Prechecked Cross Sales: Getting out of hand

[RawAlex]

Originally Posted by Gerco

Pre-checking a cross sale during the signup process is shady to say the least and just begging for chargebacks and pissed of members. Members who with think twice about ever joining ANY website after they get fucked over.

The number of people willing to take their credit cards out online is getting smaller all the time, I know people who did their banking online and cancelled the service so as to not take a risk on phishing scams, etc. Too many people don't trust the internet.

Most of the cross sales programs are pulling 2 cross sales plus the original amount, about $110 to $140 shot to the user insided 3 days. They rebill. The potential is that the user doesn't see the charges (get their paper bill) until the second round has been charged as well. So the guy opens up his bill, and that $1 trial has turned into upwards to $280. There is no way that this is going to encourage the guy to ever buy porn online again.

Worse, these days we are looking at a larger number of people "on the edge", running their credit cards near maximum and playing it month to month. Maybe porn is their relaxation of choice, and they have a budget of maybe, I dunno $40 a month for it. Guy signs up, gets whacked and whacked again, suddenly his CC is over limit and other things he needed in real life can't get done anymore, because the porn company whacked his card.

None of this encourages repeat business, and is a clear sign that many of these companies think they are going to be out of buisness soon and are just trying to grab the last dollars they can on their worn out content and poor salesmanship.