Encouraging customers to enter card details correctly

[george]

Not unusual for ticket agencies to take your money as soon as you order and send the tickets months later. I know its a `special case` but why should it be?

Oh, and if anyone wants to order their stuff for delivery Christmas 2006 now, please do so...

Sorry for spoiling yet another thread.

[wjcampbe]

Protx answer on Pre-auth

A PreAuth is Never settled, only the subsequent Repeats. You will be able to repeat against these card details at any time as many times as you like.

The option which expires is called Deferred payment, which only lasts about 7 days.

If you are shipping within 48 hours, Deferred is a good option, if you are tending to ship goods later than this, PreaAuth would be better.

If you feel you might need to amend the amount of the customers order, i.e. add delivery cost or another products that they want to buy, you would need PreAuth as you can repeat for any amount. Deferred you cannot change the amount, only release or abort.

hth

[fleetwood]

Thanks for looking into this Bill.
Still not entirely sure what is mean't by 'a pre-auth never expires'.
I thought pre-auth mean't that they have checked funds are available - from what you are saying I'm assuming I have got this wrong, as funds can't be marked as available indefinitely. I'm guessing then that it means that the card details check out as legit. Is this correct?

Must say I have looked at the ProTX site many a time (though never contacted them), and this sort of information is not that clear.

On the subject of DSR and the vagueness I mentioned - all I can say is that I have scanned through the DSR site, and cannot find mention of 'payment must be taken at time of despatch'. What it does say is that the customer must be told about how and when you will take payment, and that you should despatch within 30 days of order.
If you can find the fine print that states you must not take payment at a prior date plmk - am always happy to stand corrected.

Martin

[wjcampbe]

Martin,

The Pre-auth takes a full authorisation from the bank - i.e. details check out and funds available. It is returned to Protx as successful, and their software then issues an immediate cancellation to the bank.

When you repeat the transaction (partial amount, full amount, or additional amount) a new authorisation request is sent to the bank using the details stored on the Protx server. This repeat transaction will fail if there is insufficient free funds when it is submitted. You can continue to issue additional repeat transactions using the stored details, so if you have a backorder system and an item becomes available after 30 days, you can go back and take payment for that item, in addition to earlier payment(s) for goods dispatched straight from stock.

I agree the info is not at all clear on the site, but I am very impressed with how quickly my email enquiry was responded to, as well as the depth and quality of the response.

O the DSR and when to take payment - just looked again myself and it is not there - but I got it from somewhere - will post when I find the source.

[jxs97s]

The Pre-auth takes a full authorisation from the bank - i.e. details check out and funds available. It is returned to Protx as successful, and their software then issues an immediate cancellation to the bank.

We tried using pre-auth for a while as we were selling extended warranties through our site but the insurance company wanted to process the customer's card directly. Thus we had insurance as a component to the product and it appeared in the customer's basket. The customer would then process their card with Protx using the Pre-Auth function and we would knock off the cost of the extended warranty when we processed the card.

The problem we had repeatedly was that Protx / HSBC (I never got to the bottom of whether it was our payment service providor to merchant service providor) wasn't issueing the cancellations. When I went to repeat the customers cards, 50% of the time the repeat was rejected even though the pre-auth had been successful as the acquiring bank's software was still shadowing the pre-auth amount and there wasn't enough credit limit on the customers card to reprocess it.

If your transaction values are low you may be okay but with high transaction values pre-auth does not woth with Protx / HSBC combination.

[wjcampbe]

James has a good point there, and Protx confirm this can be a problem with certain banks who ignore the cancellation.

[fleetwood]

Its a bank problem rather than a ProTX one, as we have had similar experiences in the past on manually keyed transactions.
As has already been said, some banks choose to ignore the cancelled transaction, and whilst not physically taking the funds, still hold a reserve over the money, using up the available credit limit of the customer.
We only noticed this when we re-tried a cancelled transaction - it declined - and we phoned up for authorisation. The bank said that they needed us to actually phone up and cancel an attempted yet cancelled transaction, to free up the pre-authorisation!
Yet another instance of the banks/card companies being a law unto themselves

Martin

[Phil_s]

Protx answer on Pre-auth

A PreAuth is Never settled, only the subsequent Repeats. You will be able to repeat against these card details at any time as many times as you like.

The option which expires is called Deferred payment, which only lasts about 7 days.

If you are shipping within 48 hours, Deferred is a good option, if you are tending to ship goods later than this, PreaAuth would be better.

If you feel you might need to amend the amount of the customers order, i.e. add delivery cost or another products that they want to buy, you would need PreAuth as you can repeat for any amount. Deferred you cannot change the amount, only release or abort.

hth

What changes do I need to make to use Preauth? I've managed to get Deferred working by editing OCCPROTXScriptTemplate.pl but can't get the Preauth to work instead.

Is there a Protx/Actinic integration guide that I've missed?

TIA

Phil

[chris ashdown]

After three years we got out first shadow last week and although annoying was solved in two days

Protx mentioned a method with Pre-Auth where you can specifya maximum charge of say £2.00 for the pre-auth and therefore if it is shadowed then it will not interfere with the transaction, butdoes mean you do not no if the dosh is in the customers bank aswell

Therefore just continuing as normal with pre-auth and hopefully not expect another untill 2008-9

[wjcampbe]

Phis S said:

What changes do I need to make to use Preauth?

What to do.

Currently your TXType that you send to PROTX will be 'PAYMENT'

If you wish to use 'PREAUTH' you will need to change the TXType in your
OccProtxScripttemplate.pl file in your Actinic directory from:

'PAYMENT' to 'PREAUTH'

1. Amend your OCCProtxScriptTemplate.pl file which is located in the
commonOCC folder in the OCCUpgrade folder in your Actinic directory. In
this file you will need to search for 'TxType':

$sHiddenValues .= "<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=\"TxType\" VALUE=\"PAYMENT\">\n";

You will need to change the TXType from PAYMENT to PREAUTH.

$sHiddenValues .= "<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=\"TxType\" VALUE=\"PREAUTH\">\n";

Then save the file.

2. Amend the OCCUgrade.ini file located in the root of the OCCUpgrade
folder in your Actinic directory.

At the top of the file are the lines that look like this:

[Version]

Number=1045

Increment the Number by 1 and save the file.

3. Open up Actinic. You should get a message informing you that the
Payment Providers data has been updated.

All your transactions will then be processed PREAUTH payments. (that
need to be 'Repeated' if you wish the funds to be transferred)