International ecomm can be a *****.

When I build out for a client I typically recommend they handle their merchant accounts and gateways themselves if they are only doing domestic. No sense in giving up the additional points.

International is a whole nother bag of worms.

The Germanic regions are the worst. Very strict privacy policies that don't allow for fraud tools like even a basic zipcode lookup on the card.

Debit cards, never accept them. They frequently fraud out for no valid reason and when consumers look for refunds they become a pain in the ass because even though the funds left their account immediately you can't put them back immediately. Takes 24-48 hours and is up to their issuing bank but they don't understand that or care so they bang away at your CSRs incessantly.

This trend of "Auto-subscription" is getting more predatory every day. SiriusXM is the worst (ADT a close second). When I bought my new truck it came with 3 months free SiriusXM. To get it, you have to register of course, then give them a credit card and agree to a auto-renewal at the 4th month. If you don't want it, they said just call and cancel. OMG! First, you can't reach anybody to cancel. With patience and persistence, you can eventually find a human, but they transfer you to some hard-closing slammer who won't let you quit. Even after he agreed to cancel me, the card continued to be charged. The process started all over again with a new hard-sell slammer. I had to contact American Express, file a fraud report, and block Sirius from charging my card.

Re: Amazon Prime...I love Amazon! The mall is a last resort for me and that's just fine.

On the plus side your Amazon prime membership will let you watch the new Clarkson/May/Hammond Grand Tour show soon ! Gotta be worth something ;-)

I signed up for prime and I recall "Auto Renewal" being pretty clearly stated.

I bought a laptop power supply for ~$12 and some other gizmo which I can't recall but it was under $5. Both shipped directly from China; I can't see how that could possibly be profitable.

They tried to bill my wife twice for this very thing.

Amazon is the devil.

Thom, they make their dough selling your identity after they steal it.

There used to be a guy in the VW community who was selling VW pedal cars "NOS BRAND NEW NEVER OPENED" on ebay for $300. He was ginning up the ad to make it sound like the product was some long-lost rare discovery, when they were in reality a brand new readily-available item, and he was having them drop-shipped from Rocky Mountain Motorworks. In the old days of ebay, you could directly email other bidders, and I would do just that - sending them the link where they could get it themselves for $99.

Anytime I buy something, before I pull the trigger, I run a google search to make sure I'm getting the best price. I rarely get taken that way anymore.

I signed up for Amazon Prime a couple of years ago. I generally do not like automatic anything when it comes to billing, save for my utilities. I decided that I was OK with this, and it was clearly stated when I signed up. My sub is up for renewal next month and I got an email yesterday reminding me of this, should I want to change anything. I've found it to be pretty transparent if you're paying attention.

I'm a prime member, and make sure that I order only Prime items unless there's just no other way to get it than without Prime. You get it fast, and if you have a problem, you can get the problem fixed easily. If I'm ordering from someplace else, my level of trust goes way down, especially when it's obvious it's cheap Chinese stuff.

Yep, that's been my experience as well.