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* The Business of Software

Who can reccommend a shareware payment processor outside of the DR stable? SWREG has made some unfortunate changes across the board affecting all of their clients:

http://www.cameratalk.org/mn/viewtopic.php?p=18952#18952

This unannounced change was placed at the point of order completion where and leads to a $10/mo discount coupon scheme unrelated to the sold shareware. The way the offer is presented is deceptive - after the order is complete, they show a button with the word "Continue" on it. It looks like you are supposed to press the button to complete your order. Instead, you end up paying for something you probably didn't want - and it's a recurring charge.

Sales are WAY down (as you might expect). I have recommended SWREG in the past but am now looking for another payment processor.

A few people here (including me) using e-junkie.com + PayPal and/or GoogleCheckout, which is very attractive in terms of fees.

Plimus and Avangate also seem to be quite well thought of, but I haven't used them myself - lets hope DR doesn't 'assimilate' them.

See also:
http://www.c6software.com/articles/ecommercefees.aspx

+1 to e-junkie.  I'm using them with Paypal, and deciding to go with them rather than roll my own Paypal API solution was one of the better decisions I've made.

I've been using eSellerate for some time and apart from higher fees I an more than happy with the product they provide and their support. Their App Integrated 'Buy Now' capability is realy very good. That said they are also now part of DR. :(

>>
This unannounced change was placed at the point of order completion where and leads to a $10/mo discount coupon scheme unrelated to the sold shareware.
>>

Words fail me to describe exactly how scummy that is.  Its an outright scam, and has been covered in the newspapers before, where the scam company says that their business model is essentially nicking folks for less than they will notice on their credit card statement.  If you call their 1-800 number they have a completely automated system for unsubscribing, and as far as I can tell thats the only thing the business actually does -- bills you until you say "Wait, stop billing me".  I cannot FATHOM why an honest and upright company would do business with them, because even a thumbnail sketch of what happens in the typical transaction should tell you "Oh yeah, thats a scam".

They were doing business under the names Reservation Rewards, Shopper Discounts & Rewards, and a few other names which escape my memory.  You can Google them, which will lead to a lot of pages like this:

http://www.connecticut.bbb.org/commonreport.html?bureau=walling&compid=77000102&language=&code=

Wow that just gives me the heebie-jeebies. What a great way to piss off customers.

I have to pick one of these payment processors pretty soon, I'm heavily leaning towards Plimus right now.

We moved to Plimus immediately after this scam came to light.  It only took me around 4 hours to completely set up a new store with multiple products, taxes and options (and would have taken less if I wasn't absolutely livid at the time) and we're very happy with the new environment so far.

For our price-point, Plimus charges 4.5% of the sale, so you'll likely find the cost comparable.

There is no cost to set up a store, so you can try it out at no risk.

The 'template' for mirroring the look and feel of your site is a breeze to set up (just use the 'global' shell you had at SWREG and upload your images and style sheet to the Plimus server; you only need one template) and Plimus also has a promotion on where they'll completely configure your store at no charge if you don't have the time to do it yourself.  From personal experience though (going from zero Plimus knowledge to a completely configured, moderately complicated store) it's a snap to put together in an evening.

As we've only a few days of time with them I can't recommend Plimus from experience yet, but they look great so far.


For those of you not already following this nonsense in the Yahoo group:  The defense given by SWREG of this scam is that they're giving vendors a whopping $3.60 bounty for every customer you unwittingly tricked into falling for it, so why complain?

Now I need to spend the next few days alerting my customers of this con, apologizing profusely to those who found themselves roped into it, and write cheques to cover whatever expenses have been incurred by those foolish enough to trust my company's judgment.

An SWREG store now appears to be a serious business risk and is not a service I would recommend to anyone.

I moved from SWREG to Plimus about two months ago when SWREG first started spamming my customers.  First there was the spamming, now there is the scam discount scheme, who knows what they will try next. 

Plimus has gone without a hitch so far.

www.softwrap.com

Another recommendation for Plimus.

RegNow made me rich, I recommend evaluating them as well.

Aren't RegNow also owned by the same parent company as SWReg - DigitalRiver?

Yes they are. I don't recommend them. I switched from RegNow to Plimus. After some problems starting up, everything is running fine.

FWIW, I have just tried placing an order for my product via SWREG and everything looked completely normal...

I'm just as suspicious of Digital River as anyone. I actually switched to SWREG from RegNow because the people running RegNow were starting to refund perfectly legitimate orders apparently at random because they thought the orders were suspicious. (You know, because the customer's country is Mexico or so.) This was back when DR hadn't yet taken over SWREG.

Please STOP recommending Plimus publicly. I'm sure DR will be out to acquire them soon, and then we're back to square 1... :-)

Frederik,

The scam link does not display in your store until you hit the receipt page for an actual purchase.  It also does not appear in the Test Purchase you can run from your store (existence of this scam was completely hidden from vendors), so the only way you'll see it is to make an actual purchase of your product.

On the final receipt page, where you used to just see a thank you and printable receipt, a "Continue" link would appear at the bottom of the page which prompted your customer to move on to the next step in the new purchase process.

On that page, if your customer entered their e-mail address a second time, they would have their credit card information applied to a Reservation Rewards subscription (a quick Google search will tell you what that does).

If you've not already done so, I would strongly recommend subscribing to the SWREG yahoo group and reading the messages over the past week.  There are hundreds on this topic alone.  A few vendors have posted pictures of what the scam link looks like in an actual purchase if you'd like to see what the fuss is about.

All of your customers (since May) have been exposed to this scam and some of them may have been roped into it already.

+1 for Plimus -- the're awesome!

A pre-emptive campaign with the FTC might be needed to prevent DR from consuming anymore competitors.

No campaign will be required to 'save us' from DigitalRiver as the magic of free market competition does that already.  Strangely enough, their customers are leaving as fast as they can switch to alternatives.

Read over DRIV's latest financial news if you want to see the result of their actions:  http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=driv

The best way to halt this sort of practice is to stop giving money to those who engage in it.  Sign up to a different payment processor and take your business elsewhere.

Here's a screenshot:

http://www.icons-icons.com/swreg/swreg-1-continue.png

"Continue" leads to this:

http://www.icons-icons.com/swreg/swreg-2-offer.png

scrolling down:

http://www.icons-icons.com/swreg/swreg-3-yes.png

"No thanks" drops you here:

http://www.icons-icons.com/swreg/swreg-4-no-thanks.png

and so on.

Thankfully most of my clients were sufficiently intelligent to avoid this but I am faced with the embarrassment of emailing all of them to offer redress to the unfortunates that didn't becaues there is no way yet to determine who they may be from the sales analysis.

I did try a complete purchase with my own credit card, and didn't see the Continue link. Perhaps they enable it only with certain stores?

Why not just use Google Checkout? 0% commission is good.

BTW, it's not just SWREG that does this. It's a fairly common scam in other industries and normally a sign that doom is imminent (see http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2007/07/ringtones-and-e.html)

- Neil

Frederik,

Once the scam was discovered SWREG temporarily turned it off, so you won't see it now.  The screen prints reposted by Ulysses show how it would have appeared in your store when active.  The offer appeared in all stores which did not customize and police 100% of their templates, and some of your customers may have subscribed to it.

Good news though:  You'll get $3.60 for every customer you scammed!

I would strongly recommend reading the SWREG Yahoo group to find out more about this.

SWREG speaks:
http://successfulsoftware.net/2007/07/04/swreg-customers-beware/
(see the comments)

Patrick, I stole your link. ;0)

I was pretty much mentally done with this, but that reply by SWREG pushed several of my buttons.  I have a response on my blog.  Obligatory disclaimer: as a uISV, I have never been a SWREG customer.  As a software purchaser, I have been before*.  And I never will be again.

http://microisvjournal.wordpress.com/2007/07/05/conflict-of-interest-payment-processors-vs-uisvs/

* Semi-offtopic shoutout to the icons-icons guys:  I got another compliment for the Roma set.  "My kids love the big blue buttons!"

"If you click the button, you will be billed $9 a month to your credit card, silently, until you figure out who the heck is billing you and try to cancel."

Isn't this a reason enough to get a second payment processor and cancel the one that is trying to scam people ASAP? If somebody tried to pull this on me (as a customer) - I would cancel the transaction and the software author will not see any money from me.

Even though Reg.Net is under the DR banner, I've never had trouble with them, and I've used them for years.  Also, I just checked my buy page, and there aren't any deceptive items tacked on.

Wow, scary - they post that they think it's a great thing to do, nothing at all tricky or wrong with it in any way!

I guess with that attitude you can generally plan on more of this type of behavior from them in the future.

>there aren't any deceptive items tacked on

Yet...

The sad thing is, this probably won't make a bit of difference to DR's bottom line. There are swimming with a lot of the big fish these days (see http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2005/tc20050131_3976_tc057.htm), and the complaints of the little fish will be ignored.

BTW, it looks like the recent drop in stock price was due to the announced delay of the Symantec deal and not because of this issue.

"Why not just use Google Checkout? 0% commission is good"

Because it's not available to merchants in nearly every country of the world.

Tom,

It looks like it was only offered to US customers, and I tried my order with Netherlands as country. But I also read that it only applies to the lowest commission rate and I chose to stay on the slightly higher $1 + 4% plan, because for some reason the lower plan sounded like you were tricked into it...

I'm already checking out Plimus and Google Checkout, but Plimus has higher fees, and Google Checkout requires registration. :-(

Frederick,

Despite earlier promises, the promotion was displayed for ALL stores; even those on the older 4% + $1 and $6 + $1 plans.  We were on the 4% plan and our customers were tricked into this scam.

So far, it's been confirmed as appearing on stores for U.S., U.K. and Canadian customers.  It's possible the scam was presented to other nations as well, but we've no way of finding out.

If customers of yours did get scammed into it, you will see a new payment from SWREG appearing mid-month as reward for an offer of some sort.  If you divide that number by $3.60, that should tell you how many of your customers were tricked into the scam, but there is no way of telling which of your customers were the ones who were conned.

When considering the pricing for Plimus and other payment processors, don't forget to include that +$1 when comparing percentages.  "It's just a dollar" is an easy way to add a few percentage points to the fee without vendors considering it in their calculations (e.g. on a $20 purchase, that $1 adds up to an additional 5%; giving a 9% charge in total from the old base 4% rate).

All messages on the SWREG Yahoo group which related to this topic have been deleted and, as far as SWREG is concerned, it never happened and everyone should just forget about it.

After this, I do not understand how any business could stay with SWREG or Digital River.

They deleted the messages? How's that for being an honest business partner! I think you're right and I think I'll have to migrate to Plimus in that case.

At an average price of $69, Plimus is considerably more expensive than SWREG. However, I think that perhaps it might be worth it. Google Checkout is not working for me since it's only available for US/UK vendors.

>All messages on the SWREG Yahoo group which related to this topic have been deleted

If that isn't an admission of guilt I don't know what is.

At least those low-lifes can't delete this thread (I hope) and I'm sure it has been read by hundreds (if not thousands) of vendors.

Any vendor that stays with DR after reading all of the above deserves whatever else DR foists on them. It is their (the vendor's) customers that I feel sorry for.