Alternatives to ShareIt/MyCommerce/Digital River

[grujicd]

@IaES

But you already got money for May or June. Would you return your 90-95% to DR if they refund May and June? Because at that point you'll be holding the money that's not legally yours. I.e. you'd be doing to DR what DR does to us now.

I can see your point that DR still has some obligations to the customer, and that they could fail to provide invoice or digital download, but realistically - these obligations are minor.

[7tltd]

Refunds can be done up to 365 days. I ask me where they take the money to refund!? If they have money then they could pay us!

[IaES]

@IaES

But you already got money for May or June. Would you return your 90-95% to DR if they refund May and June? Because at that point you'll be holding the money that's not legally yours. I.e. you'd be doing to DR what DR does to us now.

I can see your point that DR still has some obligations to the customer, and that they could fail to provide invoice or digital download, but realistically - these obligations are minor.

Of course you are correct. If we refunded a May or June order then DR would expect us to pay the money back that we received + fees.

[sft234]

But another theory is also possible. Barry L. Kasoff doesn't only deal with shutting down business. As listed on his company site, they also restructure, etc. So maybe his idea was not to bankrupt DR, after all DR Gmbh was bringing in 5-6M per year according to the latest financial reports we have. Barry's modus operandi is probably to lay off anyone that can, squeeze suppliers with extra fees and increase payment terms to essentially get an interest-free cash infusion. Esentially like with new contract terms we got. And that "squeeze vendors dry" model might work in industries where suppliers depend on a company and can't leave just like that. Like if you're selling physical products to a supermarket chain, if that chain changes their terms you have to accept them, at least short term since it's hard, expensive and maybe even impossible to find alternative. If he doesn't understand our industry maybe he thought it would play the same way. He underestimated how quickly we can move to another payment processor. His gamble just turned wrong when we left platform en masse in October. That maybe explains pointing new director on 1st October, their plan backfired and now they have to switch to "steal" mode, while attempting to not get criminally liable doing so.

Nah - most vendors wouldn't have left just because of an additional $100 monthly fee and a 60 instead of 30 days payment model. That's something you can deal with when it's reliable.

People have left because of lack of communication, uncertainty and own new contracts not kept by DR itself. The money didn't come even after the promised 60 days. This triggered the bankruspy alarm. Plus all communication blocked. This triggered the deception and concealment alarm. Nobody wants to throw even further money into the orcus of a fradulent dying and lying company when it's not even sure if you at all get any of the previously earned money.

There's no CEO as dumb not to forsee this happening with such a company behaviour. No CEO wants to lose customers and destroy the reputation of a company unless he anyway plans to terminate it and so doesn't give a s**t about all of this.

[welle]

A customer reported today that money went back to their CC.

[DrOli]

@welle: how long it was between triggering refund and customer confirming that money came back?

[welle]

Triggered Thursday, confirmed today.

[DrOli]

Thx

[IaES]

I've also had a confirmation from customer that they got refund back to their card. Took 7 days.

[IaES]

Nah - most vendors wouldn't have left just because of an additional $100 monthly fee and a 60 instead of 30 days payment model. That's something you can deal with when it's reliable.

I agree. If the money had been paid at the end of September I'd still be using them today.

[OliverDocklight]

In my opinion, refunds are a regular thing and should not be treated in any way as damaging to any party.
Chargebacks on the other hand can harm the merchant account, by introducing fees and getting their merchant account revoked if some threshold is reached. Chargeback should be only used for unauthorized transactions, and this should not be the case. So if you ask your user to ask for chargeback from their bank, there could be damages involved for DR.

So this all might be a confusion between refund and chargeback, which should not be the same thing.

Thanks, I fully agree and much appreciate the correction.
We did NOT initiate any chargeback requests in fact.

There was a similar clarification from user aptly named whatamess about my comment in the lawsuit thread and also wrongly calling it "chargeback", and I do apologize for the confusion: The correct term is of course "Refund", as the MyCommerce control panel uses it also: ""Entire Order Refund" . No chargeback involved, and it seemed I was mixing this up because of some discussions about chargeback fees that I read. We simply had so little to do with this for 22 years!

Oliver, can you link that discussion on Linkein, as it's hard to find anything there?

Main discussions are around Softland CEO Lorant Barla and I simply used the same hashtags #DigitalRiver #MyCommerce #bellyup - this should find you the related threads.

[DR_byteplant]

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Hi all,

we at Byteplant have been using DR for 20+ years. Like all of you, we have not been paid since July.

We are already working with a law firm in Cologne, Germany to take legal action against DR and their executive team (Strafanzeige, Insolvenzantrag etc.).

To get the law enforcement authorities here in Germany moving, we now need your help to collect as much evidence as possible - so we need everybody here to join in and send your company and contact details along with any unpaid sales reports you can provide to dr@byteplant.com (mailto:dr@byteplant.com).
Everything you send will of course be treated confidentially and only be used in the context of the legal proceedings.

Remember: If we all stand together now and act fast to collect documentation for as many cases as possible, the better our chances are to get the authorities to do their work and hopefully help us to recover the money for all of us.

[grujicd]

I'm not sure how it could work with us who refunded customers, even if we don't know at this point whether these refunds really reached customers. If refunds work and money is fully returned, at that point Digital River owns us nothing or very little, or even we own them some fees.
We can't have it both, refund money and then also complain (sue) they didn't pay us.

[Stefano Daino]

Several years ago we had a similar situation with Kagi. After some years, we had a payment of about 25% of what was due.

In this case, I think it would be an optimistic scenario.

Stefano Daino
dsp-quattro

[ChrisG_33_JB]

About refunds/chargebacks
In version 6.3 of "MyCommerce Master Services Agreement 6.3.docx" (although I never signed that) it is stated that the fee for a chargeback is 20$.

Is Refund a Chargeback?

The definition for chargeback in the document:
"Chargeback" means the reversal of a previously completed payment for a Transaction due to a dispute initiated by an End User, payment processor, third party payment provider or financial institution."

So I am not sure if DR will keep that 20$ fee for each refund I have initiated.

"due to a dispute initiated by an End User, payment processor, third party payment provider or financial institution."
That does not include the software author, such as myself, but I am not sure how DR will see that.