Paysystems PROs and CONs

[Altco]

I have been looking at Paysystems for awhile. What are the PROs and CONs?

[Living Media]

PROs:
* very good fraud checking. There have been a few (very few) reports of instances of it being overzealous - but the client can always call Paysystems' tollfree number and straighten the issue out.


CONS:
* they seem to have regular troubles with their back end systems. Recurring billing had problems about a month back, and earlier this week their site was unreachable on and off for nearly 24 hours. Maybe they're going through a transition - but there's no notification of this in the merchant control panels. They just left us (their clients) to hang. Some hosts lost orders.

* and the one that may just make me take my business elsewhere:

Just today, I was notified by a client that Paysystems has put a checkbox on the payment pages. It is checked by default, and reads, "Yes! I want to donate $1.00 to cancer research."

Now, as fine a cause as this may be, the text does not clearly indicate that it is put there by Paysystems, and not by the hosts. It is also pre-checked by default, which makes it opt-out and thus (I believe) illegal in Canada and parts of Europe. However, when contacted about this matter, Paysystems says that the link cannot be removed, and proceeds to explain how clients are welcome to uncheck the box if they do not want to make the donation.

I've tried being reasonable, but they seem utterly unwilling to meet us halfway (there's a rather large thread started about this very issue over on WHT.) You just know that they're hoping to get a good-sized cumulative donation amount, and thus a nice tax writeoff.

It also annoys me - and others - that the link does not even have something like "This link provided by Paysystems". When our clients go to make a payment, they'll scroll past this single-line, somewhat unobtrusive link and move down to fill in their credit card details. Then, when they see this phantom charge on their card, who will they get upset with? Paysystems? Nope - most of them won't know who the heck Paysystems is. The host will catch the full brunt of their displeasure. And what happens when a hosting client wants a refund of this donation, which they did not intend to make? Will Paysystems balk? Will they have the nerve to charge the hosts for a refund of something that never should have been charged in the first place?

I myself was happy with Paysystems until this point. I'm a fairly patient customer, and as a semi-developer, I know that the course of true coding ne'er runs smoothly. Also, I'm not exactly eager to venture into 2checkout's waters, but am looking around for other options. Anyone have any suggestions? If this situation can't be satisfactorily resolved, I want to be ready with a new destination in mind.

[iBiz]

this is actually the last straw for me. I already have a 2checkout acct and have been happy with them so looks like I'll be moving all of my customers away from paysystems.

[Sesran]

Originally posted by Living Media
PROs:
Just today, I was notified by a client that Paysystems has put a checkbox on the payment pages. It is checked by default, and reads, "Yes! I want to donate $1.00 to cancer research."

Oh My.....:eek:

[Living Media]

iBiz, how is 2checkout's fraud checking?

[Chicken]

That seems unreasonable to me, though 2CO used to have something similar (I actually thought it was still there until I just checked a second ago). They used to have a link on the order form for customers who didn't have a Visa, to get a Visa card (was a referral link for Nexcard I believe). This annoyed me, but the $1 donation thing at Paysystems utterly ridiculous, sorry but it is. I haven't seen the WHT thread yet.

[Living Media]

It apparently gets even better.

The text is linked to charity-donation.com...which is owned by Paysystems. And to top it off, the site doesn't display. :rolleyes:

Here (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=101958)'s the link to the WHT thread, if people are interested. It started out as a griping about Paysystems' latest downtime...during which, apparently, they were the targets of a "DDoS hack" (in the words of one of their support personnel); and during which they also added in this link.

Any time anyone sends in a request that the link be removed or changed to not be default-checked, they just send back a stock response.

[Sesran]

Originally posted by Chicken
That seems unreasonable to me, though 2CO used to have something similar (I actually thought it was still there until I just checked a second ago). They used to have a link on the order form for customers who didn't have a Visa, to get a Visa card (was a referral link for Nexcard I believe). This annoyed me, but the $1 donation thing at Paysystems utterly ridiculous, sorry but it is. I haven't seen the WHT thread yet.
Chicken,
You and I had talked about that little link, and funny since then it has disappeared. Not sure when it disappeared, but I remember soon after it was gone.

[VoxKeysGtr]

Originally posted by Living Media
iBiz, how is 2checkout's fraud checking?

Quite good. I had a rash of fraudulent sign ups a few months back, and 2checkout handled it pretty well. There was a clump of signups made on Indonesian and Chinese based IP's, but with British and American CC's. They handled the situation well, and let me know what was going on at all times.

Sometimes they are a bit slow to respond, but if you are persistent, you can usually find someone to help you sooner or later. Once they do, they are pretty efficient. Still, I would like to get my own merchant account, soon. I am looking and trying to learn as much as possible about that. :cool:

[iBiz]

Originally posted by Living Media
iBiz, how is 2checkout's fraud checking?

In my personal experience, 2checkout has had a lot better fraud protection catches than paysystems. When I get an order, i do my own fraud checks and usually I verify the fraud before paysystems. 2checkout has been more reliable on catching frauds quickly too.