26/05/2010. Interview with the admin of xChanger

Hi everybody! For the first update today I am very pleased to welcome back an old friend of MNO and one of the most capable and respected admins in the business today. I’m talking to Andrei, the main force behind xChanger.

Though not directly involved with any investment programs himself, for over 12 months now Andrei has been offering a very valuable service to online investors with his e-currency exchange service xChanger.org. In the last year he has worked very hard in what’s really a very competitive market to establish his website as one of the most popular and trusted on the web and to see just how committed he is to this and also to see how far they have developed I suggest you read my first interview with him published here. Just remember that to celebrate this remarkable first year in business xChanger have a number of discounted services available with some very generous reduction in fees. This won’t last for much longer so if you need to use an online e-currency exchange service anytime soon you should definitely start by looking at xChanger.

“1. Hi Andrei, before we get to xChanger itself maybe you could first re-introduce yourself to the readers, tell us a bit about the background and the services offered by your website, and tell us what your personal role in setting up and running the operation? Is there anybody else working with you?

Hi Paul! xChanger.org is an e-currency exchanger. At the moment we exchange between the most popular e-currencies: STP, LR, AP, SP and GDP. I run the day to day operations of the site and handle the support. Yes, there is, Daniele or Gotenks as you and many of your readers know him. He’s a genius programmer, so if any of you need any programming work to be done, well, you couldn’t have chosen better.

2. A belated Happy Birthday by the way! After one year online how far has xChanger developed? Are you satisfied with the growth and the popularity of the service so far? I know also that to mark this first year online you are offering some special offers for the month. Would you like to tell us about them?

Thank you very much! It developed a lot, over our expectations, really. Few stats: almost 4000 members, far more orders, over 1200 support tickets.

Yes, we do for the current month of May and probably a few days into June as well. The special offers can be found on our homepage, under ‘Fees’ table written in red color.

LR to SP – 0%
LR to STP – 0%
STP to SP – 0%
GDP to SP – 0%
GDP to STP – 2%
LR to GDP – 0%
AP to SP – 0%

..and many more. Checkout the website for the complete list.

3. I know that you have different membership levels and in order to make an exchange I need to be a member. How do I join xChanger and what is the difference between the various levels? What are the benefits of each and how do I upgrade? Are there different costs involved?

Signing up is easy. It takes one minute at most to do so.

The difference between membership levels consists of: maximum limit for exchanges TO LR, processing time (although we try to process them as quickly as possible regardless of the membership level, but when we have a heavy workload higher membership level members get priority) and free SMS Notifications credits.

There are no costs involved. You are automatically moved to a higher membership levels after you successfully complete some orders (2 for Silver and another one for Gold).

4. So let’s talk about some of the changes we have seen over the last year. An important thing for a lot of people is that you are now an officially approved AlertPay exchanger. Can you tell us why there are so few exchange providers approved by them, the difficulties in achieving this, and what you had to do in order to obtain this status?

At first we were on a waiting list as they’re not looking to get dozens of exchangers on board, more than they can handle properly. They have been the most stringent in the approving process. And they also require a consistent amount of money to be hold as a Reserve.

5. So maybe now you can give us a complete list of the services you have available?

xChanger.org exchanges between STP, LR, AP, SP and GDP. We are an approved exchanger of all the e-currencies we deal with.

6. The xChanger website looks a lot different these days and I know you’ve re-designed it a bit. Why was that necessary and what’s better about the whole thing now?

It was re-designed because we had to make it more user-friendly and also introduce new sections of the site and the old design didn’t allowed this. It’s much better now because it’s better organized.

7. I’m pretty sure one popular addition since our last interview must surely be the discount codes provided to your customers. Tell us how that works and how successful has it been?

That’s right. We offer discount codes to our loyal customers. You’ll be receiving a discount code after every successful exchange order in the e-mail we send you once your order has been processed. This discount code can only be used by you and only for your next exchange order.

8. I also like the SMS text messaging service you offer, so perhaps you could also explain how this works and the benefits of it to the users?

For example, if you wish to be notified through an SMS the second your order is processed, you simply complete the SMS Notification field on the exchange form and you get an SMS to your cellphone letting you know this.

9. After a year online your reputation is firmly established among regular MNO readers, but to those new to the business can you tell us how safe is your service? First of all why should I trust you as an admin and second how secure is the xChanger website? How well am I protected from hackers for instance? Or what happens my money if your website comes under DDoS attack and my transaction is pending?

Our testimonials speak for themselves. We’ve only recently introduced the ‘Testimonials’ section of the site and we already received over 100 testimonials. Here’s our Testimonials page: https://xchanger.org/testimonials.php

There you also have the links to our threads on the most popular online money making forums where we have hundreds (350+ on MMG and ASA) of testimonials from our customers.

The website is very well protected. All the files on the website are encrypted. Also, all connections to the website are SSL encrypted making it impossible for anyone to intercept any data. There are also daily backups being done.

In the case of any downtime on our website orders will still be processed within our time frames as we have daily backups of the database.

10. And speaking of pending transactions, how long does it usually take you to complete an exchange?

We try to process them as quickly as possible. Below are our average processing times:

From LR: 3hrs 25mins 34secs
From GDP: 31mins 21secs
FROM STP: 30hrs 26mins 41secs
FROM SP: 45hrs 16mins 48secs
FROM AP: 48hrs 7mins 47secs

The average processing time is longer for the last 3 (STP, SP and AP) as we need to wait for them to review the transaction and approve it. As soon as we get the approval from them, the order is processed.

11. You’ve added a few ways for the members to keep up to date with the latest happenings at xChanger like your blog and Twitter. Tell us about them and how we can access them.

We think such instruments are needed in today’s era of internet (social media stuff) and they are also useful to keep up with what’s happening at xChanger.org.

Our blog: http://blog.xchanger.org/
Our Twitter: http://twitter.com/xchanger_org

12. Also tell us more about your Live Chat support. What kind of hours do you keep? When are you most active and what is the best time (GMT) to actually find you online?

We try to cover the following schedule for Live Support: 8:00 am to 10:00 pm (GMT time). When the Live Support is offline for those hours it means we’re busy at the moment working behind the scenes. You can still send us a support ticket and receive a reply within minutes usually.

13. What have been the most commonly raised questions or problems you have had to deal with? Is there any issue you would like to raise here so that MNO readers can avoid having to contact you with in the future?

It must have been if we exchange PayPal or MoneyBookers. We do not as both of those e-currencies strictly forbid exchanges with their currency.

14. I can’t really let it pass without asking you about the current problems with StrictPay. If your professional agreement with them somehow limits what you are allowed to say about them, then fine. Is there (in your opinion) a cash flow problem there? What do you think is going on and how should regular HYIP players treat them at the moment? You can’t deny there is a serious problem there, and I can see that from the recent change in your exchange rates.

I can’t explain it better than StrictPay’s administration did in the recent update they’ve sent where they admit that they have cash flow issues because of an investigation that took place and it’s over now concerning 2 merchants that accepted StrictPay as a payment processor.

I’m confident StrictPay will recover from this and become again the reliable service they’ve accustomed their customers first with.

15. You seem to be pretty active in making changes and improvements with the xChanger website in the past, but do you have any plans (let’s say over the next 3 to 6 months) to change things around even further? What would be your personal ambition for the service for the rest of 2010 and into next year?

Our biggest plan right now is to start offering our customers the possibility to buy and sell e-currencies through different payment methods (bank wire, WU, MG etc.) and not only exchange between them.

16. And finally, is there anything you think I’ve missed in this interview? With total freedom of expression, is there anything you wish to say to MNO readers to convince them that yours is a better service than the dozens of others available? Why are you better than the rest?

Because we always listen to our customer and work with him in such way so we could improve the service we offer to satisfy even the highest standards some may have regarding an e-currency exchanger service. Also, the fact that the majority of our customers come from referrals from other customers gives us great pride. We have built our reputation in time through quality of service.”

Thanks a lot to Andrei for taking part in that and congratulations on your first year in business. As a regular customer myself I’m sure that all the readers of MNO will join me in wishing you many more successful years to come. That’s about it for the moment but only until tonight when I will be back with all the day’s important HYIP related news stories so stay tuned for that!