AgoraNaut / AgoraXchange Community

I'd like to share an experience we had this last month.  At the end of April, we had an SSL certificate that was about to expire.  One of our primary vendors that we had used for nearly 10 years had discontinued reselling the SSL certificates we used for securing a website or server.  After looking extensively, we settled on a vendor named Trustico. The prices were acceptable and they also had a reseller program, so it seemed like a good match for us.  As part of the evaluation process, we wanted to see how an initial purchase would go before becoming a reseller, so that we could be confident that our customers as well as any future orders would be handled in a timely manner and that the customer service was professional and accessible.

So with about 27 hours to go until our SSL certificate would expire on a mission critical site, we ordered a certificate from Trustico for $45.  The ordering process was as expected. The emails showed up in timely manner, and the confirmations showed up and were exactly as we'd seen previously from the previous reseller.  The entire process of ordering took about 4 minutes (6:43pm to 6:47pm our time). However, when the order process was completed, we found that no certificate was emailed to us, which was unusual for the ordering process that was exactly as used from other services.

We have never had a problem with getting an SSL certificate... ever.

But with Trustico, we had an experience from hell that shows how not to treat customers. Here's what transpired after we realized that the certificate was not coming immediately.

As soon as I realized that the email was delayed, we checked all out servers that the email might route through, but found nothing in the email queues nor anything in the logs to indicate the email was even attempted to be delivered, but we did see the previous confirmation emails in the logs.  we did this to make sure we were not at fault for some reason

Next I went to their site and logged in and looked up the status of the order. It gave an error and said the order was pending a security review.  While that was unusual, I was not concerned yet. So, we attempted to reach them via their customer service chat functions for several hours. The entire time it was showing as maxed out at 25 out of 25 of available service slots. I filled out their online contact form and had no idea if it had been received or not as no confirmation was received. I decided to give Trustico some time to fill the order and gave up trying to contact them after about 6 hours of monitoring their chat channel and wondering when their contact form would be responded to.

By the next day at about 1:00pm, we had tried their email support, chat channels and logged into their control panel to check the status of our order yet again.  We had even tried their US based phone line but found that it routed to the UK and was just an answering machine at that point.  I was now concerned that we'd have a site offline due to someone that could not service our request. So, at 1:04pm the day after placing the order, we filed a dispute with PayPal asking for a refund or the certificate.

A couple of hours later, I felt we could no longer chance a site failure from the non-delivery of the SSL certificate, so we went to a different Vendor and ordered the  certificate we needed. The order process took 2 minutes and we had our SSL certificate ready to install.

After installing the SSL certificate for the website, I went to paypal to update the dispute and asked for a refund (at 3:58pm).

The next day, a day we were closed for business (Sunday), we got a reply at 4:37pm to the email support form we filled out. But of course we were not available to reply to it since all requests from Friday and Saturday had not been responded to. This is their reply to the form we filled out:

Thank you for contacting us about your order.

I have checked the status of your order and it is currently Queued for manual review.
This means that it is queued for security reasons by xxxxxxxxxx.

I will contact xxxxxxxxxx for you and will ask them to speed the process up so
that your order is issued as soon as possible. Xxxxxxxxxx will contact you directly
should they need any further information.

The review process can take anywhere from 15 minutes to a 48 hours, however, we
will do our best to ensure your order is fulfilled as soon as possible.

If you require any further assistance please let us know.

Best Regards,

Robert Craker
Trustico Group
http://www.trustico.com

They finally had responded 2 days after the order was placed, but a Sunday when most businesses are closed.

On Monday at 9:36am, the certificate was delivered, but we had already asked for a refund two days previous to delivery and no longer needed the certificate since it is not usable on any other domain name.

12 hours and 9 minutes later, at 9:45pm (our time) on Monday, we received this email:

It is important that you read this e-mail in its entirety as it contains
important information which may result in your website/domain
being blacklisted.

Recently you purchased an SSL Certificate from our website and
today we have received a "chargeback" from your bank in relation
to the credit card transaction. When a chargeback is received we
take it very seriously.

We are in the process of beginning legal action against your and/or
your company. From this point onward there will be additional fees
and charges invoiced to you - you can read more information
about the process we are now taking at :

    http://www.trustico.com/fraud/index.php

We are now preparing to forward the details of this chargeback
to several credit reporting agencies. The chargeback will be
regarded as a credit default and may seriously affect your ability
to obtain credit in the future. We are now preparing to file a
notice of default with the following credit reporting agencies :

    Equifax
    Experian

We also use the services of several credit reporting agencies
worldwide and some of them include :

    Call Credit (United Kingdom)
    Trans Union & Innovis (United States)
    Veda Advantage (Australia)
    KSV (Austria)
    Centrale des Crédits  (Belgium)
    CCB - Czech Credit Bureau (Czech Republic)
    RKI Kredit Information A/s (Denmark)
    Schufa & Infoscore (Germany)
    Tiresias (Greece)
    CRIF & CTC (Italy)
    BKR (Netherlands)
    Creditinform (Norway)
    Biuro Informacji Kredytowej (Poland)
    SBCB (Slovakia)
    ASNEF (Spain)
    UpplysningsCentralen (Sweden)
    KKB (Turkey)

In addition, if this matter is not resolved we will be advising internet
browsers that the website included in your order is not legitimate.
This means that a pop-up warning will appear to visitors of your
website advising that the website is a security concern. Some of
the internet browsers include :

    Internet Explorer
    Firefox
    Safari
    Google Chrome

We will however offer you 24 hours to offer a response to this
e-mail if the chargeback was initiated in error. If the
chargeback was initiated in error you must respond back to
this e-mail with an explanation of why you have disputed
this credit card transaction within 24 hours to avoid further
fees and charges.

Best Regards,

Zane Lucas
Trustico Group
http://www.trustico.com

I didn't even respond to this email.

2 minutes later they escalated the matter at PayPal.  Here's the dispute thread:

# 5/2/2011 21:45 MDT - PayPal: Seller escalated this dispute to a Claim.
# 5/2/2011 21:45 MDT - Seller: This is a non-tangible product that is delivered via e-mail. The product has been delivered via e-mail and we suggest that customer use our online management tools to download the SSL Certificate again if required.
# 4/30/2011 15:58 MDT - Buyer: I was forced to purchase another certificate from elsewhere, please refund
# 4/30/2011 13:04 MDT - Buyer: I ordered a SSL product, verified it and did not receive the cert. This is something I've ordered from another company for about a decade with no problems, but they are no longer selling SSL certificates, forcing me to find a new vendor. I ordered this 18 hours ago, but it's supposed to be instant delivery. I have tried their chat support, email support and phone. Phone gave a recording, email was not responded to, and chat has been maxed at 25 / 25 the entire time. I need the cert or my money back.

In the end, they got our $45, and we ended up finding out the hard way that Trustico was the worst vendor we could have chosen for our needs. They bullied and threatened me personally. They delivered the product 2 days after the request for refund and 3 days after it was ordered, and then indicated that we needed to download the certificate again after their proof of delivery was in place. This is poor customer service, appears lacking in integrity, and indicative of counter dispute practices that we will never support.  As a result, we've changed our company policy, Trustico is officially the last place we would buy an SSL certificate from.  We simply do not trust them.  That's pretty sad since trust is in their name.  We were duped, but hey, $45 is $45 and one can build an empire with such practices.

Reworking the dynamic aspects of a shopping experience for the sake of SEO marketing is no trivial undertaking.  In the past, you put your products in the cart, and linked to the cart via static pages or the homepage. Search engines usually found their way through the dynamic content in some form or another, but having your content "owned" or listed by a search engine was only a secondary consideration back then, only your main site and a few landing pages was all that most of us considered important to search engines at the time.

Times have changed. Google now makes or breaks ecommerce, in fact, their search criteria pretty much makes or breaks almost all businesses on the web these days. I've often contemplated how easy it would be to virtually take over the world with a search engine. I can only image that determining the direction of Google would be more fun than being a tin-horned dictator from a 3rd world country ... or even one from the US for that matter.

To market your site, you need to perform SEO which entails bowing before the alters of the Great and Mighty "Gewgall" and making your sacrificial offerings and pleas. If the Gewgall gods like what they see, Gewgall will bless you with higher rankings, making you esteemed by ll those below your rank, at least until someone else turns the great Gewgall's attention their way with their SEO rants and rituals.

It's all a constant juggling act at best.

So, I find my self torn between satisfying AgoraCart users need to please Google and gain favorable rankings and that of maintaining a secure and logical shopping experience. Despite my frustrations of balancing the two sides of this issue, I often find time to think about Google's weaknesses. For example, Google has left open a whole new opportunity for someone to write a better search engine that could traverse dynamic content. With all of the engineers and developers at Google, I can't believe they have not figured out how to do such a thing yet. I'm not a search engine developer but I do have many ideas how to make a better Gewgall. However, I'm a capitalist and my kids need shoes, so Google can buy my ideas after I try them out for $1 billion dollars.