers. In many cases we can even work with you to correct the issue.
Please remember that we are in the business of accepting transactions, therefore we accept as many as we can unless we have very valid reason to believe the transaction will result in a refund or chargeback.
I obviously cannot go into detail about how our system analyses data but I can tell you over the past 10 years we have become very good at it. Trust me, we accept as many transactions as we can.
If you are being declined or have a customer who is being declined, feel free to contact me personally and I will find out the reason of the decline and work with you to have it removed. paulk @ ccbill.com
