Too many card issuers take the position that the charge can be disputed anytime during the period charged and that the only acceptable proof is a signed copy of the charge slip.
Authorize.net would not fight the issue so we switched to Cybercash. Now that Verisign owns Cybercash I don't know if they will fight the issue either. I agree that the signed chargeback statement should be proof that the domain was not purchased by the cardholder and should belong to the reseller. But OpenSRS does not agree and their agreement is the only one that matters. So the only thing you can do is accept the fact that you will lose some money due to bad credit cards and be carefull in accepting registrations for longer than one year. Maybe call and verify the charge but am not sure that will help. What it comes down to is that you must get a signed authorization from the client if you wish to fight charge backs or place yourself in a position to reposses the service if there is a chargeback. It's hard to reposses hosting service after the period is past. In the case of the hosting deadbeat, we changed the password to the site and placed a message on the site that the site had been obtained through fraudlent means since the credit card holder whose credit card had been used to pay for the service stated he never authorized the charge. We were very careful to only state the facts on this page, no name calling or disputing the card holder's statement, we just stated the webmaster used fraud to obtain the site hosting. This stayed on the site for about three days before the domain owner changed the nameservers to remove us from the domain. We have found this very effective in getting our nameservers removed from a domain when there was a payment issue. Through normally we just place an index.page that states please contact billing to resolve outstanding payment issues concerning this site. Deadbeats do not like their activies advertised to the world. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Eric Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 9:36 AM Subject: Re: What to do if credit card fails - domain already registered... > > And unfortunately, the biggest lie is that the service was not provided > > which is why we do not accept one year hosting agreements without a > > faxed signed authorization. > > If the customer gets a chargeback claiming that service was not provided, > at that point don't you have written evidence that the customer has not > paid for the domain and therefore doesn't own it? So then you should be > able to get it transferred to yourself? This seems like it *should* be > much different legally from a case where you never receive payment; in > the latter case you don't have proof that the customer didn't pay for it. > > Not much consolation after 11 months of a 12-month term have passed. > > >
