Typical Merchant Account Experience

Each day Google sends me a list of blog posts written about merchant accounts. Today I followed a link to the Fashion Incubator Blog. Below is a portion of what the blogger, Kathleen Fasanella, wrote about working with on-line shopping carts and merchant accounts:

“I signed-up for the recommended merchant account provider and was surprised to discover a lot of hidden charges. I had difficulty trying to interpret the monthly billing charges and I suspect it is intentional. Who has the time to translate pages of information that make no sense? In the end, my monthly merchant account fees (not including finance charges) were twice the advertised rates.”

“The straw that broke the camel’s back was the customer service support. Most questions can be answered through on-line help pages. Actual customer service support is available by email or phone. Expect to wait at least 24 hours for an answer to an email. Usually the answers are quotes from the on-line help pages unless you pester them with lots of follow-up questions. Follow-up emails are assigned to a new person automatically so you may have as many as 5 people trying to help you. One particular problem took 2 weeks of back and forth emails until they finally told me it could not be solved.”

I hear and see the same stories on a daily basis, especially the part about the fees being twice the advertised rate and intentionally confusing merchant account statements. In this case the blogger ended up with PayPal which is easy to use but still very pricey.

So what should you do if you are facing a similar situation with your merchant account? Contact me and I will perform a thorough analysis of your account. The result will be a considerable reduction in fees and remarkable customer service.

Like this post? Then subscribe by RSS | Email