Forum Moderators: buckworks
I know that 1-900 has a "adult content" sigma attached to it but I think it has been long enough that people don't think that right away anymore and also there is a generation of kids that missed the "1-900 adult content" boom and so they may not associate 1-900 to adult content.
For those of you who don't know the way this works is instead of using a credit card or some other form of payment....
The person calls a 1-900 number, they are asked if they accept the charge of $X.XX and when they agree they are given a confirmation code that they enter on the site and it fulfills the order and the fee for the goods gets charged to their phone bill plus an additional service charge.
I am not adding this as the lone method of payment... just as an option. Any reasons to not?
Wow- I just did a quick Google search on 900 payments and this thread was on the second page! Fast indexing!
[edited by: LifeinAsia at 9:36 pm (utc) on April 22, 2008]
There was a test case that was used for most of the examples. They offer a once a month deposit to an account with a real time reporting tool.
What I gathered from my skim last night was that because there is are tangible goods or services and the call itself doesn't cost money until they agree to it, (not $0.50 a minute, just one flat fee) that the charge back is very low... also since this is a third party solution it becomes an issue for their billing and collection part of service to deal with, not mine. I believe they build in the cost of charge-backs into the 1-900 service. I want to say 2% of the cost goes to a charge back fund but I can't remember.
I will be reading some more tonight and will post back with some better figures.
WTG WebmasterWorld on the indexing... that was fast.
[edited by: Demaestro at 10:13 pm (utc) on April 22, 2008]
After reading some more this morning, I found that there are two methods for doing this... which I find funny since the person I was talking to with them only mentioned the one.
But the second method is where they call a toll-free 1-800 number and give some info about the product, once completed they hang up and will receive a call back right away.
The call they receive is a an automatic message that asks them if they accept the charges as if it were a collect call, if they accept the charges they get a pin to fulfill the order and it gets billed to their phone as "Directory assistance"
The fee is 5% of all sales under this plan. If I do this I would opt for the 1-800 I think. Even though there is an extra step I could lose them at... the call back, what I could gain in sales from people who don't have a CC could be worth it. They only get paid on items purchased through them and so any sales through them I can almost attribute 100% of them as sales I wouldn't have gotten without the service.
My issue is the only place I can find this service in practice is on sites of an adult nature... which my products are not... we have some "fun" adult entertainment stuff on one site but it isn't anything hard or X rated, just mature subject type novelty items.
[edited by: Demaestro at 5:21 pm (utc) on April 23, 2008]
My concern would be the charge being listed as "directory assistance." We get enough idiots who forget they made a purchase and dispute the charge. I can just image the "I *NEVER* use directory assistance" complaints/disputes. In fact, if I made a purchase that way, chances are I might forget about it and dispute it as well.
Other problems I could see:
- Someone steals a cell phone and makes a bunch of purchases this way. Would the original owner be able to dispute all the charges, and if not, who would eat the charges?
- I would assume (but definitely best to verify) that they have some sort of blocking calls to pay phones?
My understanding about the charge backs is basically it is their problem. I do see your point about the name not reflecting the purchase. My thoughts about it were that if someone wanted to make a purchase without a spouse or whatever to see the description on any bills that it gives a sort of purchasing anonymity.
I am sure the cellphone companies have dealt with the theft issue and content download charges like ring-tones or music videos/songs... you bring up great questions to ask though.
There is blocking of some cell phone carriers as they only have billing and collection agreements with some. They have the major 3 in Canada and have a couple big names in the USA market.... any calls from carriers that they don't support gets booted according to their documentation.
