Alternatives to ShareIt/MyCommerce/Digital River

[twister336]

So now I have four credit notes, none of them have been paid.
They did charge me 90 euros for a copy/paste (or AI) answer that was already posted on this forum.
I have two accounts. For my second account that doesn't generate any sales anymore I received an invoice for 26 euros.

The october credit note states it's for the period from 1 OCT to 31 OCT. That must be a mistake by them because they charge 'only' 44.73 euro subscription fee for this period.

Yesterday I did the KYC thing for the second time in a month but they have not reviewed either of them. In their copy/paste answer they mentioned I only get paid if the KYC thing was completed and reviewed. So they can just wait for the KYC review until all the money they owe me has been evaporated by excorbitant support costs and platform fees.

[elijahssss]

I also received an invoice for their services. Every refund I processed in July and August is included in this document. Considering that only about 20% of my users re-subscribed through the new payment provider, with the rest simply leaving, I can now safely say I’m completely bankrupt and owe money to everyone: Digital River (the invoice totals tens of thousands of dollars), users (some haven’t received refunds and are now demanding their money), and developers I hired. I haven't received any payment from Digital River since July, and now I owe them too. I reached out to their support team, and they confirmed the invoice is mandatory, warning that there would be legal consequences if I don’t pay. They also promised to follow up.
My company is located outside the EU and the United States. I guess I bought into the myths about justice and the rule of law in the EU/US, believing such actions would be impossible. But I was wrong; they can do as they please. If this had happened in my country, they would have faced prison time by August . This “democratic” justice will take my last pennies, and I’ll still end up in debt.

[DrOli]

Well, invoice from Digital River is based on credit notes so that means that you can be only charged for their commision.
For example, total amount that they charged was 50000, for calculation reasons lets say that their commision was 5000. In email that you received you are seeing complete amount of credit notes which will be 50000 but they can carge you only for their commisions.

I refunded every customer since July and got credit note from them for this amount (October was not included) but today I asked them to cancel my account and to send me proof (bank statements) that they really refunded every customer as only then we can settle who is owning whom. Unfortunately, we got feedback only from smaller number of customers that they got money which either means others are not yet reporting (maybe they did not see it or they do not want to report) or DR did not pay. Considering "trusting" relationship with them, before I make any payment (as account should be empty now), we will need bank statements that payment was really done. If they want to put us on court, so be it, but then they'll need anyway to provide statements for that what they are charging me as otherwise they were keeping my money.

[grujicd]

@elijahssss

They might say invoice is mandatory, but so were their credit notes yet they didn't pay them.
Also, even if you really really want to pay that invoice, there's no payment date there, and since payment terms were not specified, you're not in obligation to pay any time soon. In particular, not sooner than they pay their debts to you, which predate this invoice. I am not a lawyer, but they should be in no position to make any legal threats. They didn't even supply bank details!

In my opinion, since this doesn't have payment date and other details, this is not a real invoice. It's just a document specifying what you own them, without any mention of payment. It should be balanced with all the debts they have first, and only at that point there should be payment in one direction or another.

Also, while we software vendors were so far isolated from these issues, late payments, bankruptcies, frauds are something that almost every business have to deal with. Nothing specific to EU/USA or outside. Also, since you're outside of their jurisdiction, they don't have any easy way to force you to pay, even if they're fully in the right, and they're not. Look at it as your benefit in this case.

So concentrate on your users to double check the refunds, try to find out how Digital River puts credit card charges for your account, it should be something starting with "DRI*" "DRI" or "Digital River" and instruct your customers to look for these transactions. Also you can email each one what should be their exact amount to help them find it. These refunds are your lifeline, and if you manage to chase most of them you'll be fine.

[elijahssss]

So concentrate on your users to double check the refunds, try to find out how Digital River puts credit card charges for your account, it should be something starting with "DRI*" "DRI" or "Digital River" and instruct your customers to look for these transactions. Also you can email each one what should be their exact amount to help them find it. These refunds are your lifeline, and if you manage to chase most of them you'll be fine.

Most users claim they haven't received their refunds. Either they are lying, inattentive, or it's actually true. Supporting many "free" users and spending computational resources (I have a SaaS service) will bankrupt me much faster than I can deal with Digital River. Negative user reviews on social media also don't help my service, and people don't want to wait - they need it "here and now, and preferably yesterday."
It might make sense not to issue refunds, as it seems that some sellers who didn't issue refunds received their money for July. I, on the other hand, ended up with only debts and no clear way to verify or confirm that users received their refunds and should either pay me again or stop using my service.

[yps]

They might say invoice is mandatory, but so were their credit notes yet they didn't pay them.
Also, even if you really really want to pay that invoice, there's no payment date there, and since payment terms were not specified, you're not in obligation to pay any time soon. In particular, not sooner than they pay their debts to you, which predate this invoice. I am not a lawyer, but they should be in no position to make any legal threats. They didn't even supply bank details!

According to German law, payments must be made within 30 days if no payment terms are stated on the invoice.

But also, if they still owe you money, you are always able to set it off. So as long as their pending payments to you are higher than what they are billing you, don't even think about paying anything.

[elijahssss]

Also, while we software vendors were so far isolated from these issues, late payments, bankruptcies, frauds are something that almost every business have to deal with. Nothing specific to EU/USA or outside. Also, since you're outside of their jurisdiction, they don't have any easy way to force you to pay, even if they're fully in the right, and they're not. Look at it as your benefit in this case.

Yes and no. Physically, they won't be able to arrest me, but they can open a case or file a lawsuit, and I could end up in some database, which might result in a ban on entering the EU or future visa issues. Plus, there could be problems with payment providers in the future. My friends had a case where they were banned from entering the EU and had their visas annulled due to an unpaid fine for a minor offense.

[alexcmn1]

As the history of messages here shows, "According to German law, payments must be made within 30 days" is somewhat for weak law-abiding people. True businessmen, like Barry Kasoff, are spitting from the skyscrapper to German law and best practices. It is really refreshing lesson about real life when even relatively rich companies which were robbed by hundreds of thousands euros, were reluctant even to file complaints, not saying about going to court.
PS And, as you can guess - there is still no money.

[grujicd]

@elijahssss

What I meant by "an easy way" was small claims court or if something similar exists in Germany and if that deals with such cases at all. I'm not suggesting that you ignore legal aspects, or to avoid your obligations. Just stating that there's no quick and dirty way for them to collect money from you. It will be either balanced by Digital River, or by a court if we can't reach an agreement with DR, or, what seems to be most likely, by bankruptcy judge or whatever it's called in Germany. Someone already cited German law here on this forum - that in the case of bankruptcy, debts from both sides are balanced first before any payment is demanded.

Btw. I'm in the same boat, outside of EU, and I don't plan to avoid my obligations. But I don't want to be taken advantage of either. Also, I refunded most of orders and got paid for July, so it's not related to refunds.

[sslsound]

Above I was saying how good the support is at 2checkout.

But it's not all good with them.

With DR I have a product for $100. If it's sold to a buyer in a different currency then buyer pays in their own currency and my account was still credited with $100.

But with 2checkout a US buyer pays $100 and my account is credited with $100. But if the buyer pays in a different currency then my account is credited with something like $94.32 somewhere along the line when the default USD price is converted to buyer's currency and the buyer's payment is converted back to USD and credited to my account some of my money us going adrift.

I used 2checkout around 5 years ago. Now I remember why I stopped using them.

Anyone using Cleverbridge with a USD account? How do they handle orders in other currencies?

Is tax/VAT being taken from your 2checkout payout? I would assume these are hypothetical prices not accounting for the MoR resale fee. Not sure how DR makes money if you sell a product for $100 and get $100 back…

We’re a US based company now using Cleverbridge and it functions basically the same as DR or other MoRs.

[elijahssss]

Also, I refunded most of orders and got paid for July, so it's not related to refunds.

So, you refunded all the money to the users, but you still got paid? We have a lot of clients claiming they haven't received any refund, Digital River hasn't paid us anything, and only issued a debt. This is some kind of mess or scam. I consider you lucky, and if I were you, I wouldn't have returned them anything at all. Your double profit at least somewhat compensates for the suffering of others. Personally, I would feel much better knowing that the money is with the sellers and not with this lousy company.

[BackInCheck]

Pretty concerning to see what can happen when small to medium-sized businesses rely on large corporate "service providers", especially those who conduct their business in non-compliance with EU laws.

This makes me wonder how reliable it is to use Ilok for copyright protection purposes? Imagine they one day decided to switch off the servers and suddenly all licenses of paying customers are gone? What a mess. Makes me appreciate audio software companies with non-intrusive copyright protection, that doesn't rely on external "service providers" or foreign third-party servers.

[grujicd]

@elijahssss

If they made any selection at all they should have sent July payments to those who didn't refund. And not to us. That didn't make sense at all. This just shows what a mess they are in now. I don't plan to keep that money as it doesn't rightfully belong to my company as we refunded most of it. But I am holding it for now until everything is clear and documented. Also, as things stand, maybe it will be better to return it to some future bankruptcy court instead to current DR, in that case some of it might reach vendors who didn't get anything.

Btw. I recovered around 20% of refunds so far. I'll make another go with customers next week, by then they should received their bank statements if they din't see refunds immediately in ebanking.

[fuseaudiolabs]

Btw. their October invoice doesn't indicate where they expect us to transfer the amount "due". We dispute the invoiced amount anyway until we'll receive our money. These clowns.

[Tone2 Synthesizers]