I get zero chargebacks via Google and struggle to find anything that's comparable?
I've got the usual horror story behind PayPal (that cost a lot) and Stripe does not have adequate anti-fraud.
At the moment Amazon Payments seems to be a worthwhile competitor (they guarantee no chargebacks related to fraud) however their service is much harder to integrate. Although plenty of humans in the mix which is a very nice touch.
As a merchant, this is why Bitcoin is so valuable.
From my understanding is that it lets the customer's bank see exactly who's making the payment and gives them a chance to deny it. The merchant is then protected from fraudulent chargebacks and these are covered by the bank.
Essentially, they get to perform their own fraud prevention and it's a way of trying to improve confidence in online payments.
I believe the idea that it takes away rights from the customer is a misconception (I also think most of these protections are given by law).
I heard years ago that Level 3 were trying to encourage people (non-customers?) not to use these DNS servers. I guess this is one way to ask people not to use them.
Having said that, 8.8.8.8, Google DNS, has been planted firmly in my memory as my go to "is this machine up?" IP.
Definitely a third party service. Then place the bumper sticker "No Bitcoins on our servers" somewhere :)
I integrated MtGox and BitPay. Compared to Google Checkout (XML mania) and PayPal (documentation drama) they take about 5 seconds to implement (test is another thing entirely).
I went with MtGox in the end since it was cheaper. I was then happy to offer a 3% discount to make up for the fees users got stung with purchasing BTC. However MtGox has a number of bugs that make it a show stopper for some customers.
If you ask the right questions they will acknowledge the bugs and tell you they are working on it and need plenty of time. I would probably not use MtGox if I had known about the bugs prior to integrating.
Earlier today I received a phone call from a number in Mountain View CA. It was Google letting me know in advance that Google Checkout was to be shut down (and asking to keep the call quiet). This was, to say the least, very surprising considering I have very little correspondence with Google Checkout and was actually thinking there was a huge problem with my account. Thankfully not but this is still bad news for myself and I presume the industry at large.
Google Checkout was very good with their fraud protection to the point that I did not have to think about it. In fact, over the years I have been growing my business Google have been my rock---never a real issue with them.
PayPal was a similar story but it also seemed to attract the sort of customer that would open a dispute at almost any issue (or just threaten it). You can also count me in one of their horror stories that indirectly cost me £5k and even got to the point where they just flat out refused refunds for my customers who wanted them.
I have a Stripe and GoCardless account as well and I've been trying to make it work but their fraud protection is just not up to scratch compared to Google and PayPal, which is a real shame. I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to see enough data to get quite the same fraud protection. Stripe do look fun though.
Another perspective from a merchant: roll on Bitcoin. With exchanges offering guaranteed payouts in another currency (for me, GBP) I take on zero risk by accepting it and it solves so many problems. There's no wonder more and more websites are starting to accept it.
In the manager you can select the netboot / PXE option and "boot from rescue mode". From there you get e-mailed the logins from the server booted onto a Debian rescue image. You have full access to the OS / hard drives.
I personally feel this is a really minor problem (if that!)
I found my personal phone number appearing on customer bank statements as a Stripe merchant. That's a bigger deal than exposing an e-mail address, but it's still a minor issue.
Do you know how Google Checkout solves this? It explicitly states what's public information to buyers so I can make the decision of what I'm exposing.
Have you considered providing this data to merchants? For example, it would be great to know if you do get any calls for customers (or my prospective customers) and to see roughly what they're asking.
That way the merchants can act on the data too (and hopefully reduce the number of customer calls).
I was in a similar position with my ex -- although I think I used my start up as an escape putting more time into it than I would have otherwise. Then again, I could just have an addictive personality and it might not have made a blind bit of difference.
Either way, dwelling negatively on the past does not help as you cannot change it. I don't believe I would have come to the same conclusions if I had not experienced it first hand. Remember: work smarter, harder not longer!
No it does not, it's only when you ping their edge routers do you see packet loss, they still pass all traffic (and thus ping) over them just fine. You can see this in traceroutes or running mtr.
I believe (not 100% sure) they put their anti-dos on these routers which is why I think the US servers will have the same anti-dos measures.
Have you tried asking them? I do not believe they would hide this fact (it would be interesting to know whether they mark it as a selling point or not).
It probably won't change. Their US routers do not appear to be any different to the EU ones (e.g., they both intentionally rate limit ping to them so you'll see a lot of timeouts).
We are aware of this and are currently investigating it. Our initial thoughts were that it was indeed a compromise but after further review it seems that this is actually a bug with Debian and certain versions of RedHat.
We've tested it with different keys and have suffered the same results. I'll let you know if anything changes and we'll be announcing this shortly.
Thank you in any case, but rest assured it's not a serious issue.
That's the only reason you've found so far? That's pretty good.
They have much worse things in place:- their anti-dos measures make it near impossible to put anything of value on their without a LOT of work. For example, once they detect a DoS (just 50 Mbps was enough but it varies) they will take down your server (not just its IP) for 4-12 hours at a time.
With that said, there are some great things about OVH: they drive down the costs and make everything quite efficient (e.g., hardware prices, support costs) but then seem to just forget that they need to reduce the costs for the customer as well (their anti-dos measures being an example of how they increase the cost).
It would probably be best not to perpetuate these things and to just end the vitriol now.