Last February, my uncollected sales from 2003 stood at 8%, so I decided to bite the bullet and get set up to accept credit cards.
It's been a very frustrating process thus far. I decided to go through payright.com. The salesman was very friendly, but as it turns out, he was lying via omission.
They were supposed to charge me 2.29% right off the top, as well as $.25 per transaction, plus $9.99 per month for access.
Well, when I got my first statement, almost all of my transactions were droppoing to what they call "non-qualified" status. That meant they would charge me an extra 2.5% or so. Because I'm doing low volume, with the other fees, their total take has been around 6%.
I called their customer service division after that first statement and never made any progress. I was hoping that things would be better for month two.
When I got my second statement, they informed me, in very small type face, that my rate had increased from 2.29% to 2.40%. Again, most of my transactions were non-qualified and their take was still around 6%.
I called their customer service and they said the reason my transactions were non-qualified was because I didn't have the CVV numbers (the three digit codes from the back of the cards). Well, this was the first I'd heard about that, so in a panick, I sent out a letter to all my customers with the next statement saying that I would not be processing their credit cards unless they called me back with the CVV numbers. Most didn't call. So, even though I took the time and expense to get set up for credit cards, I still have problems getting paid on time.
Well, I've been calling their customer service people with persistency. Usually, I call and have to wait in queue for at least 30 minutes to get through to a person, and this has to be done during business hours (when I've got work to do). I've been talking to a manager who I'm now on a first name basis with. It turns out that all of my mastercard and discover charges are qualified, but for an unknown reason, all of my visa charges are being dropped to non-qualified status. The challenge is to get the credit card processing company to talk to the software company so that we can figure out what the software isn't sending the processing company.
I'm optimistic that eventually I'll get a fair shake, but Jim's comments above about the constant rate increase really scare me. How in the heck can he be paying 8.5% when they're offering new customers 2.4%???
Later,
DFW Area Landscaper