First the good.
There is a guy, Jerrry, at that company who seems legitimate and is willing to telephone you with your questions or comments. He seemed to me honest, and upfront. The good news is, they will accept just about any business.
The very bad news.
Their customer service team does not respond to any of your email communications, and their phone support tells you to send an email. Only after I threated to write this report did they answer my email, and only to tell me to go ahead and do it.
This is NOT a REAL merchant account. They are a re-seller for ECS-WORLD in London, and use a latvian offshore merchant account to process transactions. You account with them is a so-called SUB merchant account, and there is a BIG differrence.
The Problems specificlly:
1. You will have NO control over your merchant account.
2. You will not be able to issue refunds to your customers.
3. They will not issue a refund to your customer on your bahalf.
4. According to their policy they charge $10.00 for every refund, but that was not even an option for my account.
5. According to their terms they will pay you, basically when ever they decide to pay you and for however much they believe you are due, which does not go by any contract but by their "GUT" feelings on that matter. Slowing your processing from one week to another, infact would be grounds to freeze your entire account. YES — Just by not doing as much sales as the week before, would be all it took for them to consider you a risk to them. They also looks at about 400 other things.
6. The Latvian Processor and Visa 3-D Secure - is not a reliable gateway combination. I found that half (at least) of transactions would be declined for no reason at all because of this horrible gateway.
The Insane Fees (but they were upfront about this)
1.7.5% on every sale.
2.10% held as a reserve for 6 months.
3. Paid 2-3 Weeks in arrears.
4. Paid only if you have accumulated at least $2,000, otherwise you are not paid.
5.50.00 per WEEK statement free. This is the most loony of them all. They actually require you to receive a weekly statement.
6.10.00 for every refund (regardless of trans size) GOOD LUCK on getting them to issue your customers a refund. If they do a refund, you will not be refunded the 7.5% transaction fee.
7. If your chargeback ratio is increases. 01 percent, for every increase it adds an additional 10% reserve requirement. You could easily find yourself having 30% of your funds held as reserve with just the slightest chargeback increase.
Bottom line is this company will skim you, they will damage your company's reputation with their bad business practices, and I doubt they would even pay you. Or at least anything near what your contract tells you. I was never paid, so I cannot vouch if they pay.
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