- Report: #179054
Complaint Review: BankCard USA - Westlake Village California
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BankCard USA
5701 Lindero Canyon Road, Building 3 Westlake Village, 91362 California, U.S.A.
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BankCard USA ripoff overcharge on monthly fees, false representation on phone, 4.5% plus discount rate Westlake Village California
BankCard USA uses deceptive practices to hook online merchants into using their service. When I signed up with BankCard USA to process orders for my website, I was told that there would be a discount rate of around 3.4% and a minimum fee of $35 or so per month, in addition to some random charges that I was fine with. The minimum fee, the phone rep told me, would be dropped when my orders reached a certain point. This was a slippery claim (read, a lie). The fee was dropped, but in its place there appeared a host of new fees I wasn't told about and which were not specified in the contract I signed. These were discount fees for "mid-qualified" and "unqalified orders." Since I do business online with clients who use corporate cards from countries around the world and no card present, mid- and unqualified chargethroughs constitute the majority of my business. All told--adding up the customer service monthly fee, another fee to access my records on a separate site BankCard USA runs, and a $45 fee for a lease on a physical terminal I didn't even need but that was sold to me anyhow--I'm paying between 4.5 and 5% of my income to a company that promised me a 2.5% discount rate. Don't belive what you hear on the phone. Don't even call!
I found this company following a link from a site about how aweful PayPal is. Don't believe these sites. Look at them closely and you'll quickly discover that they're planted by traditional credit card processors trying to get you to use a traditional method of payment collection that is outdated, expensive, and inappropriate for the web.
BankCard USA offers a service that might sucker you in called RTWare. This isn't their service. It's actually just Authorize.net, about which I have no complaints except one: they offer no security to merchants doing global business. This is ironic in the extreme because their catchphrase is "Where the world transacts." Here's the deal: Authorize.net is incapable of running address verifications on cards for international orders. Because of this major oversight, if you get an unauthorized transaction from a foreign customer, BankCard USA jacks you $20 and ties up your funds. In my business, I work with freelancers, which means that a $50 order turns into something like a $60 loss. I'm as careful as I can be, but even so, theives exist and the service BankCard USA is offering to online merchants is incapable of helping you to help yourself stop them. Again, outmoded, expensive, and totally inappropriate for online merchants.
If you've got a contract from these shiesters, tear it up, don't sign it, don't call, don't take their calls. You don't need their physical terminal--the "Nurit"--and you won't get anything but a tax writeoff you don't want from their physical terminal. Think about it this way: you can fly most anywhere in the country once a month just to check it out on the extra, unstated fees they'll charge you.
Mike
Fremont, California
U.S.A.
I found this company following a link from a site about how aweful PayPal is. Don't believe these sites. Look at them closely and you'll quickly discover that they're planted by traditional credit card processors trying to get you to use a traditional method of payment collection that is outdated, expensive, and inappropriate for the web.
BankCard USA offers a service that might sucker you in called RTWare. This isn't their service. It's actually just Authorize.net, about which I have no complaints except one: they offer no security to merchants doing global business. This is ironic in the extreme because their catchphrase is "Where the world transacts." Here's the deal: Authorize.net is incapable of running address verifications on cards for international orders. Because of this major oversight, if you get an unauthorized transaction from a foreign customer, BankCard USA jacks you $20 and ties up your funds. In my business, I work with freelancers, which means that a $50 order turns into something like a $60 loss. I'm as careful as I can be, but even so, theives exist and the service BankCard USA is offering to online merchants is incapable of helping you to help yourself stop them. Again, outmoded, expensive, and totally inappropriate for online merchants.
If you've got a contract from these shiesters, tear it up, don't sign it, don't call, don't take their calls. You don't need their physical terminal--the "Nurit"--and you won't get anything but a tax writeoff you don't want from their physical terminal. Think about it this way: you can fly most anywhere in the country once a month just to check it out on the extra, unstated fees they'll charge you.
Mike
Fremont, California
U.S.A.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Sharon
Westlake Village,California,
U.S.A.
BankCard USA Rebuttal
#2UPDATE Employee
Fri, April 20, 2007
BankCard USA sets up merchant accounts. We underwrite the merchant based on either swiped or keyed in merchants. Swiped merchants will have the customer's credit card present and is usually a retail location. The discount rate for our swiped merchants is 1.69%. We also offer our keyed merchants (merchants who own a mail/telephone order business, internet business..etc). The discount rate that we offer our keyed merchant is at 2.29%. Our application will disclose this information. Additionally, there is the qualified rate, mid qualified and non-qualified rate. Rates downgrade to the mid qualified rate when customers use a credit card that accumilates any rewards or points. Rates will downgrade the non-qualified rate if the customer is using a corporate/business card, government cards..etc. This information is all disclosed in our agreement. We do not hide this information at all. It is the merchant's sole responsibility to read the terms and conditions of their merchant account. Our reps also disclose that a copy of our agreement can be viewed online at www.busams.com-this information is disclosed to all of our merchants.
