Here's the information I told you about. There are restrictions on what you can sell, but it gives you a new weapon in your arsenal to build your business without any up-front costs.
******What is the relationship between my business and the Company
processing our orders?
The Company processing your orders is an online retailer of their clients'
products. Their focus is on selling tangible merchandise that will be
shipped to customers.
Clients who use this company sell to them at wholesale; they then sell to
customers at retail. All orders are then billed to customers' credit cards
under the generic name of the company.
They pay their clients twice per month, on the 1st and 16th day of each
month. Complete payment options and information are listed below.
The company is Headquartered in Newark, Delaware, they are a small business
specializing in Internet-based sales and systems design. Their parent
company was founded in 1996 and is privately held.
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How does the company work?
The Company processing your orders provides you with customized snippets of
HTML code to insert into your Web pages. This seamlessly links your Web
site into the shopping cart screens on their secure server.
Customers navigate their way through your Web site, selecting products for
purchase and adding them to a virtual "Shopping Cart" provided by the
retail company processing your orders. When finished shopping, the customer
presses the Checkout button and enters his/her credit-card and shipping
information to complete the sale.
At this stage, the company is acting as your online retailer, selling
products to the customer and simultaneously buying the products from you at
wholesale. In return for the 8% wholesale discount you give them, the
company provides you with shopping-cart software, credit card transaction
processing, and our toll-free number for card billing inquiries.
All orders are then billed to customers' credit cards using the generic
name of the company processing your orders.
After each batch of orders is submitted and processed, they will send you
notification of the orders via Internet E-mail. You then ship the products
directly to the customers, and use their Client Administration screens to
notify them of the shipment.
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What types of products can be sold?
You can use the company to sell a wide variety of merchandise. Please keep
in mind the following guidelines and restrictions, however:
The company processing your orders, is intended to be used for tangible
merchandise. This is defined as "physical products that are shipped to the
customer's physical address". This policy helps the company to maintain
their 8% fee. Tangible merchandise incurs a much lower rate of inquiries,
disputes, and fraud than service-based sales or electronically delivered
products. The company has elected to provide services only for tangible
merchandise, so that their clients can enjoy a lower processing fee.
Due to product liability concerns, they cannot sell firearms, alcoholic
beverages, explosives, live animals, prescription drugs or other controlled
substances, fireworks or other pyrotechnic devices or supplies, or
hazardous materials such as combustibles or corrosives.
Your products must be legal for sale in all states, provinces, and
countries where you accept customers.
The minimum price for each product you sell is $4.95.
The following products and services cannot be sold via this company,
because they are not primarily physical merchandise that is delivered to
the customer's physical address.
*Web hosting services
*Web site design
*Web site promotion
*Internet access or E-mail services
*Programming services
*Consulting services
*Graphic design services
*Advertising sales
*Money-making information
*Other service-based sales
*Search engine registration
*Web site memberships
*Club memberships
*Gambling transactions
*Hotel / Airfare / Travel reservations
*Software delivered by E-mail
*Software enable keys delivered by E-mail
*Any information or software delivered electronically (via E-mail, Web
site, or Fax)
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What are the benefits of using this company?
Here are a few of the benefits to consider:
***You save money. Most credit-card merchant agreements require you to
pay several hundred dollars up front, such as setup fees and software fees.
Others charge monthly fees of up to $50 per month. This company lets you
skip all of these fees and pay just 8% of each sale.
***Your customers save money. This company is based in Delaware, which
means that customers are never required to pay sales tax on any U.S. orders.
***You can accept all four major US credit cards: Visa, MasterCard,
American Express, and Discover/Novus. Other retailers omit some of these
cards, and that may lessen your customer base.
This company provides a toll-free customer service number. Your customers
can call them directly if they have billing inquiries or other questions.
***You can use this company with any web hosting service, because there are
no special set-ups required. This can save you money by allowing you to
choose a standard, no-frills hosting company for your Web site.
***You can turn on our "international orders" option if desired, and we'll
take orders from customers anywhere in the world, at no additional charge.
Most retailers will not accept orders from overseas customers.
***They provide you with an easy interface to the shopping-cart screens on
our secure server. You don't have to do any programming, and they'll even
provide you with customized snippets of HTML code to drop into your Web pages.
***Their program is free to join, and you can literally start taking orders
today!
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What fees are charged by the company?
For their services, they collect 8% of the total amount charged to each
customer's credit card. There are no startup costs, and no monthly fees.
Example: Suppose you advertise a product for $8.00 and charge an
additional $4.00 for packaging and shipping. Customers would pay a total
of $12.00 for that order, right?
Their fee is 8% of this total (96 cents), and the rest ($11.04) is paid to
you.
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How does this company maintain its low fees?
This company takes pride in being an efficient, well-run service
organization. They've taken several steps to keep their own operating
expenses under control.
Some examples are:
It's very costly to process credit card transactions "live" in real-time.
Since real-time authorizations are not necessary when selling tangible
merchandise via mail order, they designed a system which batches up all of
their orders every four to six hours, and then submits them together. This
consolidation process greatly reduces processing costs for themselves and
their clients.
(Note: For this reason they may not be appropriate for clients who require
real-time card authorization.)
This company uses a customer-friendly refund policy (see below) that
allows them to grant most refund requests. This policy controls their
administrative costs in two ways: First, it reduces the amount of time
spent researching customer inquiries; and secondly it reduces chargebacks
arising from customer disputes. A chargeback is a penalty imposed by card
processing companies for failure to grant a valid refund request; and it
usually carries fines of $5 to $25 per incident.
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Who can use this company, and what are the requirements?
You can use this company if you meet all of these requirements:
*You will be marketing, describing, and selling tangible merchandise via
one or more World Wide Web sites.
*You do not require their services for products marketed by other means
(for example, any marketing information given by E-mail, telephone, print
advertising, personal acquaintances, etc).
*Credit-card customers will place the orders themselves at your Web site,
and not via E-mail. Customers will enter their billing and shipping
information directly, using this companies shopping-cart system.
*You agree to inform the company of your Web site addresses, including any
new sites that you add after you sign up.
*Your product prices are displayed in U.S. dollars.
*You can accept payments from the company in U.S. dollars, from their U.S.
bank.
*You agree to the terms of their Client Agreement.
*Clients who do not conduct their sales according to these requirements may
experience delayed orders, rejected orders, or delayed payment of funds.
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Can this company be used for telephone / fax / mail orders?
In order to keep their administrative costs low and offer their 8% rate,
they focuse exclusively on Web-based customers, because it is less
expensive to process orders for these customers. Telephone and mail orders
require a clerical staff, which is much more costly.
If you need to accept credit card orders via telephone, fax, or mail, then
you must obtain a standard merchant account to process those orders.
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Can I enter customers' orders myself?
Unfortunately this practice is prohibited by U.S. banking law, and by their
own client requirements as listed above.
Their own merchant banking agreements require that customers will directly
enter the sales transactions with this company. If you enter an order on
behalf of a customer (for example, a customer who cannot or will not place
an Internet order), then you would be engaging in an illegal practice
known as "credit card factoring".
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How does the company pay its clients?
The company makes payments to their clients twice a month, on the 1st and
16th day of each month. All the companies payments are adjusted for any
refunds, disputes, chargebacks, or other fees as set forth in the Client
Agreement.
You can choose from three different methods of payment:
Option 1: They can mail you a regular check. This is the default payment
method. They send these checks via First Class Mail within the U.S, or by
Air Mail to all other countries. No charge.
Option 2: You can choose to be paid by Cashier's Certified Cheque. This
is useful to some clients outside the U.S, because some banks may require
several weeks' waiting time for a non-certified foreign cheque. They send
these cheques via Air Mail. $15.00 bank fee per cheque. Your bank may
collect additional fees.
Option 3: They can send payments directly to your bank account via Wire
Transfer, also called Tele-Transfer in some countries. You may wish to
consider this option if you have problems with the reliability or speed of
mail delivery in your area. $50.00 bank fee per payment. Your bank may
collect additional fees.
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Other notes regarding payments:
If you wish to receive payments less often than twice per month (for
example, in order to reduce your bank fees), you can specify a Payment
Threshold amount. They will only generate payment if the payable amount
exceeds your chosen Payment Threshold on the 1st or 16th day of each month.
If you are in the U.S, you will soon be able to choose direct deposit of
funds into your bank account. This is a free service, and they expect to
begin offering Direct Deposit in late spring 1999.
All the companies payments are adjusted for any refunds, disputes,
chargebacks, or other fees as set forth in the Client Agreement.
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How quickly are funds paid?
The company implements a Reserve Policy in order to protect their company
against catastrophic loss due to fraud, theft, human error, or excessive
customer disputes.
The Reserve Policy will only affect you if you sell more than $500 worth of
merchandise per semi-monthly pay period (which is $1000 per month). If
your sales total less than $500 per pay period, you will receive immediate
payment of all funds at the end of each pay period.
Here is a chart which illustrates when your funds will be available, based
on your sales volume and your sales history with the company:
If your length of
sales history
with the company is:
Less than 3 months of sales history:
*The Company pays immediately:
Up to $500 per semi-monthly pay period will be paid immediately at the end
of that pay period.
*The Company pays after 60 days:
Up to 90% of your average sales volume will be paid immediately at the end
of each pay period.
3 months or more sales history:
**The Company pays immediately:
Up to 90% of your average sales volume will be paid immediately at the end
of each pay period.
**The Company pays after 60 days:
The portion that exceeds 90% of your average sales volume (if any) will be
paid after a 60-day Reserve Period.
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Other notes regarding the Reserve Policy:
For the purposes of the chart above, we compute your average sales
volume over a rolling three-month period, which equates to six
semi-monthly pay periods.
The Company guarantees payment of your reserve funds on the payable date.
These payments are adjusted for any customer refunds, disputes,
chargebacks, or other fees as set forth in the
Client Agreement.
Your company Account Statement, available online, shows all
amounts held in Reserve, along with the payable date of each reserve amount.
*************************
What are the companies refund and dispute policies?
The company maintains a customer-friendly refund policy. This keeps our
dministrative costs under control in two ways: First, it reduces the
amount if time spent researching customer inquiries; and secondly it
reduces chargeback fees from our card processor.
In most situations when a customer asks for a refund, we want to try our
best to grant that refund. Here are some guidelines on our refund and
dispute policies:
If a customer is dissatisfied with a product that he/she has ordered, the
client should accept the product back and grant a refund. If desired, a
client may specify that shipping charges are not refundable; however we
would prefer to refund the shipping charges as well.
A customer may claim that a product was never received. In these
cases, we will grant a refund unless the client can show proof of
delivery. If you are shipping expensive items (or if the customer is
returning expensive items), please be sure to use a shipping method that
provides proof of delivery.
Whenever a customer refund is issued, we also refund the 8% fee.
This means that you are not required to pay our processing fee on orders
that are later refunded.
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Does the company use SSL encryption?
Yes. Our shopping-cart software runs in Secure Mode on the browser, using
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) to encrypt sensitive data such as credit card
numbers.
While selecting products and adding them to the Shopping Cart, the
customer is in Non-Secure Mode. After he/she presses the Checkout
button, we switch to Secure Mode in order to collect the billing and
shipping information.
All modern Web browsers support the SSL standard, but the customer can
choose to checkout using Non-Secure Mode if necessary.
**************************************************
Are the companies online systems fast? Reliable?
Yes, and Yes. Our company is committed to providing our clients and
customers with 24-hour, 365-day availability, and high-speed access to our
online systems. We have worked hard to provide multi-system redundancy and
geographic diversity in our network.
Our primary Web server is located at the data center in Boston. And this
company is recognized as an industry leader and provider of reliable Web
site hosting servces.
In the event of a natural disaster or network outage at the Boston data
center, our standby Web server is online in Meadowlands, New Jersey. Our
standby is also recognized as a reliable corporate data center and Web
hosting facility.
After analyzing Internet traffic patterns, we decided to locate both of
these Web servers at East Coast data centers. By doing so, we have
positioned our servers to be topographically close to the vast majority of
customers' ISPs. (Two of the largest ISPs in the U.S., America Online and
IBM Internet, have their hubs located on the East Coast.) This results in
the fastest possible speeds to the greatest number of potential customers.
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Can this company create my Web site shop for me?
We provide you with customized snippets of HTML code to insert into your
existing Web pages, which links your Web site into the shopping-cart
screens on our secure server.
However, if you do not already have a Web site and do not know how to
create one, we can suggest some resources.
Most web authoring tools, such as Microsoft FrontPage and
Netscape Composer will allow you to design Web pages with the
ease of a word processor, all without HTML programming.
If you want a more professional-looking Web presence, you might
consider hiring a Web design firm to do the job for you. We can
refer you to some of the designers we have worked with; please
contact us if interested.
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Does this company offer a reseller or franchise program?
U.S. banking laws currently prohibit us from offering a conventional
reseller program. The practice would violate our agreements with credit
card companies and merchant banks.
You may, however, purchase an independent franchise license if you wish to
offer Internet retail services yourself. Franchise licenses are available
for US $60,000. This includes all software source code, documentation,
setup and installation on your Web site, and customization with your
company logo, graphics, and the native currency in your country. Full
technical support is available for a yearly fee of US $15,000. These fees
do not
include business services, legal services, banking services, or
merchant account services.
Please contact this company if you are interested in setting up an
independent franchise in your area.
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How do I make customers feel good about buying online?
Our Client Tips page suggests several ways to maximize sales and prevent
customer problems.
Okay! How do I join?
Just go to our Merchant Account Referral Program at:
mailto:
cc-referral-prog@aepublishing.com
and fill out the referral program and shoot that into us using any media
mentioned in the e-mail and we will take it from there or call us at:
(714)777-0254 California