Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Merchant Account Sales People

I am setting up a new website and as part of this, I'm trying to setup a way to take credit cards. The sales people in this industry and I just don't get along. Am I wrong to resent this sort of response to one of my inquiries?

John,
Thanks for inquiring on our services.
Here is a break down of our processing. When you take a Visa/MasterCard/Discover you only pay 2.25 % + .25 per transaction. Our merchant accounts include a 6 dollar statement fee, a 10 dollar gateway fee, and I will not charge you any setup fees, application fees or programming fees. Automatically we setup Visa/MasterCard and Discover, if you are interested in Amex let me know, but they charge about 3% and 5.95 a month.
If you have any questions give me a call. Please print out the attached application. Just fill out and sign the areas I have marked and send it back to me with a voided check of the account that you want your funds deposited.
Thank,
You name left off....Account Manager

Here's what bugs me. I think the choice of a merchant account vendor, a credit card processing company is a big deal. Once selected, I'm pretty well locked into their technology and system not so much by contract as by momentum.

I'll train my people on their software, I'll store my customers credit cards on their system, and I'll interface with their technology. But, he seems to assume that there is nothing to discuss. He assumes that I think the pricing is a simple as that.

Am I the only one who gets PO'd at this?

Attached to his email there is the:
- the 36 page First Data Merchant Services Program Guide. A dense thorough document.
- the 3 page FDR agreement
and a few other docs.

I will say that one of the other people that I've made inquiries to called me today with a lets-get-this-thing-signed attitude. I asked a few questions about how the technology interfaces and was told that I could speak to technical support after I signed the contract. I asked how their pricing compared to Google Checkout and was told that I'm very confused, that Google was a search engine and was not in the credit card business. I told her that if she didn't have information about her industry and what was going on in it, she shouldn't call me again.

1 comment:

Michael said...

Hi John, you're right. Most people think it's about price. And half the time the rate quoted isn't even accurate.

I have a free report detailing a few key questions to ask vendors. It's available on my site: www.ampyourcashflow.com

One point. You won't be storing customers cc info on their system (unless you use recurring billing). And I posted an answer to your question on my blog, but not sure if you checked it out.

Michael