It seems to have been a rough few weeks for webmasters using Zombaio as a payment processor:
Here’s what I have seen over the holidays:
Delayed payouts (still delayed)
Base rate increase from 4.9% to a range of up to 9.9% (Supposedly after Jan 1 but I see some scheduled payouts from 2010 which are affected).
The sudden implementation of a 5% rolling reserve.
Downtime for customers
Vanishing log entries (customer sees “decline” but the internal reason is “communications error”, but now the log entries are gone so the customers cannot be contacted and asked to try again)
Email notifications not being received (but API calls are still coming in, at least for now)
I hope that the few messages that have come from Zombaio are honest and sincere, and that they are merely overwhelmed after a series of massive mistakes, and that there isn’t something else going on.
But as of today the deadlines for late payouts to resume have come and gone. (I was originally told the end of last week or the “beginning of” this week “at the latest”. Now we’re into Tuesday and it’s getting hard to stretch the definition of “beginning of the week”.)
I have a few messages in their support ticket system from the past few months and I’ve worked out something interesting: In the time from mid-November to late December, they had about 1,500 support messages, or about 30 or so a day. Nothing major if Zombaio is as big as they claim to be. However, in the span of Dec 31 to Jan 3, the ticket numbers went up by over 1,000. They are experiencing about a 10X increase in support message volume.
So obviously others out there are experiencing some problems, too.
Anyone receive any of their “late” holiday payouts which were supposedly going to happen by now “at the latest”? Happy to talk here in the forum or privately.
I noticed a lot of downtime as I have scripts that test all my affiliate links, several days over Christmas they didn’t work. Personally I think the amount of time they were down was unacceptable. It wasn’t just a few hours or a single day, it was several entire days.
Yesterday requested affiliate payment to be sent by wire, will see if that goes through soon enough.
I just had a live chat with Zombaio support. (My support tickets remain unanswered but apparently I was lucky when I tried the live chat today).
I’m now told that I will receive my payouts on Thursday and that the wires have already been sent. This is still later than the original communications sent out by Zombaio about the holiday mix-up. I specifically asked if this will be just the first of my six (!) late payouts, or if it will be all of them. I was told “all late payouts”. I then asked if the payouts already scheduled for the future but not marked as late will be arriving on time and was told “yes”. I have saved a transcript of the chat.
So hopefully, Thursday will be the end of this. I’d like to know if anyone else has received similar promises, or (even better), received your payouts?
Without getting into actual dollars, let me just say that this has been a significant short-term blow. We made a big push to promote new content in December for the holidays, with original video productions and a holiday sale, and these payouts are needed to recoup that investment. We had a cushion (as any prudent business should have) but with the holidays and this long delay on multiple payouts, well, it’s not a good situation. I’ll just leave it at that.
ouch this sucks… hopefully they will pull through but i must admit i always was a bit sceptical due to their prices… I pretty much doubt they could get a merchant account for processing with a buyrate low enough to make money off a 4.9% transaction fee…
A follow-up: The six payouts which were marked as “late” have now cleared with my bank.
Re: the 4.9% rate. They’ve now increased that rate for most webmasters, using a variable scale.
If you process between $1K and and $25K per week, the rate is now 7.9%. That encompasses a lot of web sites. For smaller sites who may dip below $1K per week (which still isn’t peanuts for a side-business), the rate is 9.9%, more than double the original 4.9% rate. In the past couple of weeks they’ve also implemented a 5%, 6-month rolling reserve.
You don’t get a break even if you maintain an exemplary, low charge-back ratio or other measurably-good track record.
To get 4.9%, you have to process $75K per week ($3.9 million per year). If you’re grossing that well, chances are you can afford to obtain a merchant account and monitor your own processing and customer service, rather than let Zombaio manage it, but I’ll let you know if I ever run into that kind of dilemma.
There was a payout delay over the holiday (Christmas/New Year) due to a technical issue with the wire transfer data.
I received two apologies for the error…one from the accounting and one from a Vice President of the Company.
The increase is in the reserve…instituting a 5% reserve (which is held for for 6 months) but even with that…they are
still much more cost effective…versus a 15% processing fee with no reserve.
[QUOTE=JockDoc;86144]There was a payout delay over the holiday (Christmas/New Year) due to a technical issue with the wire transfer data.
I received two apologies for the error…one from the accounting and one from a Vice President of the Company.
The increase is in the reserve…instituting a 5% reserve (which is held for for 6 months) but even with that…they are
still much more cost effective…versus a 15% processing fee with no reserve.[/QUOTE]
Zombaio was considered risky by many people since the beginning. I think that lots of people think that they can’t survive with 4,7%.
So whats the verdict, are people still going to use them? I was planning on using them for a new real micro-niche site that I am working on now so hoping they are still ok, seems like it was an overraction on the gfy board based on so many businesses fucking people over recently a few evens happened and then people jumped to conclusions, but it seems like they are still ok.
An update - All 6 late payouts were received (as mentioned in a previous comment), and today the 1st of the next set of regularly scheduled payouts was received. So hopefully things are back to normal. (Except for the new 5% reserve and the new higher rates for most normal humans.)