Opinions about Ikobo.com?

[monipro]

I found only one suitable offer for money transfer so far - ikobo.com. But I was wondering is everything alright with them because someone told me he is waiting for his card shipped 4 months and still nothing.
If you have any opinions, please, share with me.

[TallTroll]

Well, no seems to have anything to say about them. that may not be a good sign...

[plumsauce]

amex has a very similar system,

look for the amex travel card on their site.

[pedwards]

Ikobo service is fine by my opinion. I send money all the time and have transaction of $3.000 dollars or more, each month with them. It allows you to withdraw funds through their Ikobo ATM card (Visa Electron Credit Card). You can send money to a friend or relative. And also, their fees are the lowest I have found anywhere. So far, I am very happy with their service.

[Viki]

Hello! Would you tell me what is the fee if I want to send money from one i-kard to another.

[robho]

I've just been looking into Ikobo.com - rather than repeating them here, my comments are at [webmasterworld.com...]

[pedwards]

To send money they charge you 4% of the amount sent and the minimum charge is 2$. The grait thing is that from january there are no fees to get the I-card. So, when I send money to someone there is no charge for shipping or anything.

[Viki]

I hesitated a lot while choosing money transfering company and at last I decided to use iKobo services and had a right. Now I am happy with iKobo company, though their fees are small I hadn't any troubles with them. Shurely, I will stay with iKobo foward.

[Auteuil]

Suggestion: If it were considered desirable, would it be possible to merge the two current threads about iKobo?

[Essex_boy]

Can you use them in an ecomm enviroment?

[Hogwaump]

iKobo merchant systems leave a lot to be desired. Their website is obtuse and unfriendly. The functions provided to create 'buy now' buttons do not work. A problem report entered into their system has now gone a full week with no reply whatsoever. A followup query apparently went into the bit bucket. So far, I have been able to use their 'request money' via email feature, similar to paypal, and have successfully received a payment into the account that way, but as for integrating into the web site, no joy at all. The up side is that they do have a toll-free support number, but isn't much good for technical questions. IMHO they have promoted their services beyond their capacity to support it and are playing catch-up. Paypal was just about as bad as iKobo in the early days - perhaps iKobo will shake things out and get their system ready to use, but for now it is useless for ecommerce.

[Viki]

I used iKobo to send money to a person and was completely satisfied. But now I am interested in their merchant program. I do know there are some troubles, but there is also an information that they will improve their services in the nearest future. I hope this improving will not take a lot of time because I can not find another company, which would be entirely reliable and have more convinient conditions.

[pedwards]

The best thing about iKobo is that they send you a reusable i-Kobo Visa debit card (called i-Kard), so whenever again you need to receive money you just use the same card which is attached to your account. I don't know of any other company issuing this type of cards. It's simply hassle-free. Just go to the nearest ATM and get your money. Great!

[plumsauce]

pedwards,

noticed that you joined at exactly the same
time as the threads about ikobo started.

what is your connection to ikobo?

+++

[pedwards]

I joined February 2, and this thread started Jan 19, so... not exactly, as you said...

And yes, I'm thinking of becoming iKobo's affiliate and try earn some $$$ through their affiliate program. Why not? Extra money never hurts.

iKobo drew my attention mostly because they issue a Visa debit-card, and I don't think Visa Int'l would allow just any scam artist to issue a Visa Card, do you?

[Viki]

And how do you estimate iKobo merchant program? It seems to be very attractive being an excellent alternative if you plan to process a large volume of sredit card transactions.

[Viki]

The iKobo Merchant Account gives you the ability to accept credit card and bank account payments on your website or online auction. We are one of the world's leading money transfer companies - serving 170 countries. We have unique features available to merchants such as :

1. Low transaction fees
2. No setup or monthly fees
3. No transaction fees option
4. Receive funds instantly
5. Have funds directly deposited to a US bank account or receive a Visa PLUS debit card to withdraw money at 800,000 ATM's worldwide
6. Live international customer support

It sounds very attractive, doesn't it?

[lost in cyberspace]

I recently signed on to the ikobo site and found my account immediately "blocked". Repeated phone messages seem to go off into the void. I recently sent an e-mail and am hoping against hope that some human is actually at this company.

Any advice for getting an account "unblocked"? Or would I just be better off, canceling the service and looking elsewhere?

Thanks!

[jorj]

Hi everyone.
I have to develop an IPN system using ikobo so I've read everything they have on site and I can say I know now a pretty good ideea about them.

But first a message for pedwards and Viki: good try to make us believe you're not the ikobo's employees. If you want to make an advertise for them then communicate with your support team about what I'm going to write so if they're smart they will give me reasons to come back here and post a 'repairing' message.

So, here are the conclusions:
1. they are unstable related to their documentation : is poor , bad written and outdated.

2. Lot of advertise regarding their IPN system which no one ever succeded to implement it because they actually do not offer the techncal details to do it. And I read their IPN pdf 5 times to extract the finest clues to help me implement it. I believe is a bluff.

3. No checking on their side for the item's owner when submitting a purchase. I can see all the items and their prices for all their customers. Is it right?

4. Account blocked in the first 15 minutes after registration. And not becaue of fancy operations. And no explanation. Just that they need to fax them more details about me. And I would if I would know why.

5. Chat support:"temporary unavailable". Email support: "we will pass your problem to our support team". Yeah.

6. ..no, I think is enough for the moment.

I wold expect more from such a service. I imagine there are large amounts involved and it looks like they did not used professionals for it.

Good day to everyone.

PS. I'd be happy to re-post a link with my working ikobo payment system (hear me viki )

[Shakeel Malik]

I do have some experience of dealing with ikobo, may be my words can help you a bit. To get support i sent email at "[e-mail]". You should also send direct email at this address.
As a businessman i understand the reason for account block is normally that someone else is trying to tamper with your account, may be by stealing your pin number, so it is a good sign if the company blocks your account, because that means they do take care of their customers. Now you should take care to keep your personal information off the record so that no one else in your premises should have access to that.

[jorj]

Here is what I received:

"Dear Customer,

We apologize but our scoring mechanism has determined that we are unable to service your account. We have manually reviewed the account as well and produced the same results. We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

Thank you for your interest

The iKobo Team"

So I probably simply 'do not qualify' for that account. Still, I used another account and managed to obtain an oscommerce payment module which needs some tests before its 'official lunch'.

[xobni]

I also have some good experience with iKobo services. I think they are realy the best option. Their ATM card save me the hassle of transfering funds out of PayPal and into my bank account. Not to mention that ATM withdrawals are instant, whereas transferring money into my account usually takes a week or more.

[Shakeel Malik]

I am from Pakistan and my Pakistani friends working in foreign countries had great problem to send money to their families in Pakistan. Now i have heard that lot of Pakistani working in other countries have started using ikobo money transfer facility. I think such a facility was never available to Pakistani people from any other company on Internet. Now a days consumers look for convenience and if the cost of services is also lowest then nothing like that.

[alexenitalie]

My initial impression was great. Their service worked fine with the "old" ikobo card, even though my account was blocked twice. I managed to get it unblocked after a lot of time online with them. Sign up was a little of a hassle with faxing documents to them to get to the 3000 dollars end limit a month, but it finally worked ok. Mostly thanks to the online chat service.
Recently though their customer support has gone completely "south." No longer any online chat, the new i-Kard has had some real problems being accepted in some countries although that appears to be slowly taking care of itself (although repeated emails to [e-mail] were largely ignored or contained answers that had nothing to do with the original email). Now all of a sudden i can't send any money for the past three weeks. I keep getting the same error message. I have emailed ikobo REPEATEDLY for help as there is nothing wrong with my credit card, but ikobo has failed to provide any support at all, not even an auto-generated message saying they had received my email.
It was a great idea, sure beat western union which was my original method of sending money; but, the company is obviously struggling in the customer support area. They either grew too fast and aren't even trying to keep up with customer support, or their costs are exceeding expectations. The loss of the online chat was a serious blow in my opinion, and the "contact us" function there now locks up when I try to send the comment to them. I have now sent a total of ten consecutive emails to them on different days about the problem and have received no reply from them.
I'm having second thoughts. I know I pay more with western union, but to be honest I've never had any problem with them. I like Ikobo, but right now it sucks! And no, i don't work for or own stock in either ikobo or western union!

[Morocco]

Alex,

That seems horrible. I'm truly sorry that had to happen, but you do represent an enormous number of merchants who have been burned.

Go to

www.ikobosucks.com

Try and and get some help there. It actually PayPalSucks.com but there ae many people who use Ikobo there.

[Auteuil]

Hi alexenitalie, and others, who may be using / have been using iKobo for sending money overseas. If you are looking for alternate means of remitting money abroad, there are plenty of other options. I run a non-commercial information site that topic. I can't mention the name or address of my site here, as that would be considered spam in this forum, but if you were to look at my user profile .....

Best regards,

Auteuil

[exbrit]

Well, well, well you are asking for comments on Ikobo. I have plenty for you as I have been trying to use them for months. Frankly I think that they are positively the worst company I have ever come across on the Internet and I have told them so many times as well as complaining to the Better Business Bureau. To begin with they are totally paranoid about security and are always blocking my account because their computer gets suspicious in spite of the time that I have been using them. I can't tell you how many times I have had to send copies of my passport, utility bill etc to them, at my own expence I might add! They NEVER answer emails and their chat system, which has never worked properly is now Kaput. At this point in time trying to use either of my credit cards, both of which have considerable funds in them receives an error message "transaction failed."...Totally useless!

[jorj]

I've heard rumors that they will stop providing services starting from April. Watch out!

[Morocco]

Just a rumor...

Looks like the last chapter in the IKOBO saga is 11

[nicknj]

Wait until they freeze your account without explination!
I am setting up a new site, verified my address with ikobo and hired a programmer to make an ipn script. The site is complete except for the ikobo ipn. Since I can not pay myself to test the script the programmer registered. The programmer could not use their ikobo account. After a week of mailing support they received no replies from ikobo. The only thing stopping me from launching my site was the testing of the ipn script. Then ikobo froze my account without explination! The ikobo info stated...

"iKobo has developed an intelligent computer system that identifies suspicious activity. In some cases, the system will block accounts belonging to legitimate iKobo customers."

Very intelligent! A system that can shut down your account and in effect shut down your site even if you are a legitimate customer. Then you have to wait a week or more for support to tell you that they are not allowed to tell you why the account was froze?

You will find out for yourself some day! Do you want to use such an unstable unreliable company?