Passed Custom Param. MKT

[weavercl]

I've had two purchases show up on my log that I'm curious about. Neither of these people have downloaded the eBook they purchased.



When looking at the log, it shows "MKT" under the heading of Passed Custom Param. I've not set up any parameters, so I'm not sure what this is.



Just wondering why someone is purchasing my eBooks but not downloading them and why this MKT is showing up (what is it?).



Thank you for the help.

[E-junkie_Guru]

When the Passed Custom Param. column in your Transaction Log shows "mkt", that just indicates the buyer placed their order from that product's listing in the general E-junkie Marketplace, which is simply a directory of product listings drawn from all of our subscribed merchants' E-junkie Shop pages. This help page explains more about E-junkie Marketplace and Shop product listings:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.promote.htm



As for why those buyers have yet to attempt a download, there's really no way of knowing. Perhaps they did not proceed to the thank-you/download page after checkout and have not yet checked their email to look for their thank-you email with a link to the thank-you/download page, or they may have placed their order from one location but intend to download to another location later (e.g., work and home).

[weavercl]

Thank you for the information. That explains why the MKT shows up.



I guess I'll send them an e-mail asking if they need assistance in downloading the product (one of them purchased the eBook on 4/11).



Just one more quick question. My husband set up the first item in the market place for me and was able to attach a picture. Since then, I've tried to add more products with pictures as well, but the image only shows up under the "All Products" page. When I click on the product and go to the description, no image shows up (however, it does on the item my husband worked on).



As far as I can tell, I did everything just like he did. Suggestions?



Thank you, again!

[E-junkie_Guru]

You can upload two different images for your product listing; the Thumbnail image is shown in your main Shop page where your products are listed together, whereas the main product Image is shown on that product's own page in your Shop.



When you edit your product's Shop/Marketplace listing and proceed to the screen with the Upload Images button, clicking that button will open a file-uploader window where you can browse for a Thumbnail file and/or a main product Image/Flash file to upload. The help page linked above provides more detailed instructions.

[weavercl]

Thank you for the help! That is what I was missing.

[debbiewebmom]

I have this same problem as I have reviewed the last month I've had over 10 buyers from the MKT place and none of them have downloaded. Two have issued a refund/reversed payment so I'm starting to see these buyers as rather odd.

I have made sure the download link works and have sent them each a follow up email

with no responses either.

Any thoughts what might be happening with these?

[E-junkie_Guru]

I can see no reason in the affected products' settings to explain why these buyers did not receive a thank-you email with a link to their download page, which your products are correctly configured to send.



However, I did notice that all of the affected buyers have email addresses @msn.com, or a few @hotmail.com (same thing, really), while few unaffected buyers have email addresses at those domains. I suspect the Marketplace association is coincidental, and the real problem is that Microsoft's mail services are mistakenly filtering your thank-you emails as spam. Ask affected buyers to check their spam/junk/bulk mail folders and mark your message(s) as Not Spam if they're found in there.

[dojoklo]

Hello, I have experienced the same thing as debbiewebmom, a series of purchases that were purchased through the marketplace and not downloaded. A look at the email addresses and IP addresses indicate that this is some type of scam or fraud in the making. I suspect it is a PayPal chargeback fraud. I immediately refunded all the purchases, and contacted PayPal with all the info.



It is obvious that they are not legitimate purchases because it was an older book of mine that typically sells one a month, not 7 in a row in one day, then again two days later. Also, all of the email addresses are @msn.com addresses, with random letters, and none of them match the buyers' names in any way. If you look at other buyers' names / emails, you will see that 90% of the time you can match up a name or initials between the name and their email. Plus the IP addresses of some of them were the same, despite different buyers' names / emails.

[E-junkie_Guru]

These are only types of fraudulent intent I can think of in that scenario:



1) Buyer uses a stolen credit card or hacked PayPal account to obtain your product at no actual cost to them, sticking the legitimate card/PayPal account holder with the bill.



This seems unlikely in your case since the buyer did not even attempt a download, but if you redirect to a Common Thank-you Page URL on your site, they would need to receive a thank-you email to get access to their download page, so if they didn't have access to the inbox account for whatever email address they used for purchase, they would have been unable to claim the download.



2) If you have an affiliate program, buyer joins that and then uses their own affiliate link before making a purchase with a stolen card/PayPal account, expecting to receive an automatic instant payout of affiliate commission earned on that sale, with no intention of claiming the actual product purchased.



That would be motivated by a mistaken assumption of how our affiliate commission payouts work, as our merchants must pay out commission earnings to their affiliates manually (typically paid out monthly as a lump sum to each affiliate). If you have an affiliate program, you may wish to see if any affiliate referral was linked to the suspicious sales, so you can remove that affiliate from your program. Refunding the payments should revoke any commissions earned for those sales, but you may wish to examine your next masspay.txt commission report to make sure there's nothing in there for the dodgy affiliate(s) before you pay out commissions.

[debbiewebmom]

It was definitely a chargeback scam although I don't know what they were getting out of it. After having two chargebacks from these items I took them all down from the marketplace and haven't had one since. I have a teaching kids money site and these were the products I was having problems with.

Yes they were all msn addresses. They weren't affiliates and never download any of the products.

[E-junkie_Guru]

Then most likely they were simply trying to obtain your product at no cost to themselves, either by falsely claiming their own legitimate payment was unauthorized or by sticking somebody else with the bill -- in which latter case, the chargebacks came when the legitimate card/PayPal account holder discovered the buyer had made fraudulent charges to their account.

[dojoklo]

Mine were not affiliate purchases either. I contacted all of the suspicious buyers, and none responded. And none contacted me, such as wondering why their purchase was immediately refunded, or stating that they had purchasing/ downloading issues.



I typically have about 1 buyer a month not download a book soon after they buy it, and I always am able to contact them, or they contact me, and we resolve it. Out of thousands of transactions, I have never had a legit buyer not receive the e-book either immediately or after some assistance, or not contact me when they had an issue with the process.



So when 14 strange transactions like this happen in a row, some type of scheme or scam is definitely going on.



And since it was 14 purchases of the same outdated ebook, some from the same IP address, which they never downloaded, I don't think they were after a free product. I still believe it is a PayPal chargeback scam in the making.



I don't believe they are using someone else's paypal account / email, as they are all "made up" fake looking emails of random letters, and all @msn.com, that were probably made up and registered as they went along. I'm sure PayPal could confirm that all of the PayPal accounts were created right before the purchase, but unfortunately PayPal is difficult to communicate with, and they just send generic replies to my inquiries.

[E-junkie_Guru]

The random/made-up email addresses suggest the buyer was using a stolen credit card rather than a hacked PayPal account. I can't fathom how a card thief could possibly benefit from a chargeback, but perhaps they were just testing a list of stolen card numbers they'd obtained to see which ones still worked before they tried using them again on a bigger-ticket item.



Ebooks may present a fairly low-risk test purchase, as they're typically cheap (and thus may not trigger an alert for charges over a certain amount), delivered automatically, and thus often not actively monitored in realtime (if at all) by the seller, so by the time the ebook seller notices a spate of weird purchases or chargebacks, the crook has already used that stolen card to make their more expensive purchase elsewhere.

[dojoklo]

Ah, stolen credit card tests! That sounds like a good possibility.