Archive - February, 2008

What do you think of eBay’s policy on Google Checkout

February 25, 2008 in Personal with 2 Comments

We were listing some of our shop items for sale today on eBay when I noticed what I would personally call a very unfair policy from eBay towards Google and it’s checkout users.

I listed the item for sale and put PayPal as the only payment option but since we accept Google Checkout in our shop I added this at the bottom of the sales description

Whilst PayPal is preferred we can also accept Google Checkout. Please contact us if you are interested in paying using an alternative payment method

It turns out that if you enter the term ‘Google Checkout’ anywhere in the auction you will get this message

You cannot submit your listing due to the following problems

Attention Sellers!

It appears you are offering Google Checkout as a payment method which is not permitted in the eBay marketplace. Buyers have a wide variety of choices when deciding how to pay sellers. Most payment methods offer a high degree of safety and convenience, however, a few simply are not appropriate for the eBay marketplace. Based on safety concerns and input from the Community, eBay established an Accepted Payments Policy that clarifies eBay’s position on payment methods.

Please revise your listing by removing the non-permitted payment method.

Whilst I understand that eBay and PayPal are the same company, I think it’s unfair that they are excluding other payment services from eBay, surely they should include more payment options for users. What do you think of eBay’s Google Checkout policy?

More SSL fun

February 21, 2008 in Internet Stuff with Comments Off

A few days ago I wrote about my first experience with Secure Sockets Layer certificates. After a brief search on the net I chose Instant SSL. As I explained the other day, since we don’t have our PO box set up yet and since we are still operating from home it was going to be difficult to provide 2 pieces of information to verify our address. Even though I asked about all of this via phone and via email, Comodo still didnt answer me until after they had issued my certificate which had my home address for the world to see. I thought that was bad until I tried to get a refund using their 30 day no hassle refund policy. Unfortunately their no hassle refund policy is a lot of hassle. I’ve called 3 times and I’ve emailed 3 times in the last 2 days and they have yet to reply to me. On the phone I was told that phone support cannot access any info about refunds but that still doesnt explain why no one is replying to me to let me know what is happening. All in all I’ve found Comodo to be an absolute joke.

Since I don’t want this to hold me up I went searching for a new ssl company. Dan Grossman left some advice for me in the comment area and advised me to get a GeoCert certificate (thanks Dan!). In my search for a good GeoCert reseller I found out a lot of things about SSL

  • Although there are thousands of companies selling SSL certificates, nearly all of them are reselling them for about 3 or 4 main SSL companies. Wikipedia states that

    A 2007 market share report from Security Space as of September of that year determined that VeriSign and its acquisitions (which include Thawte and more recently Geotrust) have a 57.6% share of the certificate authority market, followed by Comodo (8.3%), and GoDaddy (6.4%).

  • There is a huge difference in price in the certificates that are on offer however the browser compatibility (mostly 99.3%) and the encryption is the same across the board ie. the more expensive certificate options are just as safe for passing information across the net.
  • The main differences between the lower priced cerificates and the higher priced certificates is the amount the customer is covered for and the level of checking they do. The cheapest certificates like RapidSSL only require you to authorise that you own the domain. More expensive certificates involve authorising the certificate using bank statements for proof of address etc. However, beyond that the only major difference between SSL providers is the brand name and that is what your paying for.
  • The level of support varies widely between providers though this is the same with any internet service eg domains/hosting etc/

I checked out lots of SSL providers but the main ones I considered were The Planet (formerly ev1servers and before that they were RackShack.net) and ResellOne. I was keen on those because not only were the prices about the cheapest you could find, they also both had support forums. I love services with busy support forums because it means that if support is slow you can post a thread and get help from a fellow customer.

In the end I decided to get my SSL from enom. All my domains are hosted there so it was easy to order it there since I had money in my account. They offer RapidSSL, GeoCert and Secure Business Services certificates.

As with a lot of things on the web, you usually have to learn the hard way about it to become more clued up on it and that seems to be the case here. Thanks again to Dan for pointing me in the right direction :)

The journey into Ecommerce continues

February 19, 2008 in Internet Stuff with 2 Comments

After a few weeks of limbo due to our bank taking so long with delivering our visa cards, we have finally been able to move forward with our online shop (which I will post the details of in a week or so when it is completely ready).

Yesterday was a very long day with me spending about 14 hours at the pc but I can’t really complain because I haven’t really done much work in the last few weeks. The first thing I did was integrate Google Checkout into our shop. This was faitly straight forward.

Integrating Google Checkout

I was able to test it out in Googles test area which is called ‘Sandbox’. After that I made Google Checkout live on the site. The only problem we have at the moment is the passing of the delivery information. From what I have read in the CS-Cart forums I’m not entirely certain if the problem lies with Google Checkout or with CS-Cart.

Here’s the problem : I have shipping disabled in my cart so there is free shipping on all items. When you click on google checkout in the shop it takes you to an invoice from google checkout and under the heading ‘Shipping and Handling’ it gives the customer 3 shipping options
* Royal Mail £0.00
* Special Delivery £0.00
* Free Shipping – £0.00

Obviously there is no need for 3 settings with zero so I need to be able to remove two of the options. Of course, this won’t stop us from selling anything and it isn’t a major problem but it’s something I should try and fix.

The other small problem I have is with CS Cart handling GCO as the only payout solution. Since GCO is an external payment solution the script tells the customer

There are no available payment methods, so you cannot proceed to checkout.

I’ve read that a few other people have this problem so I’m sure there’s a solution (I probably just need to do some hunting and remove this part from a php file). We will probably be adding Paypal as a payment option soon too so that might fix it too.

My first experience with SSL certificates

Although I have been working on the web for years, this is the first time I have had any reason to purchase a Secure Sockets Layer Certificate. I did a bit of research yesterday and found that prices range from very low at Godaddy at $20 to the very high price of $1200+ at Verisign. There seems to be a lot of disagreement about which SSL certificate companies are best. Some say that the larger companies are simply charging more because of their brand name and their service is no better than some cheaper alternatives and others have added that the average shopper just sees the little padlock symbol in their browser and don’t check who the certificate is from. I am more inclined to believe that 99% of the time this is true.

I spoke with my always helpful hosting company WiredTree and they recommended a company called Comodo which has an SSL website called Instant SSL. Our shop now is now secure and we have proudly displayed the 2 logos below on our site.

Corner of TrustSecure Site

The only problem we have with the SSL certificate is that it has my name and home address as the details instead of our website name and po box. Our po box is set to start on March 10th 2008 so we will have to wait a few weeks to do this change. Then, in order to change the ssl information we will have to provide :

1) Articles of Incorporation (with address)
2) Business License (with address)
3) Trading License (with address)
4) Copy of utilities bill (Tax/Electricity/Water/Telephone/Gas)
5) Bank statement
6) Cheque containing your company name and address

Normally this kind of information is easy to provide but we have set up our company account under our partnership name ‘Muldoon & Garry’ and not under our website name. It was important for us to do this because it allows us to change the name of the website in the future if needed without having to change our company details. So our partnership name will be the umbrella for all projects we will be working on. However this does cause us problems in providing the above info ie. we are working from my house so all utility bills are in my name and our bank statement and cheque book are in our partnership name.

None of this is hard but it’s these little things that can hold up a project. Over time I’m sure we will have many small obstacles like this but it’s all good as we are learning every week :)