Alternatives to ShareIt/MyCommerce/Digital River

[IaES]

and later this month the new UK Labour Party government will announce new taxes and other measure to get more money to pay for the huge pay rises they just gave to public sector workers. But without increasing taxes on workers.

That means they will increase tax on businesses and pensioners or pretty much anyone who has worked hard to build a business or put some money into saving and pensions etc.

[grujicd]

I'm speculating that if we had a discussion group like this back in August, we would collectively figure out what's really going on much sooner. But we didn't, and the reason was there was nothing to talk about this subject for years.

Back in the days (and I see that many of us are oldtimers) there was a forum on "Joel on software" blog/site. It was the place for misv to discuss things. I'm sure we discussed ShareIt, probably recommended it when someone came along. There's no equivalent community now, targeted at micro software companies. It's fragmented in million places, many subredits, you follow people on twitter, there are indie hackers forums (too much noise there), you can even find something on LinkedIn... At the end, we don't have our own place. And we'll probably spread around once this problem is behind us.

[ibexpert]

we are also among the DR victims, but we recommend to do the same as we did in the
last few days:

we refunded last week all orders manually in the cp portal for the unpaid timeframe
A day later we received the confirmations from dr and also the first confirmations copies
from customers asking for reasons.

we sent all customers another option how to pay the money to us directly using the
new active ways or when possible direct by paypal/iban bank/... and expect no real
problems among the customers to do so. most reactions were great, but confused
why it was refunded!

it seems that the refund system is still working and if the gansters do not have the money,
that should be on our account, any longer on their account, we hit the first target.

And if we get the money direct from customer on a new way, we hit the second target ...

and if anyone does not react on the email we sent to all customers whose orders
were refunded, it does not really make a difference for us if we do not get the money
from the customer or do not get the money from the gangster company, but at least
they do not longer owe us any money and do not have any money on their account,
which belongs to us.

several of the customers reported and confirmed their refund also on their creditcard
account. I believe this is an automated process and if such a refund is entered in the cp
portal, it is technically executed (the biggest confirmed refund was around 5200€
for one customer order!).

how to do that: go in cp portal https://account.mycommerce.com/Cp/ to
manage transactions-display orders-and change time period to for example
1st of july until end of september.

click on each order you see there on purchase id, click on refunds button on top,
select type refund entire order and enter a simple reason, for example
"please contact info@.... for details"
click on submit and do it in the same way for next order.

even that it might be some stupid work to do it for all customer orders but from
my perspective it is worth and the only way to get any money from that system back.

if it works also with your account as it did with our account, you will get the refund
confirmation email data at some time over night at around 5:30 cet in the morning
and the customer will get an official refund note for his accountant.

since you will get for each order an email with the customer data, email and on
top also the chargeback amount of money, you can directly forward that email
to your customer, explain him the reason for the chargeback and as soon as he
sees the chargeback also on his account, ask if he is willing to reorder using a different
way (new provider in our case is paddle, but depending on your customer relation
it can also be any other iban account or paypal or whatever you and your customer
can use for a new invoice now created from yourself or from new mycommerce
replacement company if you have already set it up).

if you are afraid of any reaction against you from DR regarding that case mentioning
their contract, simply ignore that, they will no longer exists and if they try to sue you
for that, they will have enourmous costs for millions of unpaid orders which will have
not even a chance for opening a court case in germany for contract holders with
german digital river gmbh but i expect it can also work in the same way with
other parts of that gangster company.

Important: try to do the refunds asap since i expect the will completly close the
cp portal within the next days and if you have no more access to the currently
still working automated refund process, your money is definitly lost for all time.

exporting the data of all orders in the cp portal asap is always a good choice,
even when older orders do not need a charge back.

waiting for a court case or confirmed insolvency progress or even more funny waiting
for them to pay the money that they owe to you is no way.

i wish the same luck to all of you
Holger
www.ibexpert.com
important: this is no legal advice, just a story how we processed it and
a proposal how to do it in the same way.

[OliverDocklight]

... but we recommend to do the same as we did in the last few days:
i wish the same luck to all of you
Holger

Hi Holger,
Same story here - We've been with share-it since 2002. You confirm what we also suspected - the cancellation is automatic.

We can confirm the process you describe, customer feedback is very supportive. We communicate this now in our News section to our customers, here is our wording https://docklightnews.blogspot.com/2024 ... merce.html

What we do lack still is confirmation from our customers that the refund appeared on their credit card. So this is good to hear you already have such feedback.

Same here - good luck to everybody,
Oliver

[IaES]

What I did was look at the July and August sales reports to get DR's fees for those months. Don't yet have the fees for September but it's easy to calculate.

Then refunded "Most" orders. I say "Most" because I left enough in the account to cover the above mentioned fees plus 100 for the month's standing charge plus one hour of support.

I know they don't deserve any money from me at all but I'm lazy. If DR goes into administration it is possible that the administrators bill us for fees. I just want the administrators to balance the fees against what's left in the account and not to bother me with any bills or arguments and I can just get on with my life.

[DrOli]

@OliverDocklight
- is it ok to make in our blog article link to yours? I would like to highlight to our customers that we are not only vendor impacted.

Sorry, I meant OliverDocklight

[grujicd]

I don't think you should use "chargeback" in your communication with customers, as it might confuse them. Refund is the right word.

Chargeback - customer initiates it through his bank when doesn't agree with the charge for one reason or another (stolen card, whatever). Vendor can complain and provide evidence but in the end it's in the hands of Bank/Visa/MC.

Refund - it's initiated by vendor, so it's more voluntary thing from vendor's perspective than chargeback

Chargeback is typically more expensive for the payment processor/vendor, and it affects rating of their merchant account. Too many chargebacks and you're not trustful partner. Your merchant account could be blocked.

Refunds are a soft thing, it usually means that customer doesn't disapprove the charge, but wants his money back for some other reason, and vendor agrees to that voluntarily. It should not carry the same penalty as chargeback.

[IaES]

@IaES - is it ok to make in our blog article link to yours? I would like to highlight to our customers that we are not only vendor impacted.

I don't know what you mean? My Blog? I don't have a blog.

[IaES]

Hey everyone

what's the best way to close a ShareIt/MyCommerce account? Is it best to do it via the solution centre? or is there a menu option somewhere in the MyCommerce control panel?

If there's nobody working at MyCommerce any more will they even see the request to close the account in solution centre?

Thanks

[ibexpert]

i asked also on solution centre for a way to close the account, so you do not have to waste your time to do so also.
their response:

Rhea Lorenzo
10/20/2024 10:50:30 AM (CST) Additional comments
Hi Team,
We already asked an assistance to our internal team regarding your request. We'll keep you posted once we receive an update.

after i asked again if that is all they can say for such a very basic process, i received another useless answer

Valdez Kimberly
10/22/2024 05:29:46 AM (CST) Additional comments
Hi Team,
We have followed up with our team regarding your request to close your ShareIt account. We'll keep you updated.
Thank you.

i also find it very interesting that any combination of a given name like "rhea lorenzo" or "valdez kimberly" is typically never answering again and even google does often not find any reference worldwide of such a name, so solution center is also already complete automated bullshit, perhaps AI is responsible for creating such useless answers ...

[Otis_Inf]

I'm a member of a few other forums. A car forum, a software dev forum and even a garden pond forum.

But all of us here have been brought together because we're all in the same boat with DR. We might have no common interests outside of DR but this here seems to be a nice group of people.

I wonder if in a few month's time when all of this DR stuff is behind us will some of us still come back here to talk about . . I don't know. The weather maybe. Or even just keep giving feedback on the best MoR or trends in OnLine payments.

I think this is the greatness of the internet: we all share a common thing and no matter which watering hole we have to gather to meet, we'll find it. I'm so glad I found this thread and learned I wasn't the only one who had problems with DR/MyCommerce!

About online payments... I sell software via Patreon as well (bigger than what I sell via MyCommerce) and compared to what Patreon does, there's little else that compares. You want your money now? You can, click a button and you have it. No need to wait till a date or anything. VAT, everything handled. Still I'm glad other MoR's exist so we have a choice and can spread our risks. Knowing what I know now, MyCommerce was already behind the times and I didn't pay much attention to it, it worked, they paid us, no worries. Till they didn't. Luckily there are more MoRs out there today than there were 10 years ago, so there's a choice.

[quikquak]

i asked also on solution centre for a way to close the account, so you do not have to waste your time to do so also.
their response:

Rhea Lorenzo
10/20/2024 10:50:30 AM (CST) Additional comments
Hi Team,
We already asked an assistance to our internal team regarding your request. We'll keep you posted once we receive an update.

after i asked again if that is all they can say for such a very basic process, i received another useless answer

Valdez Kimberly
10/22/2024 05:29:46 AM (CST) Additional comments
Hi Team,
We have followed up with our team regarding your request to close your ShareIt account. We'll keep you updated.
Thank you.

i also find it very interesting that any combination of a given name like "rhea lorenzo" or "valdez kimberly" is typically never answering again and even google does often not find any reference worldwide of such a name, so solution center is also already complete automated bullshit, perhaps AI is responsible for creating such useless answers ...

I remember reading somewhere that they were proud of their new AI customer services.

[sft234]

i asked also on solution centre for a way to close the account, so you do not have to waste your time to do so also.
their response:

Rhea Lorenzo
10/20/2024 10:50:30 AM (CST) Additional comments
Hi Team,
We already asked an assistance to our internal team regarding your request. We'll keep you posted once we receive an update.

after i asked again if that is all they can say for such a very basic process, i received another useless answer

Valdez Kimberly
10/22/2024 05:29:46 AM (CST) Additional comments
Hi Team,
We have followed up with our team regarding your request to close your ShareIt account. We'll keep you updated.
Thank you.

i also find it very interesting that any combination of a given name like "rhea lorenzo" or "valdez kimberly" is typically never answering again and even google does often not find any reference worldwide of such a name, so solution center is also already complete automated bullshit, perhaps AI is responsible for creating such useless answers ...

I remember reading somewhere that they were proud of their new AI customer services.

They even charge money for these useless AI-generated answers. Check the item "hours worked" -
the cost is this number times $185

It's completely useless to use their solution center. Except you want to pay $185 per "hour" although nobody is spending time to do anything since nobdy IS there. It's only robots. You also can write it to a paper instead and hope god reads it. It's cheaper.

Their CEO really is a criminal

[MichaelPh]

One more vendor to our company: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lorant-b ... 8657-iS4S/

[MichaelPh]

we are also among the DR victims, but we recommend to do the same as we did in the
last few days:

we refunded last week all orders manually in the cp portal for the unpaid timeframe
A day later we received the confirmations from dr and also the first confirmations copies
from customers asking for reasons.

we sent all customers another option how to pay the money to us directly using the
new active ways or when possible direct by paypal/iban bank/... and expect no real
problems among the customers to do so. most reactions were great, but confused
why it was refunded!

it seems that the refund system is still working and if the gansters do not have the money,
that should be on our account, any longer on their account, we hit the first target.

And if we get the money direct from customer on a new way, we hit the second target ...

and if anyone does not react on the email we sent to all customers whose orders
were refunded, it does not really make a difference for us if we do not get the money
from the customer or do not get the money from the gangster company, but at least
they do not longer owe us any money and do not have any money on their account,
which belongs to us.

several of the customers reported and confirmed their refund also on their creditcard
account. I believe this is an automated process and if such a refund is entered in the cp
portal, it is technically executed (the biggest confirmed refund was around 5200€
for one customer order!).

how to do that: go in cp portal https://account.mycommerce.com/Cp/ to
manage transactions-display orders-and change time period to for example
1st of july until end of september.

click on each order you see there on purchase id, click on refunds button on top,
select type refund entire order and enter a simple reason, for example
"please contact info@.... for details"
click on submit and do it in the same way for next order.

even that it might be some stupid work to do it for all customer orders but from
my perspective it is worth and the only way to get any money from that system back.

if it works also with your account as it did with our account, you will get the refund
confirmation email data at some time over night at around 5:30 cet in the morning
and the customer will get an official refund note for his accountant.

since you will get for each order an email with the customer data, email and on
top also the chargeback amount of money, you can directly forward that email
to your customer, explain him the reason for the chargeback and as soon as he
sees the chargeback also on his account, ask if he is willing to reorder using a different
way (new provider in our case is paddle, but depending on your customer relation
it can also be any other iban account or paypal or whatever you and your customer
can use for a new invoice now created from yourself or from new mycommerce
replacement company if you have already set it up).

if you are afraid of any reaction against you from DR regarding that case mentioning
their contract, simply ignore that, they will no longer exists and if they try to sue you
for that, they will have enourmous costs for millions of unpaid orders which will have
not even a chance for opening a court case in germany for contract holders with
german digital river gmbh but i expect it can also work in the same way with
other parts of that gangster company.

Important: try to do the refunds asap since i expect the will completly close the
cp portal within the next days and if you have no more access to the currently
still working automated refund process, your money is definitly lost for all time.

exporting the data of all orders in the cp portal asap is always a good choice,
even when older orders do not need a charge back.

waiting for a court case or confirmed insolvency progress or even more funny waiting
for them to pay the money that they owe to you is no way.

i wish the same luck to all of you
Holger
www.ibexpert.com
important: this is no legal advice, just a story how we processed it and
a proposal how to do it in the same way.

Hi, Holger!
I'm really glad to see you here!
Do you remember one our partner, who sold Fast Reports' licenses to German developers, and then did the same as Digital River now?