The LeanPub Black Box: Problems with the payment and returns platform
Presentation
There is a phrase that we have here although I no longer know if it is something global that says lend money to someone and you will meet them in this case it could be interpreted more than anything or we could modify it so that it does something like Make someone manage your money and there you will meet them so here I am going to talk to you a little about this website I have already talked a little about what it is about Emi based on some opinions that some clients have placed or I dont know what to call it from them I have already shown you several videos about that and more or less also How the Udemy platform works recently I was also telling you about the G rot website that Well I had the sin of using their platform to upload videos or using the file upload system every day when I was recording the Laravel course and suddenly it failed deleted all the content and I was already telling you a little about What the answer was that was there that is to say I was already talking about problems or what I consider problems of these two platforms and well another one cannot be missing so we are also going to talk about LeanPub which is adding to this black box here The important thing Its not like someone who says what happened is my fault Its simply a situation that they have internally Unlike the other two that I No matter how much I caused them in the sense that one I opened a ticket with Emi and the other because I had the sin of using their system as if it were a robust system to upload my content every day but this one is a little different and now you are going to understand a little the phrase that I was telling you about lending money to someone or is someone managing your money and you will obviously know it like the previous videos this video is purely my opinion and I am only going to say it this time everything that I am going to say here is purely my opinion obviously I am not a researcher or anything like that and again I am giving you is my opinion on what I consider based on what was expressed that I am going to show you right now then in case you do not know it
What is LeanPub
LeanPub is a website whose purpose is to help people who are creating their book for example in my case which I dont really use in that way to write their books Obviously writing a book is a laborious task so here is the redundancy and more so for example when it is my case that I have more than 20 books since little by little I am feeding it with content I think it is something that you may already know that I work in that way that I have many books and little by little I am giving it content every time I record courses or I am simply renewing it etc I am also adding more content to the books I have already told you a little about how this helps me to get both courses and books of better quality and well I am seeing again coming a little to what lean putut leut is it basically allows you a kind of Word so to speak a kind of markup in which you can write your books there I do not use it because I am already from a little what I have suffered with udemy I am a defender of always having my content at hand That is to say regardless of whether the website explodes the servers crash or they decide to dispense with you or I decide to dispense with them not to lose my job and to be able to continue working as if nothing had happened therefore I always migrate having my own platform and also in the case of books I prefer to write them On the other hand in this case although I am using another platform however much it may be it is not as tied as it would be here Google dot that is to say if I get tired of Google docs I simply download it and I can continue modifying them anywhere else which is not so clear to me here how the process is But at least here it is easier for me because in the end it has a more direct compatibility with Word well for example in case I wanted to continue programming in Word or directly wir I think it is the program for the mac or whatever although later on I do plan to use a more specialized program for the writing part although that is another topic since again all my books are evolving little by little right now I am mostly working on the content later on I plan to work a little more As for the presentation that was a little introduction I wanted to give you
Preamble to the problem
You might be wondering then what this is all about lets come here and Im going to show you a little bit of this text Im going to zoom in a little bit its the email as I received the only thing I did was cover up some amounts here since its not the topic I dont want to cause noise with that so I simply put an x here This is the email that I received from them I was going to translate it but I think its better to ramble on here a little bit that is Im going to summarize the ideas here a little bit the paragraphs based on what was expressed that is Im not going to translate it literally for you Although here as I always do I am an open person and I am showing you all the content that they send me although only the first part is the important one That is yesterday since today no sorry two days ago today is September 7 2024 I received this here two days ago I received the following the following email that precisely I had a delay with the payments and I was not wondering why and well after a while I received this email they tell me
Accusation of the content creator and options
Hello Andrs recently We are writing to you because we discovered a problem with our platform eh precisely with the r these are the payments that we make to us that is to say one places their product for sale they sell it on their platform or whether one sends the traffic no and in the end every so often they send us the payments just like it happens in udemy or in Amazon on any other website So they say that they have a problem that they detected in the purchases in question that is what they are telling you there they are not clarifying to you what is happening yet so from here on yes without giving us any reason or telling us exactly what is happening which I consider at this crucial point is to say the first thing I would comment on is that and here they are indicating to you some possible ways of acting here as I say we are already a little wrong because they should express themselves first what is happening before indicating any decision that I could make which at least I appreciate that it is not something like who says obligatory yes they indicate to you is what you should well some possible scenarios that you can decide and that I have until a certain time to make my decision here says I can decide to keep all the money and Im like that well but Im not a kidnapper again the responsibility is yours you are the ones who pay me and here you can see a little bit of the issue as if nothing had happened this this phrase kills me Because they use it twice that is to say they are like a kind of accusation or like a claim when one is not to blame for anything if it is them but look how these platforms express themselves and that is why I was telling you at the beginning that give your money to someone and you will know them or a phrase similar to that or that someone handles your money and you will know them precisely for things like these So now this phrase seems quite out of place to me ap part from the fact that they still have not said what the hell is happening to them no that is the first thing they would have to put there and well lets continue going down a little bit here they already begin I think it was here eh some payments that failed and here it begins to give you a little more information about some payments that they say failed but that appear as paid Here also a very important point For me you are the platform you determine everything that is you control everything that happens there both the products that are listed the products that pay and the products that have failed payments
The platform is entirely the responsibility of the Leanpub team
Etc So really this doesnt mean anything to me because its you who control it As a content creator the only thing I have access to here is to create my content to modify it and nothing else based on the options they give me and little else to say Really then come and take this out on me that is your problem I have absolutely no responsibility in this in which you have some problem with your payment platform But things get worse I think this is eh the most crucial thing I think it was precisely here in this part They say that the problem dates back to December in summary or as far as I understand here they have had problems with fraudulent payments that have occurred since at least on this date Here is one Precisely the complicated part of the information as they are expressing themselves here
Our right to not believe everything expressed
One also has to take all this with a grain of salt because in the end one does not know to what extent they are manipulating what they are putting here One has the right not to believe everything they tell us You know because it is precisely here that the shady part of what they are reporting here is
So here I know this paragraph I think it is the worst of all I am going to tell you my opinion They say based on the problem that they are telling you about here and that in a certain way this can be taken as a claim that this is your decision and you can keep the money as if nothing had happened This thing that they say here does not happen As I told you it sounds very familiar to me Down here they are explaining it to you
Invalid and fraudulent card data errors and refund policies
Okay here it says that some purchases were innocent errors where the customer that is to say the client had a problem with their credit card or debit card and others are also curious they are adding two things to you and remember that here they are indicating the date then I suppose that on that date they changed the payment platform it is what you could say not think I dont know it seems that the previous one the previous payment platform seems to have served them better than the new one curious that is to say that you update for the worse but well because they are two things it is not one thing yes they are two things One of them is the exploits that supposedly appear from this date onwards and also what would be the innocent errors of the clients that also curiously appeared from this date onwards So I dont know maybe it sounds a little strange to me and that is why I tell you to take all this with a pinch of salt here before continuing to read the rest eh this seems very curious to me lets see how the hell if the person placed an incorrect credit or debit card in the end they I dont know what system they have but they must be using a system for example like PayPal or directly like strip or directly some connection with a bank since depending on the bank it also offers you certain services so that you can make your purchases online in this case surely this platform did the same thing like hell if you communicate with the bank and which will return you an answer so obvious that is to say if the payment was made or not like hell you authorize that purchase so that it is understood a little more I am going to show you a little what is the code that I have here well These were the personal things that I have written here to see if I find I am going to spend a moment here I found it above You can do what you want but the important thing is this suppose that this is the response of your bank here in this function what I do is Call the PayPal app of an order ID that I passed to the client in this case it is even more complicated because
How a payment platform works
If you have followed my Laravel course you already know how this process is in which the order is put together on the client side and with this order it is processed on the server that is more complicated because it is two steps even more prone to errors but in this case I trust the people at PayPal that I do not know of any vulnerability that has been exploited in the face in recent years I dare to say something important and yet it is as simple as this you here based on something that has to exist you send it to the PayPal app and based on some status that it returns to you you do something in this case you register the product it is that simple what the hell can they exploit you here so that the response automatically comes to you here without you going through here that is to say the only part where I have my application and I dare to put it here on the screen is precisely when I approve or when Piper tells me that everything is Okay then perfect I approve the product for you and I register you as a client it is that simple So I dont know what mistake they made but oh well again obviously the development part is always very open and many possible errors Obviously all of us who are watching this video or I hope because it is the well as who says it is my channel my channel is a development channel therefore the majority of those who are watching me are surely developers there can always be errors and such but still as I tell you it is something quite closed you know literally it is a line that is next to the other that is to say process here and then this and if it is with a bank it is surely more direct because everything is done on the server you pass the card Well either register the card then it passes it here directly so that it does everything behind that is to say on the server or it may also be that the bank has some plugin as is the case with PayPal that the application does not register anything understand the leput website and and a kind of order is also passed that is put together from the client as it happens here so that it is then processed on the server independently of the step I do not see it so much eye I am not an expert in security but I see it difficult precisely because of the cases one of the ways or usually when these bugs or these exploits occur it is directly related to what is the amount of code that you have but in this case as I tell you it is three lines of code then Well but that can be understood Even though it is still as I tell you it sounds a lot to me that they are exposing this type of information to someone who really has nothing to do with this because I am their platform not mine and well
This added to both the exploits as demons you again authorize something that did not happen which was when the client innocently placed according to them eye is what they are saying an invalid credit or debit card And somehow they approved it in the purchase here comes the worst I think especially when you add it all up even when they are abusing the policy that they have of return I think it is those who are commenting here that is to say you are already telling me three things Remember that those three things happened from December 2021 whatever the hell what does the refund policy have to do with payment problems on your platform I do not understand that here no matter what there are two as I tell you they changed platforms is what I am assuming no then on that platform you could place credit cards debit and credit cards that did not exist and I also had a problem with exploits from this date onwards
Not satisfied with that they took advantage and placed this and that is why I tell you that this must be taken with a grain of salt and no matter how much one analyzes it because there is also another phrase here that says think badly and you will be right then I do not understand I really do not understand and remember that they began as if indicating here claiming that I keep everything as if it had not happened then a rather strong phrase for someone that they are 100 responsible for this because it is their platform then Well here I also have an important point be careful that I do not want as they say to take advantage to throw shit at the platform or anything because I like the platform and when you are using a platform you always say for example in the case of Udemy which is the one that is most criticized you see the good you see the bad and there from there you decide in this case I continue using Udemy because the market that they have there no matter how strong it is it is the platform that still generates the most income with it So that supports me as they say or is worth more to me than all the problems that I have that is to say one makes a balance and the part of the sales that I get on their platform in a way that is like who says integral I think is the word that is to say that they do it directly in their store without me doing anything without me sending the traffic it is for me higher on the scale of all the problems that it gives me because the things that I dont like I simply dont use them and thats why I say that for example I use Demi simply as a viewer because for me thats whats worth it as they say its also a bit the same obviously the platforms that one is using usually there is something that we are not going to like and not because of that one is going to stop using it again one measures a scale and
Also abuses their return policy
What I am not completely convinced of is the evolution policy that they have which is what they are claiming here and I will explain to you why I am mentioning this apart from what was commented before They have 90 days 90 days for the client when they buy any resource in this case a book which is their main focus to return it I do not know in what scenarios that can be valid So to speak that is to say that it is really beneficial that they are taking advantage of the fact that you need 90 days that is 3 months for you to review a filthy book in my case that I generate or create programming books of on average 300 or 400 pages it does not really make sense to me Because when you see a programming book you simply give it to them quickly and then you know if it will be useful to you or not especially Well focused a little when people more or less handle the subject no if they do not know absolutely anything it will surely require more time but when you have some experience which I dare say is the majority of people who are consuming this type of resources and for that reason so from there they should generate their policies for that type of clients and they dont need that much time mind you Im not saying that the person only has one day to return it or anything like that Im simply giving my point of view in which I believe that with a quick glance you already know if the book is going to be of any grade or it is not going to be of your grade since they are like 20 30 chapters usually per book whether as indicating the long book and really little more to say in that scenario I mean it seems to me an absurd policy of so much time how should it be in my opinion how the people at hotmart handle it in which you can specify what is the time that you want for evolution that they set as a minimum 15 days and I think also up to 60 or 90 days and also remember that it is another important point to continue talking a little about the part of the return policy these resources are not particularly expensive you check here I am going to open any of these books 20 mine even I sell it at a minimum price 19 15 Look even this one you can take it free understand that they are not expensive products for what the material they offer would be and these are surely a little more expensive because they are here first on the platform mind you they are the ones I am here eh clicking but when you go a little further back as they say the rest of us mortals surely do not put prices so in quotation marks this more than anything I am comparing the prices with the website of 10 dollars from Udemy so expensive no they are surely cheaper therefore everything has to be hand in hand That is to say
Premium Returns Time Award Content
If you are going to put a return period of 90 days the price should also be Premium then it has to go hand in hand If you are selling badges here for almost these prices for everything that is involved in doing this work a book it seems absurd to me that type of evolution times when you could place this type in my opinion for example you surely know Romual Fonts I am already going a little bit but I think it is important that I clarify this point He like two years ago is the largest SEO in Spain He like two years ago it seems to me that he took a training to supposedly be a professional on YouTube or I do not know how the issue is and the course cost 1000 When you get to that point as I say he is the largest SEO in Spain and I think he speaks Spanish therefore at least one of the largest when you get to that point then you can do that type he even says it he does not say it very clearly he is a person I think he is honest and you can reach that type of public it is more or less what does what Apple does in which it creates a product for you that when you see it or you evaluate it for example a PC a Mac when you evaluate its characteristics with a PC that is to say something with Windows it always has a premium you could say but they do that precisely because of what their environment is that is to say they are the only ones who sell that type of product and therefore they can afford to put the price in quotes as they please which is a bit what this person did that is to say Romu when he launched his product since he is very good at what he does he can afford to create that type of content with that price even I remember that that was also information information that came out just after that that he generated a million dollars with the sale or well with that course that he was selling which again I dont think was just a bunch of videos there were people who attended to you there were some questions that they asked in each workshop or some questions that they asked every week every 15 days I dont know how it was but you know it wasnt just videos on demand and thats it it was obviously required the personal support of someone certain professor that he had in his company and from there it was also a bit of sense because he set those types of prices but even so it was a fairly high price I think you could say and he generated a million dollars for I think the first time he did the training or something like that that if you start to see for a person of his caliber it is not so much why Because if it was 1000 per course and you multiply it by 1000 it gives you exactly a million dollars which is the figure he got that is to say 1000 times 1000 people who registered there you get the million dollars that he generated in that training that is to say simply 1000 people They wrote being the person that he is and it is precisely for a little bit of what was commented not everyone has 1000 to do this type of training but in these cases I do not know No I did not sign up By the way it makes sense to make that type of evolution policies that I think he has also has something something of that there I did not really read it but there it would make sense to set such a long time because it is a expensive training that surely lasted several months or at least several weeks in this case that you are buying badges again seems like an exaggerated time to me so I explained all this to you or I am commenting on it precisely because I for example
I do not agree I dare to say that many people surely do not agree that their evolution policies are so long so that later they still take advantage and place it here as part of a guilt that I do not know what the hell the payment platform has to do with people who are abusing their policy of well that they return that they buy simply to keep the content and they return it to have the content for free and they being their platform and again completely responsible for both the problems that can occur with the payment gateway and also with their policy that many people I dare to say including I do not agree because it seems exaggeratedly long they want as they say here colloquially ask for cocoa that is to say ask for help I do not know based on your nice words that were commenting here above the nothing happen then well it is basically that I know that I went on a bit but as much as it is I like as who says to take the time to evaluate this step by step and this I do precisely as I tell you I want to explain a little more What are the situations that one has day to day and in this case is free and well based on this I would like you to indicate what you would do since I think my position is a little bit seen but this is their complete responsibility and here Also something curious to date it has been 3 years 3 years and you have not realized it Lets see based on everything I have told you lets add another one which is how the hell it has been 3 years and now you are realizing this problem
That is to say you do not do Even if you are I do not know if it is a company I do not know if it will be a website I do not know what the name will be if this company is or whatever it is in the United States whatever but even if it is it is a group of people who work in a certain place whether it is physical from home but it is a group of people who maintain the platform here and therefore it is understood that part of those people that staff that they have there somewhere has to see that you export what are the purchases that you make monthly or directly the page appears to you and you make the match with what you have in the bank or any payment platform that you make it seems that it does not exist there therefore the numbers have to match because it is mathematics and precisely these systems are designed for that since we increasingly have faster processors each time the database engines can handle more records more efficiently we have 1000 ways to do it so even if this is not a big website compare it with Apple for example that must have millions of sales a day this is a joke if I compare them with that and in the end they are using the same systems and the same code behind the scenes
So I dont understand how it takes you 3 years to realize that and here a bit the same so that my point is also understood it is as if you had a Well a transport website for example USPS Ups FedEx DHL I think these are all surely some have in your country you use some of those services then for you to transport the packages and they after 3 years or whatever time they realize that they had a little hole in their truck or or the delivery man had a little hole in his bag and was throwing the packages around and then he asks you or tells you that Hey Poor thing me Eh I need you to replace me Here well eh that you dont claim me for the packages when the responsibility is fully of the carrier not mine and not satisfied with that also stops it like who ties the point here of the policy they also have a policy that is internal to them that they say that if they do not deliver to you in the next 30 minutes or whatever the order is free a matter like that then precisely they have two three years later they add it up with this and they tell you what
Hey look at the policy that if I dont deliver it to you in 30 minutes Ill deliver it for free its not useful to me either So please help me I dont see the point you know I really dont understand its the first time Ive used this word in my life Im freaking out with this because it doesnt make sense So thats it I know that few people really see me I mean I dont have a community that big and not that active either But hey feel free to explain what you would do here Im still thinking about it they give me here until October 7 to decide but its just that from everything presented I dont see even as who says a point in their favor of why I have to uh pay as they say the broken dishes lets see here we also have another important point that I had missed to comment as they comment here are failed payments that is to say there was an intention to pay the person was going to pay therefore the person in the end Since the book came out free that is to say they were not charged they kept the book and little else but the important thing is that there was an intention to pay now that you did not process the payment is your responsibility because you are the ones who have to keep your system up to date you know no I do not understand why you are blaming me for that as who Well it is not the fault that they are blaming it no but it is not my responsibility it is the responsibility is yours that is to say because of your fault if you could see from that point The purchase was not made you are responsible Not me on the platform it is yours So this does not make sense and another interesting point here that they comment no that they say that Very few people do not abuse the policy of Well here I show you the rest of the letter they do not abuse their return policy that is to say Well I do not know there I quite why not I do not know it either as they are the ones who manage internally But you look for any everyday topic on Twitter or Facebook well the X now and there you see what society is like today not that it is quite Abusive So to speak you know you look for any everyday topic on Facebook and or on Twitter and there one realizes what society is like today but well They say that rarely happens because They Apparently the community that they reach here Im not saying the opposite but as much as it is it is very healthy so nobody abuses their return policies that and or I understand that they abuse it by creating a lot of fake emails and then they buy there until they are blocked then they create another one and ask for refunds and so on But that also seemed curious to me since it has a community and nobody abuses this It seems very strange to me that having such a healthy community nobody in 3 years says Hey look I buy a product it was free I didnt pay and They had to review the issue of why those purchases were free And from there correct either the mistake or the clients error or the exploitment or whatever deliberately I dont know but well it seems that it took them 3 years to realize this
They created a system for me to decide what Im going to do
Well from here on they dont say anything very interesting they simply tell me that they have already enabled a new system on the web here for me to decide at this point I havent finished valuing it much because there I get a little confused about whether or not in case I want to pay them or return the money or whatever I have a selector there to indicate how much more than they are going to consume per month they consume it is how they say they pay around 80 I think sometimes a little more a little less and supposedly the problem they have is less than 1 which also seems to me I think is a little normal when you also open a system or you are going to sell a product online you say there look this product costs me 40 to bring it here it costs me 50 the financing comes out to me so much well and from there you get the total price in which you also have to include possible problems so you telling me that you have 1 doesnt seem crazy to me either its not supposed to be something that they should handle here in the payments that they receive but I dont know anything This makes sense to me and well as I told you this is another platform that is attached here to my list of strange things and precisely I put it in the title I think Im going to put it in the black box title because I think there is a lot of information missing that They still had to put here all this seems quite murky to me To say the least then well feel free please to give your opinion if you are seeing what you would do maybe I have missed something as I told you at the beginning This is my opinion it is what I understood what I am good at margar redundancy learning from this obviously I really like this website and I want to continue working on it or with it but well when things like this happen one says As much as it is good I am grateful even if I do not have as many sales to have my own platform because really these platforms are crazy so well nothing see you in another video
- Andrés Cruz
Develop with Laravel, Django, Flask, CodeIgniter, HTML5, CSS3, MySQL, JavaScript, Vue, Android, iOS, Flutter