GloBill is gone

[baddog]

GloBill.com ("GloBill") has ceased processing. The reasons will be explained in a settlement and explanatory package that will be sent to GloBill webmasters that follow the directions set forth below. All webmasters are strongly encouraged to participate in the process.



*** Please do NOT attempt to cash any checks that you currently hold for GloBill payouts because these checks will be returned NSF ***



*** ZMA Industries, Inc. will issue new checks as part of its settlement process.***



In what we believe is an unfortunate example of Visa abusing its power against the adult industry in a stunningly arbitrary and patently unfair manner, we were advised that our bank was instructed to terminate our processing in order to avoid threatened fees in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. ZMA Industries, Inc. is already in the process of preparing legal action in response to the recent developments and further information regarding the precise nature and grounds of the imminent litigation will be forthcoming in the future.



GloBill is contracted with a technical operations company that will continue to maintain certain user related systems. Namely, the correct commands will still be sent to your server to expire users when their membership ends. Users will be able to log in without any problems. You also will be able to manually add new users to your password file, obtain users lists, etc.



All GloBill clients who are owed funds will be responded to in writing by our corporate office in St. Kitts. In order to receive our settlement documentation and other pertinent information, you must send us a letter detailing your payee name, contact information and all site IDs that you held under GloBill by Monday, September 15, 2003. Please ensure your letter includes the following information at the TOP of your letter:

Your full name, the full name of your company, complete mailing address, telephone number with area codes and/or country codes and email address;
Your main payee name under GloBill; and
Your GloBill Site IDs.
Letters should be mailed directly to our office in St. Kitts by Monday, September 15, 2003 to be factored into the settlement process. You may also send the letter to our mail-forwarding address in the United States on or before the same date, as all mail sent to this address will be forwarded to our St. Kitts' headquarters.



Given the volume of mail we anticipate receiving, please allow 6-8 weeks for ZMA Industries, Inc. to respond to your correspondence. Please do not phone, fax or email because these methods of contact have now been automated. ZMA Industries, Inc. will only respond to written communications that contain the information set forth above.



In order to receive your settlement package, please send your inquiry letter at your immediate convenience and no later than Monday, September 15, 2003 to:



GloBill.com / Settlement
c/o ZMA Industries, Inc.
Amory Building Victoria Road
P.O. Box 1058
Basseterre, St. Kitts

West Indies



Needless to say, we are deeply disappointed with the sudden and astonishing turn of events that has decimated GloBill within a matter of days. Our regret stems not only from our disappointment with the unjust manner in which we believe we have been handled, but more notably by our inability to continue serving all of our valued webmasters in an exemplary manner. Please accept our deepest regrets and look for further information as it develops in our settlement package in the following weeks.

[Kenny B]

For all of you who got nailed by this and are looking for processing or any of you who are using any other billing company that didn’t charge the $750 can I recommend you call or e-mail Swapna over at CCBill, she will be more then happy to help you out with information or setting up an account. She has been my account rep for close to 3 years and she has always been there for us!

You can reach her at 1-888-906-0666 ext 161 or swapnas@ccbill.com

Pay the $750 it’s the cost of doing business and avoid this happening again.

[Evil Chris]

Another good option to consider are the PSW Billing banners that fly right here on xnations...

[Jeff N]

Originally posted by Kenny B

Pay the $750 it’s the cost of doing business and avoid this happening again.

Ken,

Good point. The bottom line is there really isn't many business's you can get into without paying some sort of "cost of doing business" fees.
$750.00 is not a huge price to pay. Most sites can earn that back quickly.

Jeff
jeff@ccbill.com

[Cyndalie]

Thanks Chris

I've always told webmasters avoiding the Visa fee was only a short term solution. Too bad now everyone has to pay. I hope those poor webmasters get the money they are owed and find a way to survive. The Visa fee is going to be hard enough for most to afford, on top of not having any funds coming to them for up to 8 weeks.

PSW Billing does offer an Epayment Lite option where you can select to NOT pay Visa (no fee) and only accept Mastercard and Online checks. It will be a big drop in volume, but better than going out of business until you can afford to pay the fee. Contact me if you need any information about our services and I'll be happy to help.

Best wishes for all those webmasters getting through this

Cyndalie

[Kenny B]

Originally posted by Jeff N
Ken,

Good point. The bottom line is there really isn't many business's you can get into without paying some sort of "cost of doing business" fees.
$750.00 is not a huge price to pay. Most sites can earn that back quickly.

Jeff
jeff@ccbill.com

This business was the only business you could start with 0 capital investment, hence tons of competition. With all the free content, cracked software, free hosting, no set up fees, it's surprising there aren't more adult sites out there!

When you get something for free there's usually a reason, if you can't afford or just don't want to pay the $750 to have your billing done by a company that is reputable like CCbill or PSW then you can't expect your business to grow and you should find a new hobby!

My 2 cents!

[webgurl]

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i just found out 20 mins ago

[CumSensei]

I would love to use ccbill but they dont aprove of companies outside the states or the EU

So what other options are there?

I was thinking about using globill for my site but im so happy I did not get it online before this went down...


So give me some advice here guys?

[Stilgar]

What the hell?! It seems like this stuff never ends!

Originally posted by Kenny B

When you get something for free there's usually a reason, if you can't afford or just don't want to pay the $750 to have your billing done by a company that is reputable like CCbill or PSW then you can't expect your business to grow and you should find a new hobby!

My 2 cents!

You never get anything for free. The 750$ waiving was recouped by GloBill and any other company doing it.

It is like getting a loan: you have to pay interest.

If GloBill found out that they could make a buck by absorbing themselves the 750$ fee, then, good for them.

You aregument is TOTALLY moot. It's all business choices.

Stop blaming GloBill and start blaming VISA.

Of course, by this empty rethoric, you rationalise your desire to minimine the number of new startups. This is nothing but rationalisation. It has no groundings in sound economic theory.

VISA is up to something, everybody knows it, and it is not by nibbling their hemorrhoids that you'll get on top. In the end, VISA and the international banking system serves themselves and only themselves.

Heck, they OWN the private corporations called Bank of Canada and Federal Reserve and they fuck us all the way through the banks !

[webgurl]

are we going to get paid ?? Hmmm...some people say yah some say no

[Mister X]

Originally posted by CumSensei
I would love to use ccbill but they dont aprove of companies outside the states or the EU

So what other options are there?

I was thinking about using globill for my site but im so happy I did not get it online before this went down...


So give me some advice here guys?

You can try Verotel. One of my buddies signed with them to use as a backup processor until his CCBill stuff comes through. No $750 because they aren't in the US and they were processing in less than 48 hours. They also have the largest number of options for European surfers.

In the long term I would suggest you save up the $1000 US to get a US LLC and then pay the $750 to CCBill or PSW.

Whatever you do stay away from iBill. I suspect they might be the next company to go under. Mostly because their constant fuckups are chasing away customers in big numbers. I know of 2 cases where they took almost 6 weeks to transfer accounts to newly formed LLCs. And in Both cases they pulled Visa after 3 weeks because an "oversight" caused them to not submit the sites to Visa for approval. Big oversight.

[CumSensei]

Well how the hell does that work? THe US thing you said there?

I mean we are not located in the US...

The 750$ are no problem for me to pay but I just feel it´s not fair that they discriminate companies that are not located in US or EU.

Does verotel take companies outside europe and USA?

[Mister X]

Originally posted by CumSensei
Well how the hell does that work? THe US thing you said there?

I mean we are not located in the US...

The 750$ are no problem for me to pay but I just feel it´s not fair that they discriminate companies that are not located in US or EU.

Does verotel take companies outside europe and USA?

The Limited Liability Corporation is simply your foothold in the American market. It gives your company a legal address and phone number in the United States. Which is vital if you want to do business with the American CC processors. Visa's US operation will not let them ( CCBill, etc. ) process for any companies not located in the US. Several companies located in several different states specialize in offering services for people that need a US company.

As far as I know Verotel takes companies from almost everywhere. They don't charge the 750 because they are based in the Netherlands and use a European bank. Because of that they come under a different branch of Visa and follow slightly different rules. If you are expecting a lot of Euro surfers then they are a good option because they offer many more payment options than any of the US based processors do.

BUT there is still the fact that the banks in Europe have been tending to stop working with processors and companies like iBill (may they rot in hell) and websitebilling ran into problems because of that. Nobody can say at this point whether a US processor like CCBill will be safer or not, but it's something to think about.

[CumSensei]

Well I mean our company would have no problem paying the 750$ to let ccbill handle our transactions.

Thats not a problem. But when they start to stop companies that´s not working in US or EU thats a problem for us.

We don´t wanna start a company in some country if we don´t have to.

But is verotel and probilling solid companies?

Anyone using them and can give some feedback on how they worked out for ya?

[Mister X]

Really don't know about probilling but verotel seems solid. They aren't a really big player in the US market but that doesn't really mean anything.

The main reason for needing a company in the US to deal with CCBill etc. is again Visa. Visa USA says that no company without a US presence can be billed for by the IPSPs (CCBill, etc.) that are based in the US. Visa US and Visa International (or Visa Europe or whatever) have different rules about things. An IPSP based in Europe can accept websites from anywhere (at least for now) and there is no $750 buck fee for that. If CCBill or whoever has a branch in Europe and a european bank for a partner then they can operate under both stes of rules. iBill used to have a European division but I think it's gone now (??).

Visa probably has reasons for doing shit like that but nobody really knows what they are, lol. Big Multinational companies are a law unto themselves.

[Panky]

With Verotel, there's a $75.00USD cap. So basically, you can charge people for products or services under $75.00USD.

Just read the fine print when choosing any company.

[Kenny B]

Feynman,
The whole point was Glo-Bill wasn’t charging the $750 and even more so wasn’t taking the information Visa requested to be registered with them. It was CCBill who refunded the $750 they charged to webmasters and I don’t see how they made $ by refunding the $750 when some of the other billing companies didn’t offer that option.

I wasn’t blaming Glo-Bill, I am fully aware it’s due to the strong arm of Visa that they were shut down. But I can pretty much guarantee that this didn’t happen to Glo-Bill over night, they didn’t walk into their offices on Friday morning and realize that their bank had just cut them off without any prior notice or warnings. Yet they didn’t mention anything to their webmasters until after they cut off access to their stats and other admin features. Not to mention all checks they cut in the last week are going to bounce!

I agree with you that Visa is up to something & I am hardly kissing ass. It was very costly as a Canadian webmaster to incorporate in the US and pay the $750 even though that was reimbursed over time, so I’m not a fan of them at all. This whole Visa registration process isn’t just about the $750 it’s about our privacy issues & letting the government know who owns & operates what websites. The only way the US government can control porn on the internet is if all the porn companies are incorporated in the United States, this is just the first step in big brother getting closer to trying to regulate our businesses & make it harder for us to make an honest living peddling smut!

[sonicmatrix]

Since Globill Systems has closed down their discussion area and left all us users hanging, an emergency discussion area has been established. Please spread the word to any Globill users that you know as fast as possible:

GLOBILL USER EMERGENCY BOARD
http://sonicmatrix.com/iboard/

[saus]

I think I'm leaning towards the EU, and registering offshore there as opposed to LLC in the states..

I'm not thrilled with tax implications, acacia implications, and the slew of patent crap, processing crap that is coming stateside soon.
there's a lot of exposure by setting up a corporate presnce in the states..
it means your company is subject to US law, and they are on the cutting edge it seems of screwing over webmasters.

[Kenny B]

Originally posted by saus
I think I'm leaning towards the EU, and registering offshore there as opposed to LLC in the states..

I'm not thrilled with tax implications, acacia implications, and the slew of patent crap, processing crap that is coming stateside soon.
there's a lot of exposure by setting up a corporate presnce in the states..
it means your company is subject to US law, and they are on the cutting edge it seems of screwing over webmasters.

Incorporating in Europe? You can't even pick up the phone and call a friend in Montreal nevermind incorporate over seas!

[saus]

Ken will u be heading to FLA? hehehehe, fuck u killed me with that..
thx dude! I think I snorted a little coca cola, that stuff kills when you get it down the wrong pipe ugh!

but seriously for a sec - gibraltaroffshore.com/
it took me 2 spelling corrections to get it right, but no tax treaties with canada that I've found as of yet. I think that may be an excellent combo for the forementioned rock solid so far CCBILL.

I'm processing with a merchant accnt, but that's looking like a good setup as a secondary, or for stuff that needs a quick 3rd party easy to run affiliate system.

I haven't been able to find something solid for a good nevada LLC setup for under 3 grand, I'm hoping EU will be in the same dollar ballpark after all is said & done