Solved Need help paying 3cx

[Paul Timmons]

Hopefully the title gets some eyes on the issue of broken payment systems.

My company opted for Hosted with the intent of purchasing the Professional licensing. We were already a SIP.US customer, so the transition from our on-prem Cisco system to 3CX hosted was an easy choice.

We generated the default trial instance of Standard Annual 4 SC. Although problematic in some ways, we were able to get past all configuration issues and have a fully functional Hosted PBX. We also linked to our IT partner that we have used in the past who is also a 3CX partner.

Then came the negative of the 3CX solution.

The partner does not / will not use a Paypal account or Wire transfer to pay for our upgrade, only CC. They tried upgrading our hosted system with a CC, but the Online Order system errored out on the purchase. So now they cannot purchase the upgrade with a order pending that can't be completed.

Our company tried directly as well with the same result. We do not have a PayPal account and should not have to go through these hoops.

Given that 3CX is looking to become more cloud-oriented for small businesses like ours, it would be helpful if we, and the partners, could actually purchase the product.

If anyone has any way of making this work, please let me know. I have 7 days until the hosted expires. I will not be without phones. If I cannot get this resolved by the EOB today, I will be forced to revert to our Cisco system for now and begin the process of finding another PBX vendor.

 

[CentrexJ]

You need a competent 3CX partner. If you are in Canada or USA I can sell it to you, or you can go to 3CX's partner site and find a local partner to purchase from.

 

[SteveITS]

@Paul Timmons Did you or they contact 3CX?

I get your position but rather than change phone systems it seems easier to purchase a new key and enter that as a new license via Replace License Key. Even if they can't get a credit figured out with 3CX, a small size license won't be that expensive to eat/lose.

 

[Evolute IT]

Could be a bug in the portal, they made a lot of changes in the past year, however I used CC and PayPal without any issues.

Wherever you're located, we can help with that if you want.

 

[Paul Timmons]

@Paul Timmons Did you or they contact 3CX?

I get your position but rather than change phone systems it seems easier to purchase a new key and enter that as a new license via Replace License Key. Even if they can't get a credit figured out with 3CX, a small size license won't be that expensive to eat/lose.

Thank you Steve. I appreciate your response.

We both reached out to 3CX. They told the partner at first (a little over a week ago) that they were experiencing technical difficulties with the CC system/website. We then let the order cancel, which takes about 30 minutes according to the error message, and tried again. Same error. I opened a ticket on Monday and have had the support rep working with my partner on the phone as late as this morning. Last I heard, the support rep stated they could cancel the order again, but that they had no one there to take a Visa/Mastercard payment. 3CX could only process the order through the web site. Whether this is correct, I do not know as I have had 0 direct contact with any representative from 3CX besides email and these forums.

As far as changing phone systems, I agree that this is not something I want to do. But, I am starting to doubt the ability of 3cx to support us and their product. I would feel comfortable reaching out to a partner, or even working on issues myself, for an on-prem deployment. But, my company needed a hosted option. As far as I know, even partners do not have access to the backend of the hosted solution. If I am experiencing issues with a dedicated hosted instance, who do I call and how? What number? That info isn't available. That is very disconcerting for a business phone system.

 

[Paul Timmons]

Could be a bug in the portal, they made a lot of changes in the past year, however I used CC and PayPal without any issues.

Wherever you're located, we can help with that if you want.

I believe it is a bug, one that the support staff are aware of.

 

[Evolute IT]

Thank you Steve. I appreciate your response.

We both reached out to 3CX. They told the partner at first (a little over a week ago) that they were experiencing technical difficulties with the CC system/website. We then let the order cancel, which takes about 30 minutes according to the error message, and tried again. Same error. I opened a ticket on Monday and have had the support rep working with my partner on the phone as late as this morning. Last I heard, the support rep stated they could cancel the order again, but that they had no one there to take a Visa/Mastercard payment. 3CX could only process the order through the web site. Whether this is correct, I do not know as I have had 0 direct contact with any representative from 3CX besides email and these forums.

As far as changing phone systems, I agree that this is not something I want to do. But, I am starting to doubt the ability of 3cx to support us and their product. I would feel comfortable reaching out to a partner, or even working on issues myself, for an on-prem deployment. But, my company needed a hosted option. As far as I know, even partners do not have access to the backend of the hosted solution. If I am experiencing issues with a dedicated hosted instance, who do I call and how? What number? That info isn't available. That is very disconcerting for a business phone system.

There's no number to contact but there's an email and a chat I believe. 3CX Hosted is, however, usually pretty reliable and you do have the ability to shutdown/reboot the VM from your portal.

If you prefer a hosted solution by a partner, we offer 3CX hosting as well and do support it.

 

[SteveITS]

difficulties with the CC system/website

Ah. If that's the case and it's a payment problem not a key problem, then ordering a new key won't help. I would think for "can't sell anything" they'd be all over it.

Checkout goes through a third party payment system, at least that what it looks like to me. I've processed several renewals myself this year but not in the last couple of weeks. If they can't get it working perhaps they can manually extend the key a week, or something, I don't know.

Just FYI, 3CX staff seems to have more forum activity on European time, so very early morning here.

We host our own clients also...the 3CX hosting is "relatively" new, I think a couple of years old now, without looking.

 

[AndreasA_3cx]

Hi @Paul Timmons

Unfortunately, the matter is not so simple. As SteveITS mentioned above, the payment is a third part payment processor and we cannot do much on how that side works.
We are in talks with them to figure out how to solve it.
We have identified the problem and it mostly revolves mostly around the fact that we require 3DS2 for card authentication which is the more secure option and is mandatory in Europe (and highly adopted in rest of the world).
However there are some banks/cards that have not adopted this verification process and they still use the 3DS1 and thus the transactions are failing.

For the moment as you and your partners credit cards are not accepted, and they are unwilling to use Paypal or Wired transfer. You could try to use another card (possibly from another bank so that it would work) or go to a Distributor.
We are trying to sort this out.

 

[Paul Timmons]

Hi @Paul Timmons

Unfortunately, the matter is not so simple. As SteveITS mentioned above, the payment is a third part payment processor and we cannot do much on how that side works.
We are in talks with them to figure out how to solve it.
We have identified the problem and it mostly revolves mostly around the fact that we require 3DS2 for card authentication which is the more secure option and is mandatory in Europe (and highly adopted in rest of the world).
However there are some banks/cards that have not adopted this verification process and they still use the 3DS1 and thus the transactions are failing.

For the moment as you and your partners credit cards are not accepted, and they are unwilling to use Paypal or Wired transfer. You could try to use another card (possibly from another bank so that it would work) or go to a Distributor.
We are trying to sort this out.

Thank you for the explanation Andreas.

I can validate that the processing does appear to try to redirect to another site for validation, but it never loads. I can take screenshots and upload if this is being tracked as a bug somewhere. By the way, we have tried 2 different bank cards, but both Visa. Amex is not available. You can choose Amex/Paypal, but the site only allows for PayPal payment there. Neither of our companies (partner nor my company) has a MasterCard to test with.

Andreas, you mention purchasing via distribution. Can you provide a listing of Distributors to purchase from?

 

[Evolute IT]

Thank you for the explanation Andreas.

I can validate that the processing does appear to try to redirect to another site for validation, but it never loads. I can take screenshots and upload if this is being tracked as a bug somewhere. By the way, we have tried 2 different bank cards, but both Visa. Amex is not available. You can choose Amex/Paypal, but the site only allows for PayPal payment there. Neither of our companies (partner nor my company) has a MasterCard to test with.

Andreas, you mention purchasing via distribution. Can you provide a listing of Distributors to purchase from?

You can also buy from partners and encourage them.

 

[SweetAction]

Andreas, you mention purchasing via distribution. Can you provide a listing of Distributors to purchase from?

You can often see Distributors on the forums with the tag, but most distributors only sell to partners in my experience.
Example:


Manufacturer -> Distribution -> Retail -> Customer is the flow you almost always see. But not always.

 

[SnakeRiverWebDevelopment]

I can validate that the processing does appear to try to redirect to another site for validation, but it never loads. I can take screenshots and upload if this is being tracked as a bug somewhere. By the way, we have tried 2 different bank cards, but both Visa. Amex is not available. You can choose Amex/Paypal, but the site only allows for PayPal payment there. Neither of our companies (partner nor my company) has a MasterCard to test with.

I renewed a License on March 4th it went though with out a problem

 

[CentrexJ]

Thank you for the explanation Andreas.

I can validate that the processing does appear to try to redirect to another site for validation, but it never loads. I can take screenshots and upload if this is being tracked as a bug somewhere. By the way, we have tried 2 different bank cards, but both Visa. Amex is not available. You can choose Amex/Paypal, but the site only allows for PayPal payment there. Neither of our companies (partner nor my company) has a MasterCard to test with.

Andreas, you mention purchasing via distribution. Can you provide a listing of Distributors to purchase from?

We have distributor terms with 3CX. If you need help let me know. Happy to help.

 

[Evolute IT]

You can also find the list here: https://www.3cx.com/partners/distributors/

 

[AndreasA_3cx]

Hi @Paul Timmons

As our good partners mentioned above, Distributors are selling through partners. So you should discuss this with your partner and they should arrange!
If your partner needs anything they should take care it with their Distributor.
The listing of our distributors has been also provided above which is https://www.3cx.com/partners/distributors/

Now regarding the cards you used, its not a Visa/Mastercard related, the authorization/verification is on a bank level.
3DS1 = You put card details and no other verification is done. You card get charged.
3DS2 = You put your card details, you are now redirected to a verification page (of your bank) to do the double authorization/OTP to approve the charge (on a phone you already verified). This is usually done either through the bank application (push notification) or SMS with code.

Regarding our Amex/Paypal what we mean is that you can pay with Amex through Paypal. As a card we do not accept Amex.

In anycase, we understand this is a problem and we are working on a solution!

 

[Paul Timmons]

Andreas is awesome. Thank you so much for the help, Andreas.

An intermediate fix was performed earlier this week. After some back and forth with Andreas, I was finally able to purchase the upgrade via CC.