Merchant account Problems??
 

I wanted to see if anyone could share any stories
about having problems with merchant accounts...

Here's the deal.

I'm writing some copy and I wanted to get some
ideas and i figured you guys would have some stories
to share. I have many of my own. That's for sure.

But, wanted an outside perspective.

About 4 years ago...

Personally, one company held my money for 6 months
because every sale I made was the same exact number.

Go figure.

It got even better, the company went bankrupt and I
never got my money back. 30k down the tubes and still
had to pay affiliates with money I NEVER received.

Any experience would be great...

3rd party processors.
PayPal
ClickBank
Local Bank

Thanks for the help. :-)

Re: Merchant account Problems??
 

I've never had any problems with any of those but
you can find plenty of horror stories about PayPal
all over the internet.

Re: Merchant account Problems??
 

Thanks. I appreciate it. :-) Matt

Re: Merchant account Problems??
 

Hey Matt. :D

I'm finally back in "the A" now and it feels great. There's a lot more going on than when I left.

...Anyway, you should be able to find plenty of stories here: Welcome to PayPalSucks.com, PayPal Lawsuit, PayPal Alternative, PayPal Complaints, Fraud & Evil behind the PayPal system!

Re: Merchant account Problems??
 

Matt,
I tried using Google's payment processor earlier this year. What a nightmare. They suspended my account because a book I had on "Multiple Streams Of Income" was flagged as 'some type of MLM or pyramid' shceme. I asked them what I needed to do to rectify it: change the book, change the sales page, delete the entire site, and got an answer something along the lines of "we're very sorry, we understand your frustration,' blah blah blah, but no ANSWER. Went back to paypal.

-Marcus Ramirez

Re: Merchant account Problems??
 

Thanks for sharing. Sorry to hear that. Wow that sucks. Can I use this?

I'm very interested in the "Multiple Streams Of Income" was flagged as 'some type of MLM or pyramid' shceme." Never even thought about that. So amazing how merchants just don't "GET IT" :-) Matt

Re: Merchant account Problems??
 

I'll go look at it here in one sec. I heard some good things about you earlier today. :-)

Re: Merchant account Problems??
 

Hey Matt,

Yeah, we had a similar thing to you happen a few years ago, except it wasn't the fact that we had the same $ figure, it was because we had over $40K in sales in under 48 hours LOL

Shocked the heck out of the merchant acct. My partner (at the time) talked with them (it was his account) on the Monday and they were totally fine... for a bit. Funny, they kept taking the sales - but then for some reason they just froze the account.

My partner went through days and then weeks of fighting. They held it for six months. We never did see a good chunk of the money according to my (former) partner, and they never explained it. (As far as I know, they went out of business too).

(Note that my former partner and I just went separate ways because he did the rock band thing for a while... now he complains that he wished he would have stayed partners with me... LOL)

Amber

Re: Merchant account Problems??
 

Oh. And now I don't bother really with a private merchant account. He had it happen to two accounts, and the second one was after we'd gone our own ways.

2Checkout is a really good system for alternate choice of a merchant account. (Especially for those who don't like paypal). Up to 50% of sales will come through each if you have both options from my experiences.

Amber

Re: Merchant account Problems??
 

That sound like the same exact thing that happened to me. *******s.

Re: Merchant account Problems??
 

Hi Matt,

From my experiences with using 3rd party credit card merchant services, I highly recommend going to your local bank and setting up your own Visa and Mastercard merchant services account. Once you're setup you can addon American Express etc. Purchase your own merchant services software (very affordable) directly through your bank which you download onto your computer. Everything is totally automated 24/7 including authorizations and closing out your store with deposits going directly into your business account. Occasionally you need to call in for authorizations to Visa and Mastercard using free 1-800 numbers when some customer info gets rejected for a variety of reasons but 98 per cent of the time the system works perfectly. Your merchant processing costs come way down managing everything yourself and once everything is setup and running it's mostly automated and extremely easy.

Here's the links for Visa and Mastercard merchant services for the US for general info...
Visa USA | Merchants | Merchant Resources
MasterCard Merchant| MasterCard®

I'll share another money making tip here for anyone interested in investing and making money long term. It's not as cheap to get in now but there's still some Big Money to be made!

The Best Opportunity This Decade
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And if you don't want to invest in a bank, but still want exposure to the financial sector, consider Visa (NYSE: V). It takes a fee from the millions of credit card transactions executed daily, without being on the hook for the amounts charged... :)

Visa: Still a Buy?

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Dave

Re: Merchant account Problems??
 

Yes I really need to know if anyone has ever has this problem. My merchant account and my website builder account could not even help me and I was pissed. I had a physco lady that kept trying to buy a purse off my site with a card that was being declined and tried 24 times which cost me .30 per pop and no one could help me . I had to remove my merchant processor from my account for awhile and leave a message for customers to contact me to process their credit cards because she would not stop. This is costing me business can anyone give me some advice please.

Re: Merchant account Problems??
 

Matt I have a good one for you and if you could give me some advice I would appreciate it because my merchant account or my site builder could not help me. I had a phyco lady trying to buy a purse off my site with a 2 different cards that kept being declined and she tried 24 times which cost me .30 per transaction. I was pissed.... I had to completely remove my processor from my site for awhile and leave a message for my customers to contact me to process them manually. Have you ever heard something like this?

Re: Merchant account Problems??
 

Sorry to hear that. I also have heard many terrible stories about Paypal but thank God I never had any problems with them. :)

Re: Merchant account Problems??
 

The only horror story I have is PayPal locking my 6 year old account with over a thousand verified transactions and freezing my funds for 6 months.

2Checkout and my bank merchant account with Authorize.net are the only way to go now. 2CO takes PayPal so you have all bases covered.

Ted

Re: Merchant account Problems??
 

Kim
I went through the exact same thing when I had my stores with StoresOnline. It cost a fortune every time a card was "checked".

The failed authorizations weren't always the fault of the customer. Sometimes the system just didn't work properly. Not only do you end up paying a lot of $$ in fees but you lose a customer because they get frustrated and leave.

I switched all my stores over to my own hosting and used zencart and I process my CC's through my QuickBooks software. No double entries. My bookkeeping is done as I do my orders (an my inventory is managed as well)
No I don't have problems with people like your psycho lady because I just don't run the card.
I would talk to your merchant services again about that person and change services if they aren't willing to help you.