warrior2008

Hey Warriors,

I recently got an AlertPay account and made a sale from a website. After I did, I started the transfer to my Bank Account. It stayed in the "pending" status for 3 days until they decided to email me. With names like "Jawad" and "Fadi" (No Offense) I knew their customer service must be over seas. I was passed around over the phone like a French ****** (well you get the idea). Anyways, after clarifying where the money came from they decided to release it to my account thus starting the 2-5 business days clock running again. They were REALLY NICE but this still concerns me. Now, I am back to PayPal until I get a little more feedback on your experience with them.

Please let me know what your experience and opinion is of AlertPay.com from a "seller" stand point and a "buyer". Thanks...

Stay Golden,

Warrior2008

A. Green

As a seller...

My only problem with them has been their lack transparency regarding changes. Once they got kicked out of their bank and didn't bother to tell their sellers that they were no longer accepting credit cards. (They are now, of course.) Then recently they required all sales pages to go through a review and once again, didn't bother to notify the sellers. Why a mass emailing or just a plain old newsletter-style mailing list is beyond them, I don't know. Here is where you can keep up with their changes: Forums - AlertPay Developers Community

One the up side, I appreciate that they're willing to accept semi-adult items (not p**r, but the gray area stuff) that PayPal won't touch. I also appreciate that they're willing to work with people from a variety of countries.

As for the customer service being outsourced, I'm not so sure. I think they're actually run by "people with Arabic-sounding names." From the About Us page: "Firoz and Ferhan Patel founded AlertPay in August 2004." It's a Canadian-based company, though, as far as I know.

So, I don't think they're "bad" or a "scam," but you do have to keep an eye out for changes they make. As for reliability, I've made numerous transfers to my bank account over the last year and a half or so and never had a problem.

warrior2008

Thanks Green for your honest and whole hearted review. I will read the info on the link you have posted. Once again, Thanks!

Cheers!

Warrior2008

mark z

People more use PayPal. But PayPal has many limitations.
For example, AlertPay accepts multi-level marketing, mature content and other often considered `risky` businesses. All those are forbidden by PayPal TOS.

James Campbell

AlertPay is not a scam company, but they have had their problems due to the kind of businesses they accept. They are a Canadian company and as such have a very diverse employee base (ethnically and culturally speaking).

If you work with them, they will work with you.

As another poster commented, I do agree that their updates and seller notification transparency does need to improve.

Best Regards,
James Campbell

FaJeeb

Not to sound rude, but the majority of people handling your transactions and whom you speak to in customer service, including the resulotion and fraud department at PayPal are 18 year kids right out of high school. Not that I'm saying I have negative feelings about young adults, but I expect anyone who touches my money with such a power as to say "you can no longer have access to this money" to have been specifically trained with a formal extended education to deal with my, well, my financial life.

Of course, your talking to a kid who had to send many legal threats to PayPal. I'm lucky, far too many people have had their lives destroyed by PayPal's inability to function well.

I have had no experience so far with Alertpay, I just wanted to post my feelings about PayPal. You need to be 100% defensive with this service, do everything through PayPal with the thought of "what happens if they close my account, what would I do?" and you should have a backup plan.

sanjid112

Both of them are not scam. They have their own TOS, and as long as we follow their rules it would be okay. I have both AlertPay and Paypal account. Yes, AlertPay often called us for clarifying the money source, to proved it is not came from crime activities and some sort of it.

But, I admit it, their updates and seller notification transparency does need to improve. If you ask me why I used, AlertPay, it because I need some backup plan.

bizlinkx

I like alert pay . they seem to be a great payment processor. The only thing I don't like is the long wait time for response to inquiries. I'n a time crunch you could potentially lose business while waiting for them to respond.

commoditytrainer

We have had PayPal and they are the biggest payment processor, and I have had good service from them, using the website payments pro, where you can take orders over the phone, recurring payments if necessary, I don't have any experience with Alertpay, but it is always good to have a couple payment gateways to work with. To start I would suggest Paypal if you only going to use one, in my opinion.

jempub

My only "beef" with Alertpay from a seller point
of view is it takes forever to get your funds released.

It normally takes a total of 12 days from time of sale
to finally getting a deposit to my bank account.

They put a 7 day hold on the transactions.

Talk soon,
Gary

Nick Walker

Definitely Alertpay > Paypal.
Alertpay takes chargeback a whole lot more serious, and being scammed really doesn't exist in AP.

seeyou

I personally confortable with alertpay. Paypal are lately blocking accounts because of change in ip while alertpay does not.

Michael Daniels

Same here, love em.

Eduard Stinga

PayPal also seems to have their customer support overseas. Anyway, I called PayPal Europe, and some woman answered, which clearly didn't have English accent. Not to mention she was so stupid she couldn't answer anything on her own, all she was saying was "Just a second let me check" and then I could hear her asking around in the office to find out the answer and tell me something I already knew.

wpexplosion

Alertpay is the best

Gary McCaffrey

I'm growing rapidly very fond of AlertPay myself. The more I use it, the more I like it.

retirewithsandie

I've never had that issue. I've only had to contact them a few times and I've had responses sometimes the same day (if sent early) otherwise I had an email response first thing in the morning.

I've never had anything that was time sensitive but I definitely would call them in that situation vs. email.

BIG Mike

From a "Buyer" perspective - if AlertPay is the only option, you've just lost me as a customer. I don't trust them as a buyer, specifically because of the nature of the transactions they accept (MLM, etc.).

As a business owner, it's important to consider risk - I know AlertPay is popular with sellers that have had problems with PayPal, and I know they seem to be "IM Friendly". The last company I recall that was like this, StormPay, ended up in a ****load of trouble as a result. I never did get my cash balance out of them...

For the record, PayPal is hardly a scam company. Their policies may seem tough, but their in lace to protect buyers and sellers as well as themselves.

My recommendation is that you carefully test your conversions between the two companies - I'd be curious to know if you're losing sales as a result of using AlertPay.

Laurie Rogers

I've had no problems with either one and conversions between the two would really be dependent on what you're selling. Remember AP is still fairly new to the scene and those of us that have been around a long time, can recall many changes throughout the years with paypal and they certainly were not that great at resolving a lot of things (sometimes they still are not IMHO) .. we had to wait quite some time for payments to clear and get deposited into our accounts .. so I wouldn't see this as being a red flag with AP, it will probably loosen up over time once they've established a good, long rapport with their banks.

Even without being a payment processor, a regular business owner in Canada can sometimes have to wait up to 7 to 14 business days for a cheque to clear if you're new to a bank and depending on which bank you use, so this is nothing new to us. And if it's an American cheque sometimes the bank will hold it for 30 business days. We've got a lot stricter laws within our banking system in lieu of cheques, high volumes of transactions and merchant services just in general.

Melody

Hi everyone -

Have to step in here and add my experience with both companies - which is from an 'insider' perspective - not just the customer side, as I am in the payment processing industry, and have been in meetings with top staff at both companies (yes, I can even send you pics of myself and my partners wearing our little badges as we were admitted to the secure PayPal/eBay facility - whee!)

PayPal has support offices all over the globe now. Support is localized by region, so you will get the 'best possible user experience'. But you also need to remember that since the main campus is in California - which has a VERY diverse population - that means you are going to still talk to a lot of CSRs whose first language was not English. A scam? Definitely not - and while I don't always care for the way they do things - it is an amazing company if you really take the time to learn about what they have built. It is the most complex money remittance platform in the world - and because they are allowing what is technically referred to as 'person to person' payments - they must deal with an incredibly complex set of regulations regarding money movement between countries - made even worse by 9/11.

AlertPay - I admit that I was somewhat skeptical a couple of years ago, however, I had the pleasure of spending quite a bit of time with their COO, CTO and VP of sales earlier this summer at a conference, and subsequent discussions since then. They are knowledgeable in their field, very legally compliant, and have a very solid technology. I have been very impressed with their entire operation. They are NOT overseas - they are based in Montreal, and have been since they started several years ago. The platform is proprietary and offers a wide variety of payment methods, including credit cards and alternative payments, such as real time bank payments.

As to 'reviewing' merchants: this has to be done by all licensed processors on a regular basis, depending on the jurisdiction they are licensed in. In Canada, FINTRAC, the body that audits and monitors all money services businesses (MSBs) requires that this be done at least every two years, so the fact that they reviewed your account simply means that they were following regulations. And in truth - all good processors do this on a regular basis, and they do not usually notify merchants - this way they know that you did not change anything in order to pass the review!

But something that no one here seems to understand is that there are many laws now regarding the transfer of funds - especially between countries. AlertPay could not transfer the funds until it could confirm the source of the funds and the ultimate beneficiary of the funds - this is not a failing of AlertPay - this is mandated by law to prevent money laundering, and funding of terrorism.

PayPal has been 'grandfathered' in and is actually exempted from a great many regulations - but even so - it had to go through the arduous process of getting licensed as a money remittance company in 48 states to get where it is today. It still cannot get going in India - because India doesn't want money leaving the country - and they keep shutting PP down.

Both companies do an incredible job and if you know more about what they do behind the scenes to get your transactions from point a to point b - and what the difficulties and legal issues are - you would probably appreciate them both a little more.

Sorry to be so long winded but the industry that these two companies is in is highly regulated and very complex, and both do a damned good job, all things considered.

Melody

valerie

Funny stuff.

ryuchi

Both of them are not scam sites. But I honestly don't trust any of them anymore. The customer service clearly sucks for both of them. So as much as possible I try not to put much money in my account to avoid dealing with their representatives. Try Google checkout instead.

Ryuchi

Okoji

Also, most African countries will still prefer AP over paypal as they are not currently accepting most african country.

In my option, use paypal but make Alert pay a Plan B!

xxxJamesxxx

Out of the two, I've only used Paypal and I've never had a problem with them. It's funny really as I hear so many scare stories about them but they have always been good to me.

James Scholes

visimedia

what? paypal a scam? You gotta be kidding me ... paypal is not a scam, it's legit and reliable company... maybe you just have to be bear with alertpay. . . but I'm sure they're both not scam. just lack of customer service.

Okoji

Paypal is not scam but it is funny the way the do things. Suspend accounts as if it is nothing but a child's play!

Matt Baker

I've been using Paypal for 15years. Its very safe than AlertPay..

aaaa33030

I use both but paypal seems to more stricter with their terms of use
However the verification process for alertpay is more simple than that of paypal

monsur

I use both alertpay and paypal.Though alertpay is not as popular as paypal ,it has few extra features.One example includes -they have transaction password that is not available in paypal .Of course their customer service should be quicker

wolfwarrior

No,they certainly arent scams.
But every service has its horror stories.

GAVROCHE

Better read carefully the Terms and Conditions of Use from both of them, make your mind which one to use, respect their TOS. It will prevent many unpleasant surprises.

TheeBook

I've been using paypal in 3 years they didn't spam me

Mr.Daydream

Paypal just has way too many restrictions in my opinion, makes it not so userfriendly

dame016

Nope, they are not scams. I have been using Paypal for a few years now. No regrets. They have restricted my account once, but their customer service is super excellent. Solved the problem less than a week.

alamest

I was shocked when I was saw alert's pays email than I need to confirm my account or update my account and I didn't but funny part was that I didn't had any money inside it and I am safe from it..but thanks for sharing it and now days paypal is doing it as well..