I recently joined a web site that said they had something in their members section that I wanted, when in reality they did not. As I did not get what I paid for, I naturally contacted this web site and their payment processor, which was CCBill. As you can imagine, the web site never responded, but CCBill did, to their credit, quite promptly. However, their response was anything but helpful - let me quote what they wrote:
"Dear Customer,
CCBill.com does not own or operate the website in question and therefore does not control the content of the site. Since we do not control the content, we do not bill based on satisfaction of the content. You are billed based on availability to access the website. If you are unsatisfied with or have questions regarding the content, you will need to contact the site in question and report it to them. You can contact them through the contact information located on the site."
This is a canned response: they no doubt deal with thousands of these sorts of complaints in exactly the same way.
Naturally I was not happy with this, as I was not simply dissatisfied with the content: the content they said they had did not exist! Hence, I did not get what I paid for: this web site was fraudulent, pure and simple. And I did try to contact the site anyway, but they simply did not respond, presumably safe in the knowledge CCBill would not do anything either.
After I pointed all this out to them, they sent me exactly the same response back!
Customer service is supposed to assist customers! I gave them very detailed instructions on what to look for and which pages to look at: all they had to do was compare the preview page with the members' section (only two pages!). But they simply refused to help, because their policy is not to assist customers with fraudulent web sites.
How low can it get? I'm certainly not the only customer they've treated this way: check out the complaint link below for similar stories
Http://usacomplaints.com/searchresults.Asp? Q1=ALL&q4=&q6=&q3=&q2=&q7=&searchtype=0&submit2=Search! &q5=ccbill &Search=Search
CCBill is just in it for the money. Not only do they refuse to help, they are unbelievably rude about it. And as you can see from the complaint link above, they are this way with everyone who complains to them.
Obviously the safest thing to do with regard to CCBill is simply to never join a site that only uses them as their payment processor. When people purchase something through a payment processor, they should be able to rely on that payment processor helping them if the web site rips them off. That is part of the reason for having a third party handle this stuff. But unlike other payment processors, CCBill absolutely will not help you, no matter how fraudulent the web site they process for is.
A lot of people have had bad experiences with these billing companies, but CCBill is unique in that their policy is not to assist customers who have been ripped off by fraudulent web sites. No other billing company is this unethical, and it is totally unacceptable.
The guilty party here is CCBill. If you join a site that is processed by CCBill, you'd better make sure they give good customer support, because CCBill won't help you if they don't. The BBB processed a total of 268 complaints about this company in the last 36 months:
Http://data. Phoenix. BBB.org/commonreport.html? Bid=23002274
To make matters even worse, there are several other reports of people being falsely charged by CCBill, which they refused to do anything about either (their extraordinary rudeness is a common thread throughout these complaints too. Worse still, their credit card numbers were probably obtained as a result of the appalling security of CCBill's cgi scripts:
Www.theregister.co.uk/01/03/ccbill_knew_of_credit_database/
www.securitytracker.com/alerts/Jul/1007100.html
http://secunia.com/product/1824/
Unfortunately however, I have just found out the hard way that they are a far from ethical company to deal with.
A good lesson that can be learned from this unfortunate situation is that it is better to be safe than sorry. Personally I won't be joining any site that uses CCBill as a matter of principle. Many billing companies have failed financially.ccBill has basically stayed afloat by allowing website clients to rip people off (CCBill accepts just about anybody as long as they make a profit). These kinds of unethical business practices are unsustainable in the long term.
Http://www99. Epinions.com/msg/show_~threads/cat_id_~22/id_~16579/forum_id_~145
Vikaryan
sydney
Australia
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