Any lawyers in the house?

[BradShaw]

Is this legal? We sent a total of 1 new join to Ibill yesterday off an old paysite we no longer promote, so it will not affect me. Also, I would not trust Ibill with my business at this point.


But I am curious?

[spanno]

I could give you legal advice but I charge $50/ hour and i don't thin kyou can afford it

PS get those shoes ready I am nearly up to 100 posts

[BradShaw]

Guess nobody wants to touch this one.

[SykkBoy]

Originally posted by BradShaw@Jul 11 2003, 06:48 PM
Guess nobody wants to touch this one.
nah, all the lawyers are on GFY....LOL

[Timon]

If you want to know if it's legal ask your lawyer...

If you want assumptions ask GFY ;-)

[SykkBoy]

Originally posted by Timon@Jul 12 2003, 12:10 AM
If you want to know if it's legal ask your lawyer...

If you want assumptions ask GFY ;-)
What? you mean all of those advice givers on GFY are not the best source for legal advice? surely you jest!

;-))))))))

[Timon]

Originally posted by SykkBoy+Jul 12 2003, 02:08 AM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (SykkBoy @ Jul 12 2003, 02:08 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteBegin--Timon@Jul 12 2003, 12:10 AM
If you want to know if it's legal ask your lawyer...

If you want assumptions ask GFY ;-)
What? you mean all of those advice givers on GFY are not the best source for legal advice? surely you jest!

;-))))))))[/b][/quote]
Nah, only the ones with offensive nicknames ;-)

[Bad Boy Rob]

If you are a new client and start processing with them now I reckon they can. They can draw out a new contract and say you are not allowed to process with Ibill for future clients. If you then sign you are legally bound by it.

However they are now implenting something that customers prior to this announcement have not signed up to. You could easily tell them to fuck off and then if they cut your service you would win in a court of law as you have an agreement with them for them to process.

[Mike AI]

From IBill on GFY http://gofuckyourself.com/showthread.php?s...threadid=151866 (http://gofuckyourself.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=151866)



iBill Clients:

iBill would like to address the recent postings on the boards and share with you our position. We believe these posts are misleading and are designed to alarm our clients. Furthermore, we feel these comments and “revised business rules” are the result of our competitor’s attempt to introduce a rather aggressive marketing program directed at our largest clients. At this time, iBill is working with our legal counsel to review the recent policies another billing provider has introduced into the competitive landscape to determine what, if any, actions iBill will pursue.

We believe that you should think through carefully and diligently any decision you make regarding your choice in billing providers. Your decision should be based on the billing provider’s past financial performance related to payouts, how they handle your reserves, and their future viability given the competitive marketplace. We would also urge you to consider the relationships the billing provider has with card associations, since they have been responsible for many of the recent changes in this industry. At iBill, we continue to maintain an excellent relationship with the card associations and have proactively worked with the associations in our clients’ best interests.

As you know, we are part of a public company, which gives our clients access to audited financial information that allows you to understand our financial stability. We have a market cap of more than $200MM, and this provides a certain level of financial strength that many other billing providers cannot match. The recent action by one of our competitors might suggest they need more drastic methods of attracting customers.

iBill has earned a strong reputation for paying our clients and releasing our clients’ reserves on time. We believe these are important considerations in your selection of a billing provider. If a competitor cannot make the same claim, you should carefully consider how much of your business you consider safe with them.

We are making considerable progress in managing our chargebacks. In fact, to date in July we are comfortably in compliance with the chargeback rules of Visa and MasterCard. We would therefore urge you to carefully evaluate a customer acquisition strategy that is based on the contention that iBill’s chargeback “problem” has the potential to drag down an entire portfolio.

We plan to announce our solution to the MasterCard compliance program next week. Our solution will allow our customers to continue to enjoy the value of the MasterCard brand and its payment instruments and is the result of a very intensive effort of cooperative negotiating with MasterCard.

Thank you.

iBill

[Mike AI]

http://www.theinformationminister.com/pres...hp?ID=612314564 (http://www.theinformationminister.com/press.php?ID=612314564)

[Timon]

Whatever bad things can be said about iBill, they're not the processor with the deceptive pre checked cross sales and free trials.

[Opti]

Originally posted by Mike AI@Jul 13 2003, 03:30 AM
http://www.theinformationminister.com/pres...hp?ID=612314564 (http://www.theinformationminister.com/press.php?ID=612314564)
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:



I still don't get Epoch's logic for dis-allowing only Ibill to start with though. If these companies want to make it hard to work with multiple processors they will only be driving more people to their own merchant accounts I would have thought.

[Winetalk.com]

Originally posted by BradShaw@Jul 11 2003, 06:48 PM
Guess nobody wants to touch this one.

"Today is the tomorrow we worried about yesterday." - Unknown

[cj]

i don't get it ... at first glance i think epoch are being fucking idiots ... what right do they have to make these rules?

i've only just started reading all this shit - can someone summarize it?

[Hooper]

Not to defend anybody, but they have the right to say "if you do business with abc corp we wont do business with you".... no different that me saying that if you promote something i dont approve of that i wont be letting you into our sponsor programs. they arent saying you cant use ibill, just that if you use ibill you cant use them.

I'm never in the know on these things, but if i had to guess, i'd assume that because of some new visa regulations about tracking sponsored merchants across multiple ipsp's that an ipsp's overall portfolio numbers could potentially be affected by another ipsp's customer's fraud scrubbing or lack thereof.

but who knows. thats just my guess.

[Mike AI]

Not to defend anybody, but they have the right to say "if you do business with abc corp we wont do business with you".... no different that me saying that if you promote something i dont approve of that i wont be letting you into our sponsor programs. they arent saying you cant use ibill, just that if you use ibill you cant use them.



JoeE used to threaten these things all the time! haha

[Timon]

Originally posted by Hooper@Jul 13 2003, 08:46 PM
no different that me saying that if you promote something i dont approve of that i wont be letting you into our sponsor programs.

Not exactly, they are telling their existing clients to drop iBill or they will lose their rebills they have on Epoch.

It's not the same as denying admission to a program based on content of a site.

And how would you like it if another sponsor program said "If you use Quickbucks your account will be terminated" :-)




Last edited by Timon at Jul 13 2003, 11:04 PM

[cj]

Originally posted by Bad Boy Rob@Jul 12 2003, 07:00 AM
If you are a new client and start processing with them now I reckon they can. They can draw out a new contract and say you are not allowed to process with Ibill for future clients. If you then sign you are legally bound by it.

However they are now implenting something that customers prior to this announcement have not signed up to. You could easily tell them to fuck off and then if they cut your service you would win in a court of law as you have an agreement with them for them to process.
this was my initial thought, however, changing the rules is pretty common with processors and their clients ...

the only logical argument i have seen for this so far is hoopers comment ...

I'm never in the know on these things, but if i had to guess, i'd assume that because of some new visa regulations about tracking sponsored merchants across multiple ipsp's that an ipsp's overall portfolio numbers could potentially be affected by another ipsp's customer's fraud scrubbing or lack thereof.

but in this case, if you have separate companies registered with the processors, how can they enforce it?

epoch might be the leader in the biz of processing right now, but with their 'creative' billing methods of the last 12 months, i'm confused as to why ibill is going to cause them any additional grief than they already have from their own actions.

as far as customer service, usability of their admin areas etc, they both suck ass and have a long way to go before either of them can make a move to own the business ... but ibill does have a better track record than paycom.

the lives of 3rd party processors are shortening every day with the new rules in place - shit like this is only going to push more people to their own merchant accounts.

oh well, nobody thought this was going to be a boring future!

[wig]

I think if you read your Service Agreements the processors have ample leeway to cease processing for any given account.

This clause is usually surrounded by... "in the sole discretion of the Company".

And when they say 'we will no longer process for you', maybe that means new sign-ups and not recurring.

If all the risk of being TMF'd is shifted to the merchant, why would they give up the recurring?

[Timon]

Originally posted by wig@Jul 14 2003, 08:48 AM
And when they say 'we will no longer process for you', maybe that means new sign-ups and not recurring.

No he said specifically that all funds owed would be forfeited.

The question is not if it is legal to do this to their clients, because all clients sign a waiver that allows the processor to can them for whatever reason.

The question is: is it legal for a company to do this to their competitor.

[wig]

Originally posted by Timon@Jul 14 2003, 08:59 AM
No he said specifically that all funds owed would be forfeited.

Now that is a legal issue. Or do you mean simply not processing the FUTURE recurring?

[wig]

Originally posted by Timon@Jul 14 2003, 08:59 AM
The question is: is it legal for a company to do this to their competitor.

I don't think this is tortious interference. Maybe it should have been phrased differently.

[Timon]

Originally posted by wig+Jul 14 2003, 09:16 AM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (wig @ Jul 14 2003, 09:16 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteBegin--Timon@Jul 14 2003, 08:59 AM
No he said specifically that all funds owed would be forfeited.

Now that is a legal issue. Or do you mean simply not processing the FUTURE recurring?[/b][/quote]
Actually he said "suspended" not "forfeited" so I guess it's a gray area :-)

[Wizzo]

Originally posted by Timon@Jul 14 2003, 08:59 AM
The question is: is it legal for a company to do this to their competitor.
I believe so, as long as they aren't a monopoly... :rolleyes: