This guy got big problems with his contact with Plimus, be warned everyone!
Plimus Delphi mISVer
I will never use Plimus!
Source:After reading glowing reviews of Plimus I decided to go with them as a payment processor (I was considering going with Paypal directly but it sounded like too much work).
Later, I would regret choosing Plimus and being so hasty in choosing a processor.
Everything seemed to be working fine, the setup was straightforward and I chose the option of uploading a list of license keys to be dispensed by Plimus (less chances of something going wrong).
Then I made my first order, as well as letting my friends and family know they can put some orders in if they want to.
To my horror, all the orders we made were put into Plimus’ Under-Review status. Which means every buyer has to receive a robot Callback for verification.
In all the years I’ve been buying stuff online I never had to go through this process as a buyer.
The worst part of it is that the robot does not call immediately. It may call several hours later.
Which means you have to sit by the phone and wait for the call.
Because, if you miss the call, it may not call again for several days (if it’s the weekend, especially).
A few of the family members that ordered the product got a Order Rejected message because the robot was not able to get hold of them (3-4 day after making the initial order).
None of the people who ordered received their key sooner than 2 days after ordering.
I then did a search online on ‘Plimus Phone Verification’ and found people complaining about this in 2005! 4 years later, and Plimus still hasn’t done anything about this.
This is a classic case of a company not listening to it’s users needs and generally not caring at all.
I then agonized about this for several days. On the one hand, I was told this was only done for the first orders and then verification would be turned off (except for suspicious cases, which seems to include anyone not in the US).
So part of me wanted to wait and see if things would improve (especially since I had already done the work setting things up with Plimus and didn’t want to go through the whole process again with another service).
On the other hand, I had no idea how long this ‘probationary’ period would last. And I had gnawing suspicions about the quality and the general philosophy behind a company that would let things go on the way they are since 2005.
I just couldn’t decide. I was stuck.
Finally, I made up my mind to switch to another service.
I can’t stress enough how liberating that decision was. Just making a decision, any decision, was better than procrastinating and agonizing about it.
I switched to Fast Spring (my other option was 2checkout.com), and it was quite easy to switch.
Luckily Fast Spring supported the same method of uploading a list of keys, otherwise I would have had to make changes in my program.
Fast Spring also quickly set up an order page that conformed to the layout of my website withing a couple of days which was a bonus.
They don’t seem to have Plimus’ infamous chargeback fee as well, which is a plus.
A minor complaint about Fast Spring is the ‘upload license keys’ function which seems quite slow and only able to handle about 5000 keys at a time.
And I wish that they supported showing the license key on the ‘order completed’ web page, instead of only supporting it via email.
The email-only situation, leaves the user hanging there at the end of the transaction, waiting for the email (although Fast Spring seems to be very quick at sending that email – within a minute or so).
This could be a problem with email spam filters.
All in all, I would recommend Fast Spring at this point in time.
Plimus Delphi mISVer
I will never use Plimus!
