Blacklist and banned threat - account one day old

[chrisc 10]

I received a notice on 1st July from BoB's accs dept advising that an amount of R83 odd on a statement dated 30th June was "seriously overdue" plus the usual generic warnings.

 

Since I take great care to pay all invoices the day they are due, I take exception to this, and the threats contained thereon.

 

You can do without my custom from now on, buying or selling. I asked that I be deregistered from BoB and to receive confirmation, but that has not happened either

 

Regards

[admin 0]

Hi chrisc,

 

Apologies if the automated message offends you, but it seems no matter how many times the automated messages are changed, it always offends someone in some way or the other. Maybe someday someone will come up with automated messages that will be acceptable to everyone, but I doubt it, the old saying, You can please some of the people some of the time but not all the people all of the time, comes to mind.

 

I just had a look and can not find any recent emails from you on the system with the email address on your profile. Please re-consider your decision, or please re-send the email to have your account closed to communitywatch@bidorbuy.co.za

 

Thank you.

[chrisc 10]

Hi chrisc,

 

Apologies if the automated message offends you, but it seems no matter how many times the automated messages are changed, it always offends someone in some way or the other. Maybe someday someone will come up with automated messages that will be acceptable to everyone, but I doubt it, the old saying, You can please some of the people some of the time but not all the people all of the time, comes to mind.

 

I just had a look and can not find any recent emails from you on the system with the email address on your profile. Please re-consider your decision, or please re-send the email to have your account closed to communitywatch@bidorbuy.co.za

 

Thank you.

 

 

It is not the tone of the letter I was complaining about at all, its just that whoever manages your collections jumps on their hooter within 24 hours of a statement being posted demanding payment, followed by threats. It is completely unnecessary. A few days after statement to settle accounts would be more like it. I have also run a small business (11 employees) for 34 years and find that if you are a bit patient with people who have been supporting you faithfully for many years, you will get the money. I have been a BoB member for about 11 years and would have thought that was sufficient to build up some history. One way to really lose customers fast is do what your collections dept did.

 

Regards

[admin 0]

Hi chrisc,

 

It is unfortunately impossible to do the finances manually due to the high amount of sellers and deals done on a daily basis. The email you received was sent automatically by the system, I am under correction, but believe that the reminder email for due accounts are sent 2 days after the account was due. Please do not take it personally as it was a standardized automated message.

[jinxster78 10]

Does the message say "AUTOMATED MESSAGE" somewhere?

 

Only problem with that is if it is a debt collecting message then everyone ignores it so loses its use :thinking:

[TS Ron 10]

Does the message say "AUTOMATED MESSAGE" somewhere?

 

Only problem with that is if it is a debt collecting message then everyone ignores it so loses its use :thinking:

 

Take it with a pinch of salt it happens in the best of business today! I am sure you can benefit from selling and bidorbuy does value you as a seller or a buyer.

Life is to short to get upset about minor issues:grin:

[jinxster78 10]

But something doesn't make sense entirely to me.

 

Here is BoB billing info.

 

If you check this piece:

 

bidorbuy will attempt to debit any outstanding balance on your bidorbuy account from the previous month on the 7th of each month (or the nearest working day thereafter). If your account is settled before the 7th of the month bidorbuy will not attempt to debit your credit card or bank account.

 

Which raises a different question.. (usually you must submit debit orders 2 days in advance so what if you pay the 6th? anyhow, maybe BoB have a leeway coz of multiple banks or simply pay the higher debit order fee..)

 

This is not the point though... the point is...

 

BoB take any money that is owed to them on the 7th... unless your debit order bounces, you should never be in arrears unless a mistake has crept into your account somehow?

[Seeds for Africa 10]

And if you use bobpay they take the money off that balance. I use bobpay and they deduct from that. I never get any bills from bob.

[qball 11]

It is not the tone of the letter I was complaining about at all, its just that whoever manages your collections jumps on their hooter within 24 hours of a statement being posted demanding payment, followed by threats. It is completely unnecessary. A few days after statement to settle accounts would be more like it. I have also run a small business (11 employees) for 34 years and find that if you are a bit patient with people who have been supporting you faithfully for many years, you will get the money. I have been a BoB member for about 11 years and would have thought that was sufficient to build up some history. One way to really lose customers fast is do what your collections dept did.

 

Regards

 

We do apologise if this email has offended you, you were however, in arrears with your account payment, and unfortunately we do have to resort to this type of "coaxing" to ensure sellers pay their fees, after all, we are not a charity :worried:.

 

If you did not pay your Telkom or Electricity bill, do you think they would think twice about cutting off your phone or electricity if your account was in arrears? Unfortunately bad payers cost us millions of Rands in revenue, which can be used to further enhance the site, market it, add technology, hardware and staff resources, without everyone paying on time and in full, it becomes difficult to run a business, as I am sure you can imagine. We have thousands and thousands of sellers and if every one of them did not pay us, we would be in very serious trouble. It's pretty simple, just make sure your account is paid in full and up to date... :grin:. Then you won't get "nasty" emails from us... :razz:

 

Kind regards

Cuan

[chrisc 10]

We do apologise if this email has offended you, you were however, in arrears with your account payment, and unfortunately we do have to resort to this type of "coaxing" to ensure sellers pay their fees, after all, we are not a charity :worried:.

 

If you did not pay your Telkom or Electricity bill, do you think they would think twice about cutting off your phone or electricity if your account was in arrears? Unfortunately bad payers cost us millions of Rands in revenue, which can be used to further enhance the site, market it, add technology, hardware and staff resources, without everyone paying on time and in full, it becomes difficult to run a business, as I am sure you can imagine. We have thousands and thousands of sellers and if every one of them did not pay us, we would be in very serious trouble. It's pretty simple, just make sure your account is paid in full and up to date... :grin:. Then you won't get "nasty" emails from us... :razz:

 

Kind regards

Cuan

 

I am sensitive about being threatened by blacklisting on account of an experience with Neotel. On an office phone bill in July 2010 there were 3180 calls made to the same number over a period of 5 days (which turned out to be a discontinued Vodacom number) each lasting 4-6 seconds, about 25-30 seconds apart. The calls started at 05h30 in the morning on a Sunday and continued until the next Thursday at 22h45. Thing is, the office is locked at 16h45 every day and opens at 08h15 or so. The alarm opening and closing proves the times. Neotel said there was nothing wrong with their systems, even though the regular calls we made from the same phone during the day that same week did not appear on the itemised account, and I must pay the bill. I wrote to a technical manager at Neotel about it but received no reply, despite 3 reminders and dozens of calls. Next thing, in Feb there is the Sheriff of the Court at the door, they have served summons to recover the R 4200 bill and blacklisted me. I had to pay it to avoid going to court, but Neotel won't remove the blacklisting, and now I can't get a new phone service, get a new 8ta data contract, also had some insurance declined, all for a R 4200 bill that I settled 4 months ago. They are completely disinterested. So when I see another similar threat, however minor, I do take issue.

 

btw: BoB, why not send me an invoice by email, then it will get paid? I am not short of R35,00 odd to pay you.

[Guest Guest]

WOW!!! That is so-o-o "New RSA!!"

 

Neotel = truly bad news it clearly seems! Thank you for your info on their "insight help!" [Hint-hint...!]

 

Hope those whatshemaycallits get their "bloody" act together ASAP!

[jinxster78 10]

That Neotel story sounds like a phreaking attempt.

 

On the BoB issue, it is a story of jumping to conclusions. BoB (in general) don't try hard enough to understand that anyway, their formula is to use a few technicalities to give themselves reason to proceed and then do so mercilessly thinking this is good business practice.

 

At the end of the day Cuan doesn't really understand (or possibly want to understand) what the issue from chrisc is about. He says "Im sorry you are offended but...", so notice how they are "not" sorry that they forgot to put the debit order through... since this is possibly the mistake here as it looks to me. Also, anybody who says, Im sorry but (or in the eloquent language, "I apologise, however") isn't sorry about anything other than the fact you didn't be sorry enough to them first. In this case for not doing anything until you paid the R35, which you were not really informed about apart from when you put the listing up and were told, it could be up to x amount but nothing about when it is due.

 

Maybe they should put "you owe R35" as part of their, "you have sold" email.

 

Cuan jumped to a conclusion on telephone and electricity bills without enough insight or understanding to those type of billing cycles.

 

He may be right overall, as at some point it really must get cut, but didn't research what that point it is, or how to get there without causing upset customers, just indemnifies BoB becuase they make out as if you brought it on yourself.

 

So to put it a different way, before you start blaming people, alert them something must be addressed.

[qball 11]

We are not in the business of blaming people... and I have not jumped to any conclusions... sad to say...

 

Overdue payment reminders are sent every month on the 15th, sellers are also sent invoices at the end of every month, all by email. It is possible that Chrisc's spam filters or mail marshal software prevented the mails from being delivered. These emails are sent out religiously by our mail server to all seller who incur fees. So essentially in most cases, as we bill in arrears, many sellers run up accounts and do not pay or pay late, this for any business can be very detrimental to the ongoing running costs. The "blacklisting" email is the last email we send and are unfortunately necessary to prompt sellers to pay their accounts. This may offend some people but it is unfortunately necessary to ensure users understand that late or non payment is not something we take lightly. We write of millions of Rands in unpaid fees and bad debt, this ultimately affects the services we provide our community, so every seller that pays late or does not pay even if it's R1 or R1000, affects our ability to keep the site running and the payment of ongoing costs we have to keep operating.

 

Every user has the ability to view their account at any stage by logging into their bidorbuy account and check the balance they owe or to pull their invoices from our system. It is the users responsibility to ensure they pay their account or have sufficient funds to pay for the fees they have incurred. You might feel I am unsympathetic to this situation but I am not. I doubt we would blacklist someone for R80 odd, but as already discussed, the emails are automated, and are notification that fees are overdue, older than 30 days. I am aware of some companies in SA that do not even send you notice, they simply hand you over. The wording of the email may appear harsh, but you also need to understand we come from, especially when we have so many non paying users. In these cases this is usually the 3rd email that the seller would get from us regarding overdue fees. One would be a reminder in the middle of the month, you would get an email at the end of the month (invoice or statement), and then a notice of overdue payment, this usually happens after an account has not been paid for over 30 days or longer... not 1 day old. In fact Chris's account has due in June and not paid in June for 2 transactions completed in May, so the amount was over due for almost a month and a half... it's now July and that is why we sent that email to Chris.

 

Jinxster78, I would ask that before you go and start posting comments that have no fact , please check with me first... :wink: I would really appreciate that!

 

Have a lovely weekend folks...

 

Cuan

[jinxster78 10]

Still doesn't explain why no debit order was taken.

 

The non factual info, there are so many different approaches from Municipalities and in some cases it works a bit sticky. If you rent a spot where you get a reading and post pay your electricity, and you don't pay the electricity to your landlord, then unfortunately for the landlord, he still has to pay the muncipality and if he doesnt (and the electric is cut but the municipality) you can sue them for legal costs, reconnection costs and possibly damages. So non payment can result in not being cut.

 

Individual municipalities each have different approaches. Mostly they get the balif of the sherif to deliver you a notice, you must sign it... this means the person knows for definate. Not sending an email subject to spam rules, this is the essense of this issue, guaranteed methods to get info accross. In practice, they don't cut as quickly as you think since the law in previous paragraph still applies.

 

Wrt prepaid, running out is not the same as getting cut. (telephone and electricity)

 

Wrt late Telkom telephone payment, they have a 3rd party company physically phone you (until they are blue in the face and you answer). They use this opportunity to complete a short statistical survey. Before they cut you.

 

I have noticed of recent, admin mentioning mail problems and difficulties as well as a few others experiencing problems via BoB. The issue would be less terrible if BoB was not so automated, but I understand you cant have someone check and recheck all day on machines, but at least while you are experiencing mail issues, you should try to make use of additional notification methods.

What I can suggest is, create test zones and check zones, so that you determine if your email has gone sufficiently. eg, do 2 things:

1. get a delivery report, then when it comes back match the 2 (can be done quite easily) if a 5 day period passes and no response then get a human to intervene.

2. send a test copy every month via a spamassassin server and see what your spam count is, if higher than 5 (maybe even 4), try do another one. (one email per cycle), but most people are set to 5.

 

The point of my post was to say don't compare your "cut" to telephone / electricity cuts as neither work the same as your company's setup.

[chrisc 10]

I now have "selling restrictions" on my account and upon enquiring, was told I am a bad payer. Hey there, if BoB forget to submit a debit order, don't shift the blame on me. It is you that stuffed up, not me. You are no better than Telkom and other big organisations, it is easier to blame the consumer than spend a bit of time looking into the complaint. See my note about Neotel above, it now seems that everyone who was involved with that debacle has "left". Usual excuse, not so?

[qball 11]

Hi Chris

 

Thank you for your feedback. The accounts team have confirmed that the debit failed due to a validation issue on the details we have for you. So we did attempt to debit the account, but due to invalid/missing/outdated details the debit could not go off. Please could you send through your banking details through to us to check, to billing@bidorbuy.co.za. No one is blaming you, but you must also understand that even if a debit order did not go off, it does not absolve you of your responsibility to ensure your account is paid. The selling restrictions are in place until such time as we receive your banking details and do a validation debit on them to ensure they are correct.

 

Kind regards

Cuan

[chrisc 10]

Hi Chris

 

Thank you for your feedback. The accounts team have confirmed that the debit failed due to a validation issue on the details we have for you. So we did attempt to debit the account, but due to invalid/missing/outdated details the debit could not go off. Please could you send through your banking details through to us to check, to billing@bidorbuy.co.za. No one is blaming you, but you must also understand that even if a debit order did not go off, it does not absolve you of your responsibility to ensure your account is paid. The selling restrictions are in place until such time as we receive your banking details and do a validation debit on them to ensure they are correct.

 

Kind regards

Cuan

 

 

How long does it take to do this validation? I have submitted my account details twice since your email of 25th July, but no change.

 

Regards

[qball 11]

HI Chris

 

I believe Solanche has been liaising with you. The account details are different, which would explain the failure to debit. In order to update your details you need to login to your account as per Solanche's email from the 4th. We cannot do this for you.

 

To update your bank details go to My bidorbuy, select the Selling tab, scroll down the page, to Fee Management (menu on the left side of the page), select the Fee Payment Method option and follow the steps as required.

 

Thank you and apologies for the delay in responding to you.

[chrisc 10]

Thank you, everything is fixed now

 

Regards

 

 

HI Chris

 

I believe Solanche has been liaising with you. The account details are different, which would explain the failure to debit. In order to update your details you need to login to your account as per Solanche's email from the 4th. We cannot do this for you.

 

To update your bank details go to My bidorbuy, select the Selling tab, scroll down the page, to Fee Management (menu on the left side of the page), select the Fee Payment Method option and follow the steps as required.

 

Thank you and apologies for the delay in responding to you.

[admin 0]

Thank you, everything is fixed now

 

Regards

 

Good to hear :wink: