Avangate is too stupid to live - pay Mike directly!

[captain]

Avangate refused to accept my credit card directly, so I paid via paypal. Paypal verifies payment has been sent, but avangate does not, nor will avangate display any of my order info based on my email address and order number. AAARGH! I should have just paypal'ed directly to Mike. This is FUBAR. I just wanted to show my support, and now I'm out the money, and Mike doesn't get the money.

[mike admin]

This has been raised with Avangate and should be resolved soon. Generally, Avangate IS a good company as it's the first case like this. Please do not hesitate to use them.

[Avangate Support]

Dear customer,

Please accept our apologies for the delayed response in this matter. We have looked up your order in our database and it appears it has been put on hold for further clarifications due to the fact that the details you have provided inside the billing form were invalid (name and billing address). Since we are using these details in order to generate a legal invoice for your purchase, you are required to provide us with valid billing details in order for the purchase to be processed and delivered. Given the situation, we have sent you a follow-up email right after the order was received in the hope that the issue can quickly be rectified and the delivery sped up. Sadly enough, we have not received any feedback from you, consequently the order remained in this stage.
If you require more details on this subject or if you simply have any questions related to our services, please feel free to contact us by email at support[at]avangate[dot]com
Thank you for your understanding in the matter.

Sincerely,
Avangate Support
www.avangate.com

[captain]

EDIT:

TO AVANGATE:

Please email me EXACTLY how to remedy this, so Mike can get his money, and I'll try one last time.

/EDIT


According to the email message Avangate references above, there was a minor typo in my mailing address, but not enough to preclude anything being delivered to me by snail mail; plus, WTF?? They obviously can contact me by email, so WHAT THE HELL??? Furthermore, avangate will not even allow me to sign back into their system to correct the typo. I have tried signing in, as well as using my email address and the order number they emailed to me. They had no problem taking the money from paypal... [edit- Well, okay, the paypal charge is still pending.]

This whole interaction has been a massive pain in the ass! AAARGH! I just wanted to support a fellow software developer, and have a registration code that won't expire when makemkv.com's web site is down at the end of a beta-period and I want to rip a blu-ray. But I give up. I have no idea whether or not the paypal money will be given to Mike, Avangate, Paypal, or returned to me.

We seriously need better e-commerce options.

Sorry Mike. I tried.

[captain]

Am I the only one who sees the irony of this taking place re. MakeMKV???

"So, my 'Personal Identification' failed your 'Verification Check', and I'm denied the right to pay you, even though all technology is already in place which already verified that my payment is valid." Sounds like Sony-level DRM crap to me! :-/

[Avangate Support]

Dear customer,

Please note that we have sent you three consecutive email messages aimed to help you finalize the order by providing us with your valid billing details (they were sent to you on the following dates: November 2nd, November 5th, November 14th). We have also tried to explain the situation on this thread and we have invited you to contact us directly in order to rectify this situation as soon as possible. Unfortunately we have not received any reply from you with the aforementioned details. As a result, your payment was fully reversed on November 16th therefore the amount should be back in your account now. If you're still interested to make this payment, we kindly recommend that you place the order again and fill in the online payment page with all the required information.
Thank you for your understanding of the situation. If you have further questions on the subject, please get back to us at support[at]avangate[dot]com

Sincerely,
Avangate Support
www.avangate.com

[captain]

Okay, I *think* I have figured out what Avangate's problem is.... It looks like they insist on having ALL of my personal ID before they will process a charge that my bank has already *verified* as valid. Why? They are not shipping me anything - they don't need my full billing address. We are not getting married - they don't need my SSN and DOB.... All they should need is the info that the CC Companies require to verify purchases (i.e. CC#, exp. date, CVV - and *possibly* billing zip code. NOTHING ELSE!) If they follow those simple data gathering and verifying procedures, then they are not out any money and cannot be "chargeback"ed. They are just unnecessarily covering their asses, and/or gathering data for future "sales" efforts... or worse.... :-/

I'm going to go with "worse", since after failing the CC charge, I paid "in cash" with paypal. They *still* denied my purchase! That is just insane! It's not Avangate that's losing out, it's vendors like Mike here (who won't make sales) and customers like me (who will either be unable to buy products, or will open themselves up to ID theft). (Avangate is not alone is these overzealous data-gathering operations. Many POS vendors now "require photo ID" with a CC charge. That's illegal in the USA (contract law - read the Merchant Agreements re. "requiring other ID"), etc.

Again, I suggest Mike dump these crooked business partners and go to a direct sales model, or at least use a legitimate, non-abusive partner. I'd bet that he could sell through Amazon Marketplace and make enough off of successful, and painless, sales to make up for any possible extra fees that amazon.com might take, and might even save on a per-sale basis, as I'm sure that Avangate is taking a percentage too.

Just my $0.02, which I can afford to spend since Avangate refuses to allow me to pay mike the $50 I feel he deserves for sticking with this project!


PS: One other, huge, reason we may not want to be fully ID'ed is that ripping our own discs is technically *illegal* in the USA, according to the asinine DMCA law. So, having all of our info in some database that's directly tied to "criminal tools" doesn't sound like a very good idea. The jackbooted thugs could conceivably come a'knocking. Do we really even want to go there?

[Smithcraft]

I'm not sure if you grasp this, but there is this thing called fraud.

At some point you will realize that your financial institution will give your money to anyone who asks for it. If you think they have any interest in looking out for you, then you are very mistaken. The whole iDea of the verification check is to protect you from someone else using your money.

With the way credit cards work, if the card holder wants a chargeback, the company does it. A valid transaction? Pish posh! They take the money from the vendor and give it back to you. The vendor has to then fight to get the money back. If they don't have the correct information, then why would the credit card company agree to give the money back to them?

The problem here, is that you made a mistake("According to the email message Avangate references above, there was a minor typo in my mailing address"). Not Avangate. Avangate is doing what they are supposed to do.

I paid through Avangate with out any problems by simply doing what was asked, and making sure my information was correct. It is the same thing I do with every single online transaction I have done for the last 15 years.

Now, if you had contacted Avangate, and they told you to pound sand, then, in my opinion, you would have a valid complaint. However all you have done is complain that they are doing what they are supposed to do, and failed to indicated any sort of malfeasance in the part of Avangate.

SC

[captain]

I did contact Avangate; Repeatedly, and never received any informative response ("Please provide us with the requested information," when I have already done so, is not helpful.) I followed every instruction, including the contradictory ones, from their automated responder, including the ones "signed" by company representatives, and got nowhere.

Smithcraft, since you do not know the full story, and don't seem to have even paid attention to what I have shared with the community here, perhaps you might consider not being sarcastic and puerile in your name calling (despite the fact that I initiated this thread with some of the same - I'm sorry, I was extremely frustrated). I'm glad that you managed to get your money to Mike. I wish it had been so easy for me.

We could debate the credit card industry practices until the cows come home, but the fact is that the MasterCard (and Visa) Merchant Agreement falls under the auspices of contract law; all the merchants sign these contracts in order to accept CC payments. By not abiding by the rules in the contract (i.e. requiring more verification than the contract entitles them to** - which is part of what Avangate is doing) they are violating their contract which is tantamount to breaking the law. If they don't want to abide by the rules of the contract, they should not have signed it! It's specious of all you Avangate boosters to claim otherwise, and it's suspicious of Avangate to deny a charge even *when* a customer has fulfilled their illegal demands.

** 9.11.2 Cardholder Identification
A merchant must not refuse to complete a MasterCard card transaction solely
because a cardholder who has complied with the conditions for presentment
of a card at the POI refuses to provide additional identification information,
except as specifically permitted or required by the Standards. A merchant may
require additional identification from the cardholder if the information is
required to complete the transaction, such as for shipping purposes. A
merchant in a country or region that supports use of the MasterCard Address
Verification Service (AVS) may require the cardholder's ZIP or postal code to
complete a cardholder-activated terminal (CAT) transaction, or the cardholder's
address and ZIP or postal code to complete a mail order, phone order, or
e-commerce transaction.


PS: FWIW, I have again reviewed all of the correspondence sent to me from Avangate, none of which offered a solution. Looking again at all the data I submitted, they most certainly received more than enough to snail mail me a hard copy receipt (or to send the jack boot thugs to confiscate my DMCA-violating ripped DVD collection).... So I am utterly bemused by whatever they are up to. *Avangate's* behavior is the one that is suspicious here, and I resent that they, and their boosters, continue to imply any wrongdoing on my part.

[captain]

Mike: if you'll PM me a Snail Mail address, I will send you some good old fashioned MONEY.

[Smithcraft]

Where did I call you a name? Also, at no point in your previous comments, did you say that you were attempting to work with Avangate, just that they were not accepting your money, so your comment that I haven't read what you wrote is wrong. Also nobody here can know the full story since you were not providing all of the information.

Anyway, since they are not replying, or helping you, then I say Flame On!

SC

[mike admin]

With respect to every party, this discussion is going nowhere. I can only say that Avangate supports LOTS of payment methods and all of them are enabled for MakeMKV. For example, you can purchase MakeMKV by providing only email address and then paying with cash at any 7-11 store. Be sure to check all available payment methods on Avangate website.