Does Anyone Check Processors?

[RawAlex]

Just a question, I am not in the position to do it myself, but:

One of the things I notice (more often recently) is that it appears that one or the other of the main processors suddenly goes cold. Suddenly no matter how many people make a join page, sales just don't seem to come. Yet the other processor is seeing similar traffic, and the sales come along.

I often see it, example, as a string of sales from different sales via netbilling, yet the ccbill / epoch stuff just isn't selling.

Anyone have ideas on this?

[Toby]

scrub on... scrub off...

They all deny that they change the scrub levels, but I'm not buying it.

[Hell Puppy]

I dont know whether they do or do not.

But think about this. You have to stay under 1% chargeback. So, would it make sense to adjust your scrub thresholds depending on how close you were to that mark over the course of a month or whatever period of time?

[RawAlex]

HP, normally I would say yes, but I would think that it would be more specific to programs having programs with chargebacks, and not an overall effect. I see an overall effect that suggests that the processors may be doing it on a much more global scale.

[Hell Puppy]

Originally Posted by RawAlex

HP, normally I would say yes, but I would think that it would be more specific to programs having programs with chargebacks, and not an overall effect. I see an overall effect that suggests that the processors may be doing it on a much more global scale.

That's exactly what I meant.

Again, I am no expert on the behind the scenes of processing, but here's how I think it works.

PSP's basically factor their merchant accounts legally. Most have multiple accounts, but in this day and age there's only so many banks willing to service adult.

So they need to spread around all of those charges (and subsequent charge backs) from all of the sites and programs they serve to that handful of merchant accounts. So again, I'm thinking if those key merchant accounts start to creep up anywhere close to that 1% mark the risk tolerance goes down, scrub gets turned up. The threshold is likely extremely low given how precious the merchant accounts are.

That's not dishonest or unethical, that's just good business.

It's still a frustration point for me. So far I've always opted to outsource the hassles of dealing with the merchant account to the PSPs, and my chargebacks are next to nothing. My transactions would be used to "wash" away some of the guys who do things I'd never do like prechecked cross sales. But yet if my theory above is correct, my sales suffer due to them when scrub gets turned up.