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Not impressed with payment options

Postby DJamieson » November 29th, 2010, 12:23 pm

So, I've made a game, signed up with a sponsor and slated for a release date.

I go to pay for server costs, and find... the only way to pay is a recurring monthly payment of $25 + costs.

The great thing is that my bank actually charges for payments in foreign currency. I didnt think this would be a problem, since most places accept paypal (or variations), but apparently playerio is locked into payment with "Koebenhavn V DK", presumably a payment service in denmark?

So, not only am I paying for the service, Im paying for cash conversion, and I have my personal bank information with a company I've never heard of.

And rather than set up a prepaid amount (say, paying for 3 months usage), I have to manually cancel the account in 6 months.

Now, perhaps this is my fault for not doing the research, but I was a little disappointed at my options here.
DJamieson
 
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Re: Not impressed with payment options

Postby Oliver » November 29th, 2010, 1:10 pm

Hi DJamieson,

I'm sorry to hear about your bad payment experience with us. I hope the development experience was better!

First of all, we charge in USD, so i don't think you'll be charged for the currency conversion. That's a charge that should be on our end. We haven't heard any other complaints about this, so i'm curious: Where do you get this conversion information? Are you sure you're being billed for currency conversion? You really shouldn't and if you are, we'd love more information so we can have a long fun talk with our payment processor...

Player.IO is run by a company called "Odpy A/S", which is based in København V, Denmark. We're aware that this fact is not clear enough from the current payment page though, and are adding more information to the page shortly.

Before Player.IO, Odpy built Nonoba.com, so your first credit card statement will most likely say "Nonoba". We're working furiously to get it changed to "odpy.com" (and put information about Nonoba and Player.IO on odpy.com), but our payment processor is a big fan of bureaucracy, so it takes a lot of time.

Regarding the personal back information: We don't have your personal bank information. You gave us your credit card info, but technically we don't even have that. It didn't even pass through our servers. What we have is a reference to your information that is unique to us. We use this reference to bill you monthly until you cancel the service. The actual credit card information is securely stored at our payment processor.

ANYBODY who handles credit card information must be PCI certified, which is a big, expensive security procedure that ensures that your credit card information stays secure, and our payment processor is of course PCI certified like everybody else that is allowed to handle your credit card info.
In short, you should feel just as secure using your credit card with us, as you would feel using it when shopping for Christmas gifts at amazon. And even if we were are fraud, you can *always* dispute any charge with your credit card company and the burden of proof will rest on us.

Regarding the Prepaid plan.
We don't offer it because it's possible for users to use more resources than is included in their base package.

Most services that are resource based are based on billing credit cards monthly, because the alternative would be shutting off games when the prepaid amounts are used up, which is undesirable in most cases.

For instance, look at hugely popular amazons webservices. They don't offer any kind of prepaid access, but require a valid credit card to always be attached to each account.

Imagine your game getting shut off because it got hugely popular; doesn't that seem like something you'd like to avoid?

That being said it's not the first request for a prepaid plan, and we'll take it into consideration as something we might build and offer at a later date.

Best,
Oliver
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Re: Not impressed with payment options

Postby Henrik » November 29th, 2010, 4:09 pm

DJamieson wrote:The great thing is that my bank actually charges for payments in foreign currency. I didnt think this would be a problem, since most places accept paypal (or variations), but apparently playerio is locked into payment with "Koebenhavn V DK", presumably a payment service in denmark?


That sounds like something we would like to investigate, you shouldn't pay for currency conversion, since we charge you in USD. Could you do me a favour and check with your bank the total amount you had to pay for signing up with us, and if it says anything about which currency it was converted into and at what rate?

You can either PM me the info, or send me an email at henrik@player.io.

Thanks,
Henrik
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Re: Not impressed with payment options

Postby DJamieson » November 30th, 2010, 8:28 pm

Im from the UK, so I have to pay extra £ to be converted into $. Its not a huge amount, but its something I feel that shouldnt be happening at all. (it seems especially strange considering itll then have to be reconverted into kr, presumably at cost to you). If I was denmark based, it would be converted from kr->usd->kr, which seems doubly strange.

The bigger issue is that this is a recurring charge: if it was a one off fee, it would be easily ignorable. Unfortuantly, every month I lose to this conversion.

What I think would be more acceptable to me:
Pay upfront for (say) 6 months. This creates an account of $25x6 = $150.

At the end of the first month, usage is acceptable. My account is now $125.
At the end of the second month, a large spike causes my bandwidth to shoot up, costing me an additional $10.
My account is now $90.
Usage returns to acceptable levels after this.

Now, either I pay the additional $10, or the service runs out at 5 months rather than 6.

The other side is that it creates a limit: if (somehow) my game got so popular it required more than the $150, then maybe I want it shut off. As an indie developer, if Im using your service, perhaps I cant afford paying $1000s for server costs.
DJamieson
 
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Re: Not impressed with payment options

Postby Oliver » December 2nd, 2010, 4:00 pm

If you has costs that grows with usage (like Player.IO) you should also have earnings that grow much faster with usage.

Ie, if servicing user costs on average 100$ then you should make a lot more than 100$ off that user. (hypothetical example with huge numbers)

- Oliver
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Re: Not impressed with payment options

Postby Oliver » December 2nd, 2010, 4:01 pm

Currently our pricing is in USD and will remain in USD. We simply don't have the capacity do deal with pricing in all sorts of different currencies.

What you're describing is a prepaid plan. As mentioned above, we don't have any current plans for this, but might add it in the future.

- Oliver
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Re: Not impressed with payment options

Postby Henrik » February 14th, 2011, 1:31 pm

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