Credit Card Processing
I signed up for a credit card processing service (merchant account and gateway combination) a year ago. I was begrudgingly losing money with not making the minimum accumulative transaction amount and not taking many (or any) credit card purchases every month.
Then they announced a security fee that would effectively 25% of my credit income to date (on top all the other fees I'd been paying).
I decided to switch processors as that was something I was not happy with. Chase Paymentech seemed to have decent prices without the huge security fee. It seemed to be too good to be true. It was. I never received information on activating the gateway account that I required for my setup. I was actually asked to set it up on my own! (This option would not be free.) They needed to have inspecters take pics of my business location (where I live) to make sure I really did what I said I did (I think my first processor was okay with just my website). I also purchased a card swiper to use with the app on my phone.
I later realized that it would actually be more expensive than the processor I had been using already. And it was taking a long time to get things set up. I felt like I was getting the runaround. I decided my best course of action would be to cancel this thing before it got out of control.
I called and cancelled (without a cancelation fee, as far as I know). I cancelled the appointment with the on site inspector too.
The next day, the representative emailed me stating I needed to do this (obviously, he got he message about the cancelation of the inspection, but not about my account). The inspectors came at the time they were originally scheduled to (they appeared to be an older couple) who had obviously not gotten the message and left rather pissed. I felt kind of bad, as I didn't know how far away they were coming from. I later realized that the inspection company had called and left a voicemail that Google Voice didn't notify me of.
Now I can no longer accept credit cards, and have a useless card swiper. (Did you know that swiped California drivers licenses show up as Maestro cards?) Intuit seems to have a much more reasonably priced plan with monthly fees being half what I paid before, but with higher transaction fees. With the infrequency that I process credit cards, this sounds like a much more affordable option. I don't see any online store transactions being supported, however.
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