WHC credit card holds on TBR (1.Viewing)

MapleDots

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I have a credit card with a 75k limit and I use this card for all kinds of business purposes. I traditionally have to pay this card down twice a month to keep it from going over the limit. On any given month I can put up to 120k on this card so I always have to keep an eye on the balance.


That said the hold WHC (pre authorize) that gets placed on the card can be significant if you participate on TBR every week.
I placed some pretty high bids today and don't like the fact that those funds are tied up on my credit card while I wait for the outcome.


[notify]FM[/notify] when does WHC release the funds, I know that takes a few days to hit the card.



Secondly...


WHC should have a reputation system where once someone is verified, and they know they don't default in payment, that this hold is no longer required.


I guess I could use a different credit card but this is my business card and I get 2% cash back so I'm not keen on using a different one for TBR.
 
This was the response i got from Frank regarding pre authorizations:
On your first backorders your card might be authorized for the initial bid amounts you are placing bids for, once you have paid backorders this is no longer the case. While we authorize the card and release the authorization right away, I've learned that this does not always take effect immediately, it depends on the card and card issuer. This is the current state of things, I have asked development if this is easy to change, but considering how the authorization works this may not be straight forward to do.
 
MapleDots said:
I have a credit card with a 75k limit and I use this card for all kinds of business purposes. I traditionally have to pay this card down twice a month to keep it from going over the limit. On any given month I can put up to 120k on this card so I always have to keep an eye on the balance.

My card has a monthly limit of $1000 if that makes you feel any better... :D

I pay my card off weekly and have never been late for a payment, yet I always get declined for a limit raise. Sometimes I wonder if it has to do with my age? Is it time to make the switch to another bank?

Anyway, I'd love to see Interac e-Transfer added to the list of payment methods offered by WHC. Wishful thinking and I'm not even sure if it's possible but it would make my life a hell of a lot easier!
 
For KNOWN customers there should be no hold on credit cards. I have been a customer of Sibername for years for TBR purposes. If I have to earn my TBR CRED again because I have to switch to the WHC platform, that is BS.
 
WOW. I placed orders on WHC today thinking I might as well make the changeover this week. I was in a rush, and WHAT A MISTAKE!!!

1. couldn't figure out how to just paste in my list of domains I wanted to backorder like you do everywhere else. Had to start clicking domains in a massive list, how effing stupid.

2. had to run through the whole creditcard baloney. PLEASE let me keep my card on file and never ask me for it again. It has no limit - I'm good for it. I can assure you that whole concept of authorizing every transaction every week is going to do more harm than good.

3. after placing one order, I realized a missed a BUNCH of domains because picking through the entire list was tedious and ridiculous. In any case, I go to place another order and it says "you've already ordered these, remove them from my cart". WTF? Now I'm wondering, if my first order went through, why didn't YOU remove them from my cart? So now I've gotta start figuring out what ones I've already successfully ordered and remove them from my cart, so that I can place a new order ?? What a cluster f***. I bailed out and went back to Sibername to place more orders. HORRIBLE system. PLEASE fix before next week, this is unusable for a power user.

Sibername had this down. Paste your list. Approve the bid prices (you could remove one if it was too high). Click submit. No pre-authorizations. Credit Card on file. One-click payment AFTER the post-tbr auctions, automatic assignment to your default registrant. The only think Siber needed were my preferred default nameservers applied to the domains.
 
Also looks like WHC is still accepting TBR bids well after 2pm - just placed a bid at 2:18
 
silentg said:
[notify]rlm[/notify]
Bulk Order is under the filters box:

jesus, that's not a filter, that bulk add should be at the top (permanently/static position)!! Well thankfully they have that.

can anyone else confirm the problem of placing an order, then not having those domains removed from your cart, so that you can't place any additional orders without manually removing every domain from your prior cart?

Also, that credit card auth thing is absolutely not power-user-friendly. asking to re-auth after every submission is ridiculous. _please_ implement a bypass for people with a pre-approved card on file. I'm often in a hurry placing orders, and I _guarantee_ you will lose money from me because I didn't get orders placed in time due to jumping through extra hoops. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
 
Tried WHC backordering for the first time this week as well. Not a fan of the hold, especially since my card is already on file from years of hosting payments.

Guess the domain and hosting payment side of the house is separate?
 
MapleDots said:
[notify]FM[/notify] when does WHC release the funds, I know that takes a few days to hit the card.

The card is authorized only if you have never paid for a TBR domain before at WHC.

The release is done immediately after the authorization. As I learned though (and as you say) not all cards make the funds available right away.
 
mcm said:
Anyway, I'd love to see Interac e-Transfer added to the list of payment methods offered by WHC. Wishful thinking and I'm not even sure if it's possible but it would make my life a hell of a lot easier!

We've heard this as a feedback from others as well, so we're looking at making additional payment methods available to TBR auctions at WHC in the future, however we cannot commit to a timeline at this point.
 
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Siber had it for years. Maybe they should just rebrand the Siber site *DONT_KNOW* *SCRATCH*

Anyway, I'd love to see Interac e-Transfer added to the list of payment methods offered by WHC. Wishful thinking and I'm not even sure if it's possible but it would make my life a hell of a lot easier!
 
jaydub said:
Siber had it for years. Maybe they should just rebrand the Siber site *DONT_KNOW* *SCRATCH*

That would not work because they are integrating it with their other services like hosting, dedicated servers etc.
They are already a registrar and integrating Sibername with WHC is a smaller task than trying to integrate WHC with Sibername.

Personally I think WHC needs a rebrand, how can you call a company Web Hosting Canada when it is already outside of that scope of service.

I know a few domainers who would have some pretty decent domain names for WHC *ROFL*

One would surely be a better name fit.
 
jaydub said:
Siber had it for years. Maybe they should just rebrand the Siber site *DONT_KNOW* *SCRATCH*

I know, and Siber is just such a easy place to pre-order TBRs, quick TBR ordering and the auctions work, and you can pay with the payment methods you want. It's real with multiple options.. and they actually send an invoice, letting you pay at your convenience.

I can't even imagine spending $5-$10K on WHC and then have it immediately hit my CC the minute the auction ends. I spend $500 and it's jarring.


"Uhhh, maybe I'd like to pay via Paypal or maybe wait a few seconds for me to decide on that or eTransfer..".

Nope, BAM! $10K on your card. Thank you for your business.
 
I was being a bit facetious regarding rebranding ;)

MapleDots said:
That would not work because they are integrating it with their other services like hosting, dedicated servers etc.
They are already a registrar and integrating Sibername with WHC is a smaller task than trying to integrate WHC with Sibername.

Personally I think WHC needs a rebrand, how can you call a company Web Hosting Canada when it is already outside of that scope of service.

I know a few domainers who would have some pretty decent domain names for WHC *ROFL*

One would surely be a better name fit.
 
mcm said:
Anyway, I'd love to see Interac e-Transfer added to the list of payment methods offered by WHC. Wishful thinking and I'm not even sure if it's possible but it would make my life a hell of a lot easier!

But then you don't get to enjoy the points you accumulate :)
 
Ok, as the dust settles on my first chaotic WHC auction, I found the actual auction and bidding process to be pretty good - up until the end of the auction.

Here is my review ([notify]FM[/notify]):

Pre-Auction:
The main problem here was me not seeing the option to paste a list as it was at the bottom right corner. I feel that should be placed at the top, not bottom. Now that I know where it is, maybe not deal breaker though. I still feel like something about that process is a bit clunky, but with more use I'll be able to better identify what that means. The big issue is the credit card auth stuff. Of course I don't know how many times you have to deal with non-payment from a regular TBR participant. If that was a serious issue, then I could understand, but I assume that if you just prevented people from participating in the next auction until they've made their payments for the previous auction - well that would solve 99.9% of those issues too.

Auction:
I thought this part works pretty well and updating bids etc was pretty smooth. Good job here. My main comment about the actual bidding is that power users might like to have the list automatically sorted by time remaining (so the ones about to close are at the top), or at least have the ability to manually click a sort button to do that. When you've got dozens of auctions all closing within minutes, it is a challenge to keep track of which ones are ending. You don't want to hamper people's impulsive last second bids, you'd just be losing money. It only takes two people to run an auction up significantly higher than the 3rd highest bidder. Accidentally lose one of those two bidders and you're leaving serious money on the table. This is an issue for most sites, but for me, I think the ability to manually sort by time remaining would certainly help keep focused on the domains that are closing first.

Another interesting option might be a "tap out" button when the price is more than you're willing to pay so you just want it off your list to provide added clarity to the remaining auctions you ARE interested in. The "tap out" button could even just sort it to the bottom of the list with the option to "tap in" again if they change their mind. This is obviously only useful when there are many domains in an auction. But I know on busy days I've certainly wished for this option many times on every TBR platform but never brought it up anywhere.

Post-Auction:
As my winning auctions ended - they just disappeared from the list. Sibername kept them in the list, just showed closed. While that wasn't quite optimal either, it was comforting to see the results right there, and I could keep tabs on how much I've already spent. What would have been better was if Sibername pushed the closed auction data to a separate table below the active auction table. That allows the bidder to focus on the bids, but keep an eye on funds already spent and the comfort factor of seeing the closed auctions.

The current situation at WHC - with closed auctions just disappearing and nowhere to be found leaves a very disturbing feeling of "Wait, what just happened? did I win that? No? how much did I spend?" Not seeing makes you second guess what just happened especially when there are many auctions.

The current table at the bottom is pretty much useless to me. I don't care to see the domains WHC didn't get listed there. It's irrelevant at this point, we're bidding on domains you did win. It would be totally fine to still have a page showing that data, just not here in the active auction page. Its just clutter that doesn't really add value, at least not for me.

What I would suggest is a new table showing all the closed auction results for the day. So once an auction is closed, it would jump from the top active auction table to the lower closed auction table. This way users can keep tabs on what they've already spent, and have the peace of mind on seeing that visual confirmation of the day's results. I would label that table "Closed auctions - Unofficial Results. All bidding activities are subject to audit." Once results are audited and official, that table title could change to Official Results.

Results & Billing:
I just got the email with the official results. I was happy to see the domains I thought I won listed! The whole "claim your domains" page was at first a bit weird terminology. I'm thinking, what, do I have the option to not pay for a domain?? But now that I do it, I see this is simply your opportunity to assign a registrant to each domain individually, or as a group. Well done here, that worked perfectly.

Unless I missed it, this could have also been an opportunity to allow users to assign nameservers in the same manner at the same time from the same window. While the bulk update feature works well enough for nameservers, it would be slicker to kill two birds with one stone - especially if its using your default nameserver choices.

As for payment, since we pre-authorized everything during pre-auction, that was automatic, so no hassle there other than you had no opportunity to send E-transfers. From my perspective, authorizing long term customers for every order is a huge annoyance. I know we've probably beat that horse to death. But I'd rather make a single CC or E-Transfer on known results than being hassled to repeatedly authorize on not much more than hopes and dreams in the pre-auction. I hope WHC fixes this - at least for trusted and verified users.

Over all, this went better than expected, mostly because the actual bidding process went smooth and easy, other than trying to juggle closing times on dozens of simultaneous auctions. I guarantee some money was left on the table due to that issue. This seemed to be a more extroardinary week though in terms of interesting domains. Slow weeks may not be much of an issue.

Sibername's interface wasn't perfect either, and change is always hard for stubborn old people like myself, but good job [notify]FM[/notify] and WHC to get your new interface to where it is.

Cheers.
 
rlm said:
Unless I missed it, this could have also been an opportunity to allow users to assign nameservers in the same manner at the same time from the same window.  While the bulk update feature works well enough for nameservers, it would be slicker to kill two birds with one stone - especially if its using your default nameserver choices.

I really like this idea, simple and effective.
 

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