WooTickets uses WooCommerce, whose CC processor explicitly forbids tickets sales

[Joshua]

I ran into a huge issue with the plugin we purchased. Buckle in, because this is some Inception movie level stuff. WooCommerce tickets appeared to be perfect and I chose it because it uses the tried and true WooCommerce. Well, apparently since WC 2.2, Simplify Commerce by Mastercard has been the only payment gateway for CC/Debit through WooCommerce.

Simplify Commerce has no phone number, just a single support email you have to reach out to on a wish and a prayer. They use the super creepy Priority Payment Systems http://prioritypaymentsystems.com/ , for all the actual card processing.

Anyways, all this funnels back down to be the only CC/Debit option for WooCommerce, and thus WooTickets. (Outside of paypal that takes users off the site). Simplify Commerce merchant terms of use says it hasn’t been updated since December 10, 2013.
https://www.simplify.com/commerce/docs/misc/legal/merchant-terms-of-use

But if you click on the link hidden down in #6 (https://simplify.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/1173592-prohibited-businesses), that takes you to a longer list of prohibited items, and you’ll notice that list was updated on March 11th, 2015. Shortly after they started using Priority Payment Systems. Who explicitly deem Event Ticket Sales to be too high-risk for massive charge-backs, and thus forbidden.

So what does this mean for WooCommerce Ticket users who had a merchant account through WooCommerce’s Simplify Commerce (probably the majority of people since that’s their default, free gateway)? Well, the short of it is their Merchant Account will be ghosted with no warning like ours was, and customers will have to buy tickets through paypal (if it’s even enabled as a secondary method) until someone notices the CC processor is down. The IT team over at Simplify and Priority Payment Systems really couldn’t care less. Their TOS from 2013 states that if an account is found to be in violation of their merchant agreement, written notice will be provided and the account removed. They just ghosted our account from their database with no warning or notification, not to mention the account was approved as a ticket sales website at first, only weeks before the new management came to town.

I know I know, this is a WooCommerce thing. It’s their payment gateway, not yours. But when I bought WooCommerce Tickets I thought I could sell tickets using CC/Debit card no other upgrades needed. That is an impossibility for all WooCommerce Ticket users now, and if some are still doing it they should be made aware that their payment gateway is about to shut them off, possibly without warning.

The solution? Pending account set-up and testing, is to upgrade your WooCommerce payment gateway to Stripe, as they currently do not disallow event ticket sales.

I write this so you can email blast your WooCommerce Ticket subscribers and let them know. Because if Simplify Commerce finds them before you do, they could be out serious money/lost time.

[Joshua]

Replying to say that I spoke to my client, who told me he did get a letter from Priority Payment Systems saying that after careful consideration they’ve decided to close his account. No email was ever sent and the letter was virtually an anonymous postcard from a company he didn’t remember signing up with so it was ignored.

[Geoff]

Hi Joshua,

Thanks for getting in touch here and sharing this experience. I can see and relate with how frustrating it is to have something working and functional one day suddenly stop, especially when it’s a functionality as important as taking payments online. My sincere apologies up front for the disappointment.

One thing that is particularly concerning here is the choice of a payment gateway. To my understanding, WooCommerce does not take credit card payments by default, but can be set up with a number of different payment gateways that do accept credit cards. You can see a list of all those options on the WooCommerce site. Note that Simplify Commerce is one choice of many other options.

I only note this because Simplify Commerce is not a default payment gateway in WooCommerce. Rather, it’s an extension that needs to be set up. It’s very possible that it was setup by someone other than you or your client, but I do see that could be a real source for the confusion here.

I appreciate you taking the time to note this with us, seeing as WooTickets does rely on WooCommerce for checkout. While it’s a shame that situation came up, it is good to know about poor experiences with specific vendors so we have that on our radar as well. Again, thanks for sharing here!

Please feel free to let us know if you have any questions for us and we’d be happy to help.

Sincerely,
Geoff

[Joshua]

Indeed, WooCommerce works with many payment gateways. However, upon installation of WooCommerce, if you go to Settings > Checkout … Simplify Commerce is definitely the default gateway provided.. for free. As in it is shipped and installed with WooCommerce. In order to use a different gateway, one must pay for the upgraded gateway, and install the plugin by uploading the zip file.

It’s my assumption that most who are say, using all the defaults for their calendar, are likely just going to set up with the pre-installed payment gateway, which up until just a few weeks ago didn’t disallow ticket sales. Which means everyone in that situation is going to get their CC processor silently shut off and they won’t know until the get a letter in the mail.

[Geoff]

Ah, gotcha. Thanks for clarifying that, Joshua.

We’ll certainly take note on our end–and, if you haven’t done so already, it might be worth bringing up on the Woo support forums as well so they are aware of the experience here.

Thanks again for sharing and keeping us in the loop!

Geoff

[Geoff]

Hey there, Joshua! Just a quick note that I’m going to go ahead and close this thread. Please feel free to start a new thread if any other questions pop up here and we’d be happy to help. 🙂

Cheers!
Geoff

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