BadCustomer.com

[mikel]

http://www.badcustomer.com/

Anybody use this service? Sounds like a dandy idea I've wished was available for quite some time. If you have, how was the integration into Miva and please share any experiences. Thanks.

--
Mike

[Brandon MUS]

Re: BadCustomer.com

Seriously? I saw that on Practical Ecommerce yesterday, shared it with the office and we haven't stopped laughing yet!

Two obvious things that jump out at me:
1) You are now going to share every customer's information with this new, unverified, company. I have never heard about this company before yesterday and now they expect me to trust them with my customer's information? If there was a security breach on their end, you take the heat, not them.
2) I have never seen this used on a live site (and if I knew a site used it I would run because I don't trust them with my info), but based on their (amazing) screenshots (of Amazon -- whom could probably sue them for using their logo) you will be telling every customer that you think they may be a "Bad Customer". Seriously? Then you warn them that if they give you a charge back you will blacklist them? You really want to threaten your customers like that?

[Manoj]

Re: BadCustomer.com

I am sorry but the concept is not new Big cooperation have been doing this for a while now.

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/...de/P103694.asp

[mikel]

Re: BadCustomer.com

Seriously? I saw that on Practical Ecommerce yesterday, shared it with the office and we haven't stopped laughing yet!

Two obvious things that jump out at me:
1) You are now going to share every customer's information with this new, unverified, company. I have never heard about this company before yesterday and now they expect me to trust them with my customer's information? If there was a security breach on their end, you take the heat, not them.
2) I have never seen this used on a live site (and if I knew a site used it I would run because I don't trust them with my info), but based on their (amazing) screenshots (of Amazon -- whom could probably sue them for using their logo) you will be telling every customer that you think they may be a "Bad Customer". Seriously? Then you warn them that if they give you a charge back you will blacklist them? You really want to threaten your customers like that?

I had not viewed the screenshots of the Amazon example until now. I gave it a quick look yesterday and thought it was a database you could check against manually. It does look like they screen each of your orders and the screenshots of what the customer sees is pretty awful. Wonder if you can simply use the database manually to check suspicious orders out?

[Brandon MUS]

Re: BadCustomer.com

Nope, they can't give you the database either because it is chock-full of customer's addresses and probably even purchase information.

Also, if you follow along very closely, you will notice that if they are a bad customer, they are kicked out of your store and taken to their lovely website where they charge the customers a fee to be taken off this list...

[mikel]

Re: BadCustomer.com

Oh, I wouldn't expect them to give out the database, I was just wondering if you could enter the info manually and get the "good customer" or "bad customer" response. It's probably only 1% of the orders you'd want to verify anyway, most orders are repeat customers or not worth the trouble to verify.

Guess I didn't look closely enough because I did not see that they take the bad customers to their site and ask them to pay to get removed...that's so bad in itself, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. So if a bad customer is willing to pay $10 or whatever to get off their list so they can continue to scam merchants for $1000 at a time, badcustomer.com will sell out and remove them? LOL

[Brandon MUS]

Re: BadCustomer.com

There is a screen for consumers to see if they are on the list or not, so you could maybe use that for yourself. But you make a great point -- they are willing to sell out for a couple of bucks. I bet once they are removed from the blacklist, they are even whitelisted so that the consumer is never flagged again

[Pamela Hazelton]

Re: BadCustomer.com

In my opinion - though such an alert would be nice, I see participating in this service to be more of a bad thing than a good thing. I do read privacy policies on sites I shop and I wouldn't order from a company that participated in this type of practice.

First issue is, the site name: badcustomer... is reason enough to turn customers sour. :)

Seriously, if the concern is chargebacks, then look into fraud control, which "scores" people who consistently buy and chargeback on cards.

Also, consider accepting more methods of payment from companies that actually WORK with merchants (opposed to Visa and MC, which essentially caves to consumers most of the time). Amex and Discover both WORK with merchants; they want to eliminate "abuse" on both ends. So does PayPal.

I also have to wonder if anyone gets enough chargebacks that they get real excited about using such a service, what are they selling and what are they doing wrong? We've got clients selling some pretty risky and/or obscure products, and with the right customer service, they rarely see chargebacks and most are resolved.