[thelist] authorize.net issues

[Bob Meetin]

Nan et al,

I have one customer using authorize.net, have not heard of complaints, 
but that doesn't mean much.  It takes effort for customers to complain 
up the food chain.  If you have a speaker phone use it.  I actually did 
that 3 months ago when I set up my client.  When you get someone live on 
the phone, ask them if there have been any recent server/network/etc 
issues? 

When I have had to contact my broadband support in the past the techs 
(at least the decent ones) are generally willing to check history on 
outages or problems that would impact you.  Some outfits have automated 
recordings detailing hot situations.  The problem you commonly encounter 
is that first-level techs don't commonly give out information unless you 
give them ammunition to follow up. 

-Bob

Nan Harbison wrote:
> Hi All,
>  
> I was wondering whether anyone has been having problems with authorize.net
> lately. Here is what has happened to me in the last week or two-
>  
> 1. I was testing my payment integration with authnet, and I got the response
> that the server was having some kind of problem, please try again in a few
> minutes. I continued to get this message for 45 minutes, when I gave up and
> went out to do errands for an hour. It was working when I got back. This
> doesn't seem to bode well for real transactions! What if that had happened
> to a customer?
>  
> 2. I needed to ask them some questions yesterday, the wait would have been
> 44 minutes, so I chose the option to have them call me back when it was my
> 'turn'. I know I entered the correct phone number because they read it back
> to you and allow you to fix it. They NEVER returned the call. In the past
> they have returned the call, although WAY past the time they took you it
> would take.
>  
> 3. We want the option of ARB (automatically recurring billing) and I was
> setting it up the way I set up the one time payment through the gateway,
> using an ARB class, blah, blah blah, but I just found out that to set up ARB
> with a new client, you have to log in to your authnet account and create a
> new ARB subscription  on the back end first. Is this state of the art, or
> are there any payment gateway companies where you can submit automatically
> without it being work on the back end? What if we were getting thousands of
> new clients a month?? 
>  
> 4. This is a simple, unrelated and somewhat off topic questions. I am
> generating the credit card expiration date automatically. How many years do
> you need to go out? 5 years? More?
>  
> TIA
> Nan
>   


-- 
Bob Meetin
dotted i - Internet Strategies & Solutions
www.dottedi.biz
303-926-0167