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Let me start the story with why I even decided to try Google Checkout.
Last year, when an unusually and unexpectedly successful sale shut down my account with that other company, I was in dire straits. My entire business depended on my ability to receive payments via third party vendors – it was my assurance that were I to be struck by lightning, my clients could always get their money back.
So many of my clients were used to the company I normally used to process payments, and I was scared that they’d never come back if I didn’t use it. I also used Clickbank, but often found that the fraud rate was a lot higher. Return rates with this arrangement l were .01% and stayed at that level with only 2 fraud incidents, ever, in three years.
Incidents of fraud or return on Clickbank were nearly 1%.
I know what you’re thinking – boo hoo, Tinu, that’s far below the average for digital products.
But how would you proceed if with one reseller you had one in ten thousand turn around, and with another, one per one hundred? That’s 10 times as many! Especially paying for my medical costs out of pocket, I couldn’t always afford the luxury of higher fraud and returns, plus the other way, i got my money faster.
My business would crash and burn if I couldn’t accept charges. And I’d had several bad experiences with merchant accounts. First I turned to 2checkout.com – they were fine but there was a delay in getting my account up and running that wasn’t entiredly their fault. My business credit is immaculate and I’d heard good things about Google Checkout, so I gave them a try.
Not only did they respond immediately with a personalized email, but every single time I’ve had to contact them about an issue, they’ve responded via email within one business day. They were also set up to handle large transactions – my account has never been shut down or even interrupted, for the kind of business transactions I need to do, ever. I now run all of my consulting invoicing through them.
They’ve also been good at catching fraud before it gets to me in a timely fashion. Add no fees until 2008 to that and I’m hooked.
On the con side, Google checkout doesn’t have pre-set buttons, nor is it set up to handle subscriptions – you’d have to manually invoice your clients each month, which you may well know is a huge hassle, and can interrupt the subscription process.
The delivery system for electronic goods also leaves much to be desired. We have intermittent problems with the IPN in the system we use talking to them – which isn’t as much of a problem if we say so in advance and do manual follow ups within a business day.
At present, the only reason all my pages aren’t set up with Google checkout is because I’m figuring out why the automated delivery of digital products doesn’t work. When it is, I’ll use all three of my favorite vendors side by side, and, as a courtesy to my die-hard fans of the other system, we’ll leave that one up as well, which goes through my partners, Morgan and Cindy – this site officially belongs to them, though we are currently equal partners..
Now, that’s from a merchant perspective.
From a buyer’s perspective, I felt kind of funny at first, having Google know my credit card information, but after the first clunky sign-up process, I actually prefer it to just about all other methods. I have a recourse if my product is not delivered as expected, and when things go well, they send me a shipping notice. And if I want to buy something with my email address hidden, they will create a forwarder for me – quite convenient as sometimes my commercial email addresses get caught in filters.
I’d love it if they could incorporate anonymity too, as sometimes I am purchasing on behalf of someone else, or simply don’t want my buying habits known.
Their directory is great fun to browse in as well. I would suggest a store that uses Google Checkout with confidence – not every business is eligible, and knowing that you must submit your Tax ID number to be a merchant gives me peace of mind.
So, I guess you could say that I like Google Checkout better as a buyer than as a merchant, but the fact that they saved my butt in a time of crisis is no small thing. I wish I had tried them first – my business might not have gone through a rough period, even during my illness.
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