ForumsMerchant Services

We represent a processor with the following attributes you might be interested in:

No setup or app fees

No equipment or software to buy, lease or rent

No contract or early termination fees--exit anytime on 30 days written notice

Included internet gateway with merchant account--in other words, good to go for basic internet processing.
Otherwise, you need to subscribe separately to Authorize.net or a similar gateway provider..

No batch header fees, no annual fees, no AVS fees, etc. Entire fee structure clearly spelled out.

Major Fortune 500 company, not a brand X solution.

If you're interested in details, feel free to contact me at amspcs@juno.com.

Happy Thanksgiving.

AMSPCS

E-commerce business, Welcome

Who are you??, Where are you?? How soon are you starting this new business.

You received a reply from "amspcs". Yes you are in GREAT hands with amspcs.
Barry is good to work with.

Good luck, LUCKIEST

Dear Basket Guy: I read your post and feel your pain. I understand you have experienced a major monetary loss and are now very skeptical about credit card processing companies. However I have to tell you that, from the information you provided in your post, it is clear that your wounds are to a large extent self-inflicted, a result of of unrealistic and incorrect expectations you have regarding many areas of credit card processing. Allow me to clarify a few issues that might help you and other readers of this post save a lot of trouble and money in the future.

First , you appear to feel that since your processor approved the sale, you were home free and safe. Absoutely 100% _in_correct. Authorization means only (repeat: only) that the card being used has sufficient open to buy to cover the transaction authorization being requested. Authorization has nothing remotely to do with inferring that the sale is legitimate. This is entirely the responsibility of the merchant. Visa/MC regs and your processor agreement clearly state that all non face-to-face transactions are 100% at the risk of the merchant. So in the case of the $350 chargeback you suffered, the system worked perfectly and the chargeback was entirely justified per Regulation Z/Truth in Lending laws. In your case, the card was not reported as stolen because the owner probably didn't know he/she had been breached yet; had it been reported rest assured you would have received a 'decline' prompt. The bank did nothing wrong so they certainly aren't liable, and Reg Z protects the victimized card holder to a max $50 responsibility. That leaves the merchant on the hook. That's the law. There ARE ways for merchants to protect themselves of course, which all starts with having realistic expectations and undersandings of how processing works.

Let's talk about processors 'protecting' merchants. Most programs do offer security prompts such as AVS, CVV and so on which are the responsibllty of the merchant to use properly in conjunction with common sense mail/phone order processing procedures which should have been included in your training. These are designed to be 'red flags' to help the merchant protrect himself, which is a very far cry from the sort of guarantee protection I think you expected. If your processor failed to properly train you, you have a legimate beef with them as you were severely short-changed. Otherwise, however, again, the chargeback appears to be perfectly justified.

So mis-interpreting what your authorization meant was mistake #1, quickly followed up by mistake #2 which was changing processors and absorbing a $350 early termination fee for doing so. Fact is, you can change processors every day of the week and twice on Sunday, and you still would have eaten the chargeback. Obviously, V/MC regs as well as Reg Z/Truth in Lending laws apply exactly the same for all processors.

The $350 fee you refer to was apparently an early termination fee. These are fairly common in many processing contracts and are generally legitimate. It costs processors a lot of money to underwrite and board a merchant initially, and they have every right to protect their initial investment from losses resulting from merchants who quickly go out of business and/or change processors as often as they change their socks before that investment can be recouped, which is a problem in the industry. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, making a dollar is what business is all about after all. If the processor rep who signed you up verbally lied to you about such fees or intentionally denied you the opportunity to read your agreement before you signed off on it, then again, you have a legitimate beef. On the other hand, if the early termination fee verbage was included in the contract that you signed and you neglected to read it for whatever reason, then that is an entirely different story. Clearly, one should never never sign anything without reading it. I should also add that it is the responsibility and duty of the selling agent to sell his/her product and honestly answer all questions; it is NOT the duty of the rep to anticipate every possible question or sit there and read every word of a business contract as if it were a bedtime story; that is the responsibility of the merchant signer. Sorry to be so harsh on this subject, but this is how the world works.

I notice you have contacted me via email privately, which I will respond to separately. I'd also like to thank
Luckiest for the positive testimonial in his previous post. We DO try very hard to be straightforward and honest which isn't always easy since we understand that very often the truth isn't exactly what the merchant wants to hear. Nevertheless, we tell it like it is.

AMSPCS

Basket Guy,

Thanks for the clarification. You are sort of right in some respects. Most responsible processors DO help you
determine if the shipping address and billing address of a credit card match. They do this via a system called
AVS (Address Verification System). To learn more about AVS, including a link to review the meanings of the various AVS responses, go to http://www.MerchantServices-help.com/merchant-glossary.html

However, AVS is meant to provide the merchant with a tool in the form of a red flag so he can take steps
to confirm the validity of a sale and avoid being victimized by fraud. AVS generally does NOT generate an automatic decline in the case of address mis-match (although some more sophisticated POS systems are able to set preferences to do just that). The bank generally will only decline the sale when they know the card is stolen or otherwise compromised--if they don't know this (and they usually don't when the owner of the card isn't even aware of the breach and hasn't reported it yet), then they have no reason to decline. Again, an authorization is NOT an indication that the transaction is legitimate or safe.

Beyond that, there are many effective and proven procedures that on face-to-face merchants can use to protect themselves against fraud. If your processor didn't train you in these techniques, then you were severely shortchanged by that processor.

But beyond that, the assumption that the responsibilities of the processor include providing assurance that a credit card transaction is legitimate is an erroneous assumption--confirmation of validity is always 100% the responsibility of the merchant, although processing programs do provide useful tools for this.

AMSPCS

go to http://www.entireone.com/Views/Information/Services.aspx to get the lowest rate possible at the US!
you cant get those rates anywhere else!

Please send your e-mail address to me.Are you having a provider now?
b86bn@aol.com

Thanks for the info, i could lot of infomation and advice