YNOT.com :: View topic - My Final IBILL Update.. Unbeliveable!

YNOT.com

General Board - My Final IBILL Update.. Unbeliveable!

saraswirls - 01:14 PM EST, Friday Feb 10, 2006
Post subject: My Final IBILL Update.. Unbeliveable!

Well as I had reported back in January, I had been using Ibill in a backup capacity during nov and oct of 2005. Bottom line since then they have only paid me 4 out of 13 scheduled payouts. Despite numerous unanswered calls,emails no one from that company has bothered to be truthful about the status of it. Personally I am not posting in here for sympathy, I have just written off the money and there existence as a legitamite company. BUT TO THE NEWBIES........

Get this, I called today at about 1:00 pm est, and was given a voice option of pressing 1 for new accounts, 2 for existing accounts,etc. So it is there way of weeding out the pissed off webmasters and the gullible new comers. So I press one for new accounts, and said I would be interested in opening an account.

I had actually done this before and posted the experience in ynot, so I figured they would not be so brazen to do it again. Well long story short they are taking new accounts and PROMISING that there has been no delays with payouts, no glitches at all, and that as far as they knew all payouts are current!

I started laughing and said, how is it that you can sleep at night knowing you lie thru your teeth for a living? The guy said,"what do you mean" I said, " I am an existing webmaster who has not been paid my last 6-7 payouts, so how could you lie and cheat new clients knowing what you have done, and his answer was "as far as I know all payouts ARE going out" Notice he did not say all payouts have been made.

Anyway I know people are sick of hearing about Ibill, but I figure the only reason to open a thread is to warn the newbies because they are continuing to operate deceptively and maliciously. Had I been warned as a newbie I may have avoided the loss and frustration that I have had to suffer with these crooks.

Newbies don't fall victim, there are many ways to get screwed in this business and I am familiar with many of them, so take the words of advice and stay away from Ibill. Period!

regards,
Sara

Hammer - 01:20 PM EST, Friday Feb 10, 2006
Post subject:

Not that I'm defending them, but remember that when a company is having problems they can either declare bankruptcy, in which case you would never see any of your money anyway, or they can do their best to continue in business and pay off their debts over time. It's pretty hard to continue in business without taking on new clients and obviously admitting to those new clients that you are having trouble paying existing clients would not work out too well.

So, they are in a catch 22 situation and although I don't condone lying to potential customers, it's hard to think of any options that make sense really.

saraswirls - 01:33 PM EST, Friday Feb 10, 2006
Post subject:

Good point Hammer, but as a newbie trying to start a business, as opposed to ibill's situation of staying in business, is it my burden to be mislead and risk my livelihood trying to save something that cannot be saved?

It would seem that enough newbies have been put out of business by them already. Hell I know how close I came to being out of business because of them alone, and other crooked companies, so I feel very lucky and compelled to warn all potential newbies.

It is not the resposibility of the newbie to bail them out, when they have already taken a shit on the very ones who have sustained them. I am not even talking about me, I have read some of the reports from other webmasters all over the web, and the stories of people losing their homes, businesses and all of that, It really could be worse for alot of us, but sorry I can't cut them any more slack. I was one who did cut them slack and give them a second chance and they repay me by taking a crap on me again.

I know you are not defending them Hammer, but I could say the same hypothetical... How is a new struggling business supposed to develope and grow when its already limited budget and resources are decimated by a company who is clearly in default and still signing up new business? It's mind boggling isn't it?
At this point what they owe me is a distant memory, however I know the pain and discontentment with this industry that can develope and discourage a newbie who has worked honestly and hard to get started and then be grossly mistreated, and misused by corporate greed. Ok maybe thats politically incorrect I suppose its mismanagement thats all, no criminaly intent just negligence...LOL.

regards,
Sara

TheLegacy - 01:49 PM EST, Friday Feb 10, 2006
Post subject:

the situation over there is becoming the stuff of legends on how not to treat clients and will likely leave a bad taste in everyones mouth for a while. Current billing companies are watched even more closely for fear of being pegged as another "IBill".

It is true that these guys simply expect many webmasters to believe in what is a digital shell game of payments. I think what is the most difficult thing for us to bear is that they represent all that is bad in business and human nature. Lying to ones face and knowingly sucking the life out of people with no disregard of reputation or dignity.

they remind me of selling snake oil in the old days that cures all ailments... and they still would sell a fake cure to a dying child's parents if it meant they would make some money out of it. IBill is no different in their dealings with their clients

Smurf - 05:47 PM EST, Friday Feb 10, 2006
Post subject:

As a newbie, I thank you for the heads up on IBill Sara. I found a trait I've had for many years when dealing with ANY company is fair but ruthless. Dealings with ANY comapny CAN break down, the difference between a good comapany and a bad one is how they deal with it. A good company will attempt to put the problem right ASAP, appologise and put in place measures to stop it happening again, a bad one denies the problem, makes little, if any attempts to fix it ASAP and puts NO effort into making sure it don't happen again.

With that in mind, I give my loyalty and reccomendations to those in the former catagory, at the same time actively disuading freinds, family etc from giving buisness to those I found to be in the latter catagory. This ruthless tenacity is for life.

Bottom line, shit happens, its what reaction you get to it that counts. Give the customer a decent level of service and you have them for life, give them bad service you lose them AND those who they can influence from ever becoming customers.

Reputations DO count.

Tim2 - 07:23 PM EST, Friday Feb 10, 2006
Post subject:

I wonder why Ibill is trying to pretend they are still in business.

rockslammer - 02:15 AM EST, Saturday Feb 11, 2006
Post subject:

Hammer wrote:

....or they can do their best to continue in business and pay off their debts over time. It's pretty hard to continue in business without taking on new clients and obviously admitting to those new clients that you are having trouble paying existing clients would not work out too well....

Then it usually becomes a Ponzi scheme, always having to take in fresh money to pay off the old debts. Short of a miracle, this almost always leads to a Chapter 11 anyway.

This caused the problems at ibill

www.forbes.com

Quote:

That dubious distinction comes courtesy of a little-noticed lawsuit filed Sept. 17[,2004] by Internet Billing against First Data (nyse: FDC - news - people ). IBill acts as a middleman between 4,000 small, mostly porn, sites and the banks that are critical to any credit card transaction. In iBill's case, the bank was an obscure unit of First Data, a financial services giant that expects 2004 sales of $10 billion. But apparently fed up with the connection to the controversial business, First Data finally got out of porn on Sept. 15 when its contract with iBill expired, leaving iBill in the lurch (but still holding $14.5 million of iBill's deposits).

seansms - 07:44 AM EST, Saturday Feb 11, 2006
Post subject: Cell Phone Billing

Well there is an alternative which is not being fully exploited by webmasters and that is payment using SMS for European clients.
No chargebacks guaranteed
I will be the first to say the payouts are crap but with over 100 million suitable clients out there willing to pay by cell phone it is a whole new world of revenue to exploit.
Sean O'Connor
CEO
Textbill Limited
http://www.textbill.com

Kroywen - 04:25 PM EST, Saturday Feb 11, 2006
Post subject: Re: Cell Phone Billing

seansms wrote:

Hey, nice way of totally screwing up your reputation and therefore potential business by making your first post on Ynot a spammy sales pitch. Way to go.

Kroywen - 04:30 PM EST, Saturday Feb 11, 2006
Post subject: Re: My Final IBILL Update.. Unbeliveable!

saraswirls wrote:

I had actually done this before and posted the experience in ynot, so I figured they would not be so brazen to do it again. Well long story short they are taking new accounts and PROMISING that there has been no delays with payouts, no glitches at all, and that as far as they knew all payouts are current!

I started laughing and said, how is it that you can sleep at night knowing you lie thru your teeth for a living? The guy said,"what do you mean" I said, " I am an existing webmaster who has not been paid my last 6-7 payouts, so how could you lie and cheat new clients knowing what you have done, and his answer was "as far as I know all payouts ARE going out" Notice he did not say all payouts have been made.

Sincere kudos to you for having the guts to call them out on it. It's very sad and bad for the industry to have companies act like iBill does and I hope one day iBill will either get their act together (hmmmm) or vanish for good.
I know of a lot of well intentioned webmasters who got burned very badly by them and while I like to give a struggling business the benefit of the doubt, iBill clearly isn't cutting it.

saraswirls - 05:24 PM EST, Saturday Feb 11, 2006
Post subject:

Thanks Kroy Baby, I had to let it be known, simply because they are playing games with peoples lives, and that is unacceptable. Just imagine working at your bank,deli,post office,law office,schoolbus driving,etc. no matter where you are imagine your payroll people promising you your check the next week, you trust them because you know they are getting revenue off of your hard labor, but then you wake up 6 weeks later, and there is an eviction notice, your car repossesed,lights off,etc.

Its disturbing that it can go on with impunity in the way I described as I called them and they show no shame or guilt,or remorse in flat out lying to people who want to enhance there own quality of life.

You know they can't answer the phone and tell their merchants where their money is but they can answer and tell potential new clients to sign up today and send them more business.

It just embitters me that the DOJ will make erotic literature and max hardcore a priority in there mission but will not make an example out of Ibill's corporate fraud , who has clearly done more damage and irreversible harm then any of the sites recently busted for 2257, or obscenity or whatever. In my book nothing is more obscene than the amount of damage Ibill has done, and is still doing present day.
regards,
Sara

Jimmidean66 - 06:25 PM EST, Saturday Feb 11, 2006
Post subject:

Hammer mentioned two options that are correct go chapter 11 or try to operate and pay. Both are possibilities.
I see a third option stay in biz and keep the cash for as for as long as possible and then run.
This is where I see I bill.
Good work Sara to continue towarn potential newbies who may become discouraged very quick by losing there hard earned cash.
Hope you get your cash I fear you wont.
Sad

Jimmidean66 - 09:01 PM EST, Saturday Feb 11, 2006
Post subject:

I actually scrolled by that post by Seanms.
Kroywen well said.
Sean MS at least Ibill does not spam us here.

seansms - 06:33 AM EST, Monday Feb 13, 2006
Post subject:

My deepest apologies to those who were offended by my post that wasnt the intention.

Being new to this I made an amateur's mistake.

Advice welcomed on how to make our service known to webmaster's would be greatly appreciated.

-Seansms

khan - 09:31 AM EST, Monday Feb 13, 2006
Post subject:

Seansms, try submitting a listing to YNOT's Service Directory. Try buying an ad at YNOT. Hell, try just participating and letting folks get interested in what you're doing.

nhermanc - 08:25 PM EST, Thursday Feb 16, 2006
Post subject:

I am a longtime IBill customer and have some thoughts on this.

Many of my experiences with IBill have been negative but remember current Ibill managment inherited a terrible situation from their predecessors.

I'm not sure how much blame current IBill management should get for the situation.

I feel strongly that the previous Ibill management team is responsible for a lot of the current problems. I also feel that First Data is responsible for a lot of the current problems. Current management may be just holding the bag.

First Data yanked the rug from IBill and from what I understand kept a bunch of their money.

First Data may be a prime reason for all of this.

The basic problem was generated by the interaction of the old Ibill management team and First Data. One of them - or both are criminal in this. Current Ibill management team is probably holding the bag. I think the current Ibill management team makes a convenient punching bag because they are well holding the bag.

I suspect that there are some former Ibill honchos and First Data honchos laughing their a**es off at those going after the current management of Ibill.

I suspect that there are some hot cars in south Florida and ski vacations in Utah paid for by looted money from us. And that money was looted by the previous management team and First Data.

If justice is served here someone MUST go after the previous management of Ibill and First Data. I suspect criminal activity. I also suspect that the current management team is just the fall guys/lackeys and the true criminals are laughing at us going after them.

Thats my 2 cents and I've lost a LOT of money here (with Ibill).

yatesf - 03:35 AM EST, Saturday Feb 18, 2006
Post subject:

100% agreed, I think the Lion's Share of this mishap was the poor communication between previous Ibill management and First Data.

The current management is just doing the best thing they know to try and survive at this point.

Really sucks that so many are getting screwed.

I am so glad I did not go the route of Ibill, but then again, when I got into porn in Oct '05, this news had plenty of air time, so I did enough research to exclude them based on history.

Thank god for word of mouth, and I appreciate the value of this thread in providing insight to others who might make the mistake.

khan - 09:40 AM EST, Saturday Feb 18, 2006
Post subject:

Any alleged criminal activity notwithstanding ...

When you buy a company, you buy their debt as well as their operations. One would assume due-diligence would have revealed any debt load held by the original owner. Plans for addressing that should have been first and foremost in the minds of the new owners IF they intended to continue running the company. To think one could just ignore the debt owed to past clients trusting that you could build a new client base is, to my thinking, extremely short sighted. You don't get out of the responsibility by saying, "well, that was the other owners", imo.

lightboy - 02:42 PM EST, Saturday Feb 18, 2006
Post subject:

Ibill sucks big ... Sad

********************

this sponsor doesnt convert any much beter than any others but they pay out massive amount per sale.
im getting about 1:950 with tgp/mgp and between 1:300-600 with ppc (depends on search engine/search term)

the trick is to try and send as many sales as possible as every 2 sales a day means an extra $10 per sale..

1-2 sales $50
3-4 sales $60
5-6 sales $70

etc .. upto $130/sale max

this is the only program ive actually made a good sustainable profit with on any search engine ppc ..

cams.com

use the per order program ..
**************************

Nizla77 - 06:41 PM EST, Tuesday Feb 21, 2006
Post subject:

We used to be on ibill Sad

It angers me when they owe us money and there are articles about new deals they're making.

HellHouseVic - 10:00 PM EST, Friday Feb 24, 2006
Post subject: Re: My Final IBILL Update.. Unbeliveable!

saraswirls wrote:

I started laughing and said, how is it that you can sleep at night knowing you lie thru your teeth for a living? The guy said,"what do you mean" I said, " I am an existing webmaster who has not been paid my last 6-7 payouts, so how could you lie and cheat new clients knowing what you have done,

I love people with bravery like you. This is a great story. Bravo.

Johnny - 08:35 PM EST, Wednesday Mar 01, 2006
Post subject:

I was unaware of the transition that took place at iBill. It was not until my recent return from South America did I discover such. From my readings, iBill seems to be back on track.

Oddly, I checked my old account(#2XX) recently. Discovered monies owed to me. Filed the neccessary papers to claim it. Hope to see it soon.

philthompson - 01:58 AM EST, Wednesday Aug 23, 2006
Post subject:

To all affected merchants,

My firm - Merchant Risk, is in touch with a number of former Ibill merchants and Etelegate merchants to facilitate their collection process. We specialize in global asset recovery and focus on recovering ($$) funds first. If you think you have a claim, please visit www.collectfromibill.com and complete the short form. This is for both Ibill and Etelegate merchants!

Phil Thompson
Merchant Risk, Recovery & Intelligence, Inc
www.mrrii.com

BBWH121 - 11:07 AM EST, Friday Nov 03, 2006
Post subject: Textbill/ Mibill

seansms wrote:

This Company is truly ranked up there with IBill, Actually they surpass Ibill , At least Ibill paid at least 1 payment.Textbill / Mibill is nothing more than a bunch of thiefs and that "Sean Oconnor" If he really exsists "since he has not never replied once to my many emails" Is a bold face liar .If you are a webmaster looking for a payment company-Textbill / Mibill is not for you! This company owes me more than $6000.00 and also owes trustedonlinepharmacy the over that amount. This company is a complete failure!! Nothing more than a bynch of crooks , all they do is give you the run around and more lies.Once I am paid I will be sure to post--so far I havent received the 1 penny in 4months and they still are putting me off. I have had enough!! I want my money!

TheLegacy - 03:34 PM EST, Friday Nov 03, 2006
Post subject:

Johnny wrote:

back on track? please dont take this the wrong way.. but dude have you seen their site lately?

http://www.ibill.com

khan - 09:27 AM EST, Saturday Nov 04, 2006
Post subject:

Dude, are you aware you're responding to a post from early march?
Wink

BBWH121 - 11:06 AM EST, Saturday Nov 04, 2006
Post subject:

lol-yeah--But I think people should know about how textbill /mibill are treating their webmasters

All times are GMT - 12 Hours
Powered by PNphpBB2 1.2d © 2003-2004 based on phpBB 21.2d © 2001, 2002 phpBB Group
and by YNOTMASTERS 1.2 which uses Theme Graphics by Daz
and by Attachment-Mod 2.3.6