Everybody avoid Bluesnap (ex Plimus) at all costs

DanFromFastSpring.com,
could you tell us what the currency conversion fee on Fastspring ? ie: if the US$ vs Eur = 1.30 vs 1, and I get a 20-Euro sale (excluding VAT), how much $ would I get in my Fastspring account ?

 

Sure. About 3% less than the published exchange rates, due to exchange fees.

 

Main thing that put me off FastSpring was that you had to charge the customer VAT, even if you're not a VAT registered business. You don't get that with PayPal. In the UK you don't need to be VAT registered, until the VAT taxable component of your income is above about £77k.

 

It has been 3 years that I tell everyone to stay away from Plimus/Bluesnap. Now some people like Amanda had to move tons of games to BMT.
If you don't care about affiliates, Fastspring seems good too (though I've used it not much). Otherwise BMT is currently the ONLY ONE alternative.

 

Not just that, you forgot the GIANT size 150 "REFUND" button they sent automatically on each order receipt email?
That was pure genius. It is MY CHOICE to decide if I give a refund to a customer, cannot be enforced by the vendor. Besides, even Steam has a no refund policy now...

I remember the countless time WASTED because some customers clicked the button, then when asking "Why you asked refund,there's anything wrong in the game?" and their replies "uh no." like saying "I just saw the giant refund so thought you were giving away the games for free!".
That was the last drop for me, already 3 years ago (or more, can't remember).

 

That's not FastSpring fault that they charge VAT - it's EU rule. Just because you don't charge VAT for EU based customers through PayPal doesn't mean you do it legally. You should in fact charge the VAT, but with PayPal you have to handle the process manually, while serious payment processors do that for you.

And that doesn't mean you have to be VAT registered. FastSpring (or eSellerate in my case) is VAT registered and they handle VAT for you. They send you net payments. You may want to consult that with someone that has deeper knowledge in that area, but my believe is that is how it works (and how I work with it).

 

Sorry mate, just typed in 2 responses to this, and both times the browser / forum software ate my response!!

Yep, I was trying to say, my understanding isn't the same as yours on this matter, and I think you may be mistaken.

Sure, FS have to charge VAT because they're registered. You don't, because you're not registered. Lets say you sold direct (no payment provider), and collect 20% vat per sale; you're not VAT registered; so how do you pay HMRC? How do you file a VAT return with no VAT number?

Who, or what, has lead you to the belief that you are required to charge VAT on EU sales?

 

OK, if you sell direct and are not VAT registered then you might be right. I am VAT registered, so I have to charge VAT even if I sell directly. Anyway, I remember that was a law that said "no matter where you're from you have to charge VAT for electronic sales to EU customers" (that's why eSellerate or FastSpring charge VAT despite they are US based companies). That's from memory. If you want to know more about it dig it somewhere.

Of course I could mess up everything, but that's how I'm handling things at the moment...

 

Just chiming in here...

We do in fact support affiliates, just in a different way. We let you tap into the largest affiliate programs like CJ, Linkshare, etc. rather than assume ours would bring you the world's best affiliates like those top programs do. Or if you have your own web affiliates already, you can use FastSpring to manage them the same as you can for other resellers you may work with that need to be told their sales results and cut a separate payment from yours. FastSpring does not charge any extra % for affiliate transactions.

Re refunds, when we get a request, excluding suspected fraud situations, we come to you, the client, we don't go refunding the customers' orders on our own.

Regarding the concerns about us collecting VAT, please note that Council Directive 2002/38/EC (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2002:128:0041:0044:en:PDF) specifies that VAT must be collected by non-EU entities providing electronically supplied services (including the supply of software, text, music and games) to consumers in EU member states. PayPal, as was noted, leaves the responsibility of collecting, paying, and your being in legal compliance with VAT to you as the seller instead of handling it all for you.

In our experience across 2,200+ global software clients' web stores, charging VAT does not have a negative impact on cart conversion rates.

 

I made the switch to BMT Micro a month ago. Not sure if it's in my head, but I think I'm getting more sales. Plus the support at BMT Micro is fantastic. They are much nicer than the folks at Plimus.

 

Do they let you design your own sales page? They didn't used to, and that kinda irritated me a bit because I felt like I would be annoying them by keeping asking for changes.

 

BMTMicro will theme your sales page to match your site. I've been with them for a very long time and never had a complaint.

 

When I opened a BMT account back in 2005, I noticed I was getting more sales. At those times I had both Plimus and BMT buy links, and somehow I would get more sales from BMT. And BMT anti fraud was even better than Plimus (had very little chargebacks, and anyway they don't ask you money for that).
Indinera, that summary is like an horror story :O

 

I just got bitten by them. I 100% agree. They are so crap.

More recently I've been using Braintree. They've been absolutely awesome, although I'm worried now that they have been bought by Paypal. They don't seem to have changed anything yet though.

 

It's been 2 weeks that I am waiting a credit back that Bluesnap has accounted as Refunded. I have communicated many times with bluesnap by email or by phone on +1 (866) 312-7733, and they has sent to me a screen capture from their PC showing their internal record of the refund, and also they gave me their processing bank.
( that's bullshit, whay they didn't send me their bank account statement !)
They said with their screen capture my bank shall be able to find the refund. Guess what, my bank said that it is not possible, but there is a process that can take up to 120 days ! Lot of processes and authorization are needed to check all the refund processing chain ! Of course Bluesnap knows that and they probably managed to get my refund stuck somewhere into a shadow bank or whatever we can call it, the fact is that
very probably somebody is using this refund along with other customers's refunds, as a working capital.
Now my theory is that Bluesnap is counting on customers lack of 6th sense, and wait for 120days to release this money, or waiting untill the customer's bank shows up along with the Mastercard or Visa ( a higher than customer's bank instance ) and ask where the refund is. And at that day, bluesnap will say oh sorry, there was a glitch in our system, here it is blablabla, or just send it that's all, or just say they had a difficult time getting the money back from the merchant!
I wouldn't qualify this as a fraud or scam (I am not a judge), but Bluesnap is probably in the grey zone, not 100% legal and safe but not 100% illegal or unsafe ! They are probably just witty greedy bastards that wants to take advantage from the system !
Meanwhile my bank credited me that refund provisionally...another detail Bluesnap knows about and of course count on that so that customers don't complain on internet ! But I will and I swear I shall use all channels to share this bad experience with bluesnap...