Comments to Online Payment Alternative: Bill Me Later2008-04-10T07:41:55-07:00Practical Ecommerceinfo@practicalecommerce.comhttp://www.practicalecommerce.com/Copyright 2007 Confluence Publishing DBA Practical EcommerceBillmelaterIsScammingMehttp://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/487/Online-Payment-Alternative-Bill-Me-Later/#comment87342008-04-10T07:41:55-07:00Billmelater.com is totally untrustworthy and does not care about customers.
They only care about taking your money. It is just impossible to get them to correct a mistake. Their reps and supervisors just repeat the same thing each and every time from some script. We are not responsible..call the merchant.
Anyways, lets begin with this, I was entitled to a free product from Equiifax due to Hillis/Slack Settlement and picked the billmelater option without realizing that I was openning an account with billmelater.com. I realized I made a mistake in the payment option and cancelled the order 2 days later with the Equifax. Equifax told me I would not be charged. However, I received a email from billmelater.com that a bill was on the way. I called immediately called billmelater.com on it to inform them of the cancellation. billmelater.com keeps saying that they already paid Equifax the money and I would have to call Equifax and have Equifax refund the money back to billmelater.com. This...John Seversonhttp://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/487/Online-Payment-Alternative-Bill-Me-Later/#comment86852008-04-09T06:20:57-07:00I wasted a lot of money on PPC. I went with a company called FutureRanking.com. They guaranteed that they would get my keywords on the top 2 pages in the major search engines. It took about 3 months for them to get me there, but I was very pleased with the results. I'm getting a lot of traffic because of it. Hopefully I can get something like BML in the future later when my business grows. It will be a while before I see $10 million. Does anyone know about any direct competitors they may have?gayathriherathttp://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/487/Online-Payment-Alternative-Bill-Me-Later/#comment77752008-03-12T12:02:50-07:00Has anyone out there heard about WideCircles.com. It seems like a way better service then wasting money on PPC. Apparently they are using refering websites ( forums, blogs, wiki, etc. ) and have a viral word of mouth distributed approach to it. My friend told me he got around 100 visits from single post which cost him $0.40c. I am going to give them a try today . In case you are intrested here is it. http://widecircles.com?s=imt1P Robinhttp://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/487/Online-Payment-Alternative-Bill-Me-Later/#comment71352008-03-03T12:11:12-07:00Do not use them. Their billing practices and late fee charges are questionable at best. They apply the payments in a way that if you have 3 different purchases 1 due immediatelly, 1 due in 3 months and 1 in four months they will split the payment between all 3 thus charging you late fees for no payment of the amount due immediatelly if you 1/3 does not cover the entire amount due immediatelly.
Brianhttp://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/487/Online-Payment-Alternative-Bill-Me-Later/#comment47112008-01-21T10:25:57-07:00They did not properly credit a return. I called them on it several times and got correction assurances each time. Never happened. Finally a supervisor promised to solve it. I moved on.
Then Penncro & Associates got on my case. This is a COLLECTION AGENCY going after me for a product that I returned for a full refund. Bill Me Later admitted their mistake but refused to address a charged-off account. I complained to their execs and got a call back today from a VP. Can someone please tell me how a company can collect on a debt that doesn't exist? I should note that the merchant involved, OfficeMax, agreed with my version of events and has been wonderful.
Maybe I'll get some solutions soon.Busbyhttp://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/487/Online-Payment-Alternative-Bill-Me-Later/#comment46272008-01-09T12:47:29-07:00Bill me later is a total scam. You unknowingly get signed up with an account and then all of a sudden get harassing calls from rude collection people. When you ask simple questions they act like trained robots rather than humans, charge outrageous fees and I would NEVER use them for my business or as a consumer ever again. They should be shut down for what is tantamount toloan sharking. Angryhttp://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/487/Online-Payment-Alternative-Bill-Me-Later/#comment44782007-12-26T14:07:58-07:00I have had someone use Bill me Later and now I have bill collectors calling and Bill me Later does not seem to care that I did not request this service. And what really ticks me off is someone purchased a Continental Airline ticket to it would not be hard to figure out who used my identification. Instead, Bill Me Later seems to enjoy harrassing me!!!!
This is a really ridiculous service that can be used in a very wrong way!!!Heatherhttp://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/487/Online-Payment-Alternative-Bill-Me-Later/#comment38262007-10-09T07:24:21-07:00BML seems to be targeting very large businesses with relatively large sales volume. We don't fit the $20M per annum target, and therefore, after considerable research we opted for BizPay Direct's Ecommerce solution which can be found at http://www.bizpaydirect.com.
They primarily use the direct debit (ACH) payment method for online transactions for both payment and collections. They also have a non-profit version called donorbuddy (http://www.donorbuddy.com).
We were able to easily private label the payment solutions to fit our brand and corresponding website. AND GUESS WHAT - they did not charge us a set-up fee AND they charge a simple monthly subscription amount and NO percentage of the amount transacted. Turns out to eb a Win-Win situation! Lee Tranhttp://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/487/Online-Payment-Alternative-Bill-Me-Later/#comment35602007-09-03T20:43:40-07:00Check out this free merchant account letting customers pay via mobile phone on your website. http://www.getpaidbyphone.com
The customer actually doesn't get billed until later on their phone carrier's billing cycle.. like deferred billing.
The merchant is guaranteed payment by the phone carrier.Reynaldo R Rodriguezhttp://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/487/Online-Payment-Alternative-Bill-Me-Later/#comment34382007-08-08T21:40:57-07:00I am building 2 websites and so far I have a shopping cart and a good company to process future clients credit cards for full payments PayPal, but I like the idea of offering a pay late plan or small pay plan for products, what I would like to do is have the pay later option next to pay pal, so the customers can choose towards the end of visits to any of my sites is this possible???Frank Zeiselhttp://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/487/Online-Payment-Alternative-Bill-Me-Later/#comment33742007-07-26T03:57:34-07:00Folks, I recommend using a decent pay per phone company called www.daopay.com
No annual fees, no minimum sales required, just plain good service and customer service. Fast and anonymous (definitely not furious ;-)) payments.Bhonghttp://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/487/Online-Payment-Alternative-Bill-Me-Later/#comment30722007-06-15T10:21:25-07:00
Anyone considering alternative form of payment, check out e-gold.
Backed by Gold Metal
http://www.e-gold.com/e-gold.asp?cid=4512006
Heather Fieldshttp://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/487/Online-Payment-Alternative-Bill-Me-Later/#comment29972007-06-05T16:29:25-07:00I work for Bill Me Later. I wanted to let your readers know that our CNP online sales volume is not $10M-$20M as suggested. We actually are working with mid-market merchants today. I would be happy to talk to anyone interested in learning more. I can be reached at heather.fields@i4commerce.com or 443.921.1961. Please know that I am at the Internet Retailer Conference from June 4-7 but will respond to inquiries immediately thereafter. Alternatively my colleagues in our Inside Sales Group can also answer questions. They can be reached at 443.921.1949 or salesinquiries@i4commerce.com.
Harvey Braswellhttp://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/487/Online-Payment-Alternative-Bill-Me-Later/#comment28722007-06-03T14:52:21-07:00Wow, I just took a look at the form to sign on and the first question asks whether your sales volume is greater than $20M.
But I see one of my competitors www.planetgrind.com offers the service. Somehow I doubt these dudes are doing $20M/year selling scooters.
Mitch, can you give some insight as to what the minimum requirements are? You cannot even complete the form for BML unless you are doing over a million per year!
HarveyChris Sabeyhttp://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/487/Online-Payment-Alternative-Bill-Me-Later/#comment28002007-06-02T07:50:40-07:00I do a lot of weekend traveling around the midwest, and to florida for vacation. I am a business owner and recent college graduate. I book all my flights, hotels, and traveling needs online. I have booked through some sights (sometimes at a higher price for airfare or a hotel room) specifically because they offered Bill Me Later.
I don't like using my debit card to book these things as it can tie up cash flow at times. Using a credit card would be easy, but using them for everything can forms a liberal spending habit which can lead to problems, as well as being difficult to seperate business expenses from personal. Obtaining business debit and credit cards as well as personal is annoying because you have so many accounts to manage cash flow through.
Bill Me Later allows me to track these expenses for tax purposes as an independent contractor just as good (if not better) as a credit or debit card, while providing a convenient, reliable, and efficient means of payment for...Frankhttp://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/487/Online-Payment-Alternative-Bill-Me-Later/#comment27522007-06-01T03:34:37-07:00This article was really worthy of Impractical Ecommerce rather than your site/magazine.
In order to signup with Bill Me Later you need over $20M of revenue per year so how practical is that for the average ecommerce site?!?!?!Paul Hollowellhttp://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/487/Online-Payment-Alternative-Bill-Me-Later/#comment24232007-05-25T11:45:27-07:00Overall, we've had good results with BML, and, quite honestly, we would be able to drive additional incremental sales if we were able to promote the service to a greater degree on our own site. We have had much more positive results with BML compared to PayPal, both in terms of the percentage of total orders, as well as average order value.Jestephttp://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/487/Online-Payment-Alternative-Bill-Me-Later/#comment23772007-05-24T11:21:34-07:00The minimum for Bill me later is huge. Small and even medium ecommerce sites will not be able to use the bill me later services. We do several million a year in online sales, and we weren't even close to what bill me later required when we looked into it last year. Definitely was disappointing as the service would fit perfectly with our products and our customers. Everything looked great then as it still does not, but it's just not usable for the majority of online merchants. Nancyhttp://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/487/Online-Payment-Alternative-Bill-Me-Later/#comment23742007-05-24T10:45:16-07:00How much sales volume do you need to do get approved for Bill Me Later? I've heard that it is a minimum of $10M - 20M per year? Also, can we go through Authorize.net to get a Bill Me Later account?Keithhttp://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/487/Online-Payment-Alternative-Bill-Me-Later/#comment23752007-05-24T10:44:57-07:00We saw a 5 percent decrease in overall sales. We promptly shut it down. Turns out, people were having problems adhering to the strict BML guidelines for the fields in the checkout process.