Sometimes when dealing with a certain organization or company, you just get a “feeling.” The kind of feeling that tells you that you should be extra cautious in all your dealings with them.
Unfortunately, I did not get the feeling where this particular company (or companies) is concerned until it was too late. I had signed up for a contract with them for a year.
As noted above, the company I am referring to seems to go by various names. The two I am familiar with are SecurePay and Pipeline Data Processing, but I have seen other names at various times on account statements and other correspondence I have received. Although this outfit may offer other “services,” I had signed a merchant account contract with them.
If you are not familiar with a merchant account, it is the type of account that allows a business to accept credit card purchases. I signed up so that I could accept credit cards in my online store. What other way is there to shop online?
To spare myself typing this whole story again, refer to an earlier post I entered here when I first started having problems with these idiots. That should provide all the background required to understand this story.
On 9-26-2007 my one-year contract with this company ended. Or, perhaps I should say, should have ended.
When I got in touch with an employee named Jennifer a few months ago, I was assured that my contract would indeed end on 9-26-2007, but unless I wanted it to just automatically continue, I needed to fax some paperwork to them with my signature and all the magic account and ID numbers before they would terminate it.
Well, I don’t have a fax machine and although I can use my document scanner and PC to send a fax, frankly, it is just a pain in the rear. I guess I will never understand the business world’s obsession with the fax machine. We’re all wired up with e-mail and the Internet so what the hell do we need fax machines for? They seem rather primitive to me, but I digress.
When I informed Jennifer that I did not have a fax machine (must have been a real shocker!), she told me I could send the paperwork through the mail and she provided me with the address.
Around the beginning of September, I prepared all the paperwork and sent it in to Pipeline Data Processing as instructed. I wanted to make sure it would get there in plenty of time before the contract expiration on the 26th.
About a month ago, I got my usual account statement from the company which showed the approximately $30 or so they deducted from my business checking account for their usual litany of “fees” and “charges.” No surprise there since this was for the month of August. I knew one more round of deductions would be coming in October for the final month of the contract in September.
These types of accounts are typically set up to collect the money from the credit card transactions and then deposit that amount in store owner’s bank account, which is quite convenient. That convenience comes at a price, however.
While they were pretty good at depositing the money they collected for the transactions that took place on my web site, they were also quite adept at removing money from my account for various “fees.” Giving access to a company to make deposits in your bank account is a two-edged sword!
So, for the last couple of weeks, I have been watching my bank account like a hawk and waiting for what should have been the final deduction. When I logged into my account this morning, I saw that the deduction had been made. This time it was for about $40 since I have not been using this merchant account for a while now and they hit you with additional charges if you do not do enough business through that account for a given month. Again, no surprise. I was expecting that.
This is where that “feeling” I was talking about comes into play and my feeling about this company is not a good one. So, at this point I felt that I needed to verify that they had received and acted upon my termination request.
I decided to e-mail Jennifer and simply ask her to verify that my contract had indeed been terminated since I did send all the required paperwork to the address she provided me with. She promptly sent me back the name and phone number of the person who handles cancellations.
I should say a word about Jennifer at this point. Despite my feelings about SecurePay/Pipeline Data Processing, I also believe good service should be given the credit it deserves. Jennifer was always very quick to respond, always answered my questions and was very nice about it to boot. The morons that run that outfit could take a few lessons from her!
Anyway, I called the person in charge of cancellations right away and went through the usual drill of providing my company name and merchant ID number, etc.
When I related to her my reason for calling, there was a long pause on the other of the line and I could tell something was not quite right.
She then asked me if I had faxed in my paperwork and I told her I mailed it in. At that point she expressed what might be described as a “V8 Moment,” and if you are familiar with those TV commercials, you know what I am talking about.
I could hear her shuffling through a bunch of papers that must have been sitting on her desk. After a short while she found my paperwork and realized her mistake.
I told her that my concern was that I was going to be charged again in November and have the pleasure of having SecurePay/Pipeline Data Processing reach into my bank account once again and extract another $40 for the month of October. This, of course, should not happen, since I sent in the termination paperwork well in advance of the contract termination date.
Although she sounded somewhat hesitant to admit it, it was too late and they would indeed be extracting another $40 from my account in November. Although I was about ready to blow my top at this point, she seemed to sense that and admitted that it was her fault and that she would put an order in for an immediate credit to my account. A sort of “pre-emptive refund” to make up for what they will take next month.
Apparently, she received my paperwork back around the beginning of September and must have just set it aside and forgotten about it. Now that’s a pretty typical example of human error, and even though that is understandable in the vast majority of cases, this is exactly the kind of thing I expected to happen when dealing with an outfit like this.
As you might expect, I will be watching my account once again for the credit she claims to have ordered. The “feeling” I get from dealing with these people tells me that something may go wrong with that as well.
In summary, if you happen to be a merchant who is online searching for information on a merchant account, my advice to you is to stay very far away from SecurePay/Pipeline Data Processing.
And when you do find a merchant account you plan to sign up with, make sure you read the entire contract agreement before you sign it. There are very likely to be a few nasty little surprises in there that will come back and bite you at some point in the future if you are not careful.
I’ve heard horror stories about some merchants who have canceled merchant accounts before the contract expiration and had to pay a $300 or $500 penalty because of it, so work out a contract as short in duration as you possibly can. You do NOT want to find yourself trapped in a contract with an outfit like this, so push hard for a short contract and don’t buy their B.S. that they can only give you a multi-year contract.
I almost fell into that trap myself. I had actually started to read the multiple pages of my contract agreement around the time I had the experience with the chargeback and discovered that the “standard” contract agreement with this outfit was for three years! Needless to say, this caused me much concern because there was a hefty “termination fee” for those that wanted out of their contract before the expiration date.
Luckily for me, I had saved my original e-mail correspondence with the jackass salesman I had dealt with when I first signed up and I had a message from him that stated quite clearly that my contract was for one year. I had to forward that message to the company to prove that when I started talking to them about terminating the contract.
Just be careful and remember you are entering into a contract when you sign up for these kinds of merchant accounts. It will not be easy to get out of the contract without paying a penalty if the service sucks and you decide you don’t want to deal with them any longer.
In my earlier post, I mentioned how I was pretty happy with using PayPal to process all the credit card transactions from my store. A while back they introduced a new feature that allows you to process payments through their merchant account without the customer ever leaving your web site.
That was a huge move for PayPal because to use their service previously, you had to shuffle your customer off to the PayPal site to complete their transactions. Just the kind of thing you don’t want to be doing, and that was the reason I wanted another merchant account in the first place.
I have been using the new PayPal feature on my site for a couple of months now and it is working just great. I am very happy with it and highly recommend it. Remember, PayPal reversed the only chargeback I had ever encountered while using them and gave me the money back. Unlike the way SecurePay/Pipeline Data Processing treated me.
In addition, the PayPal transaction process is much more secure, in my opinion. As I pointed out in the previous post, when using the SecurePay/Pipeline account, it seemed it would accept just about any name and address for a transaction as long as the credit card number and expiration date are correct! Some security that is!
With the PayPal system, the CVV code is required as well as the name and address of the credit card holder that is recorded on the credit card account before the transaction will be approved. I think it is a much better system and even though it might mean a few lost sales here and there, I prefer that to being ripped off by some low life thief!
Good riddance SecurePay/Pipeline Data Processing! You truly suck!
Update: Thanks to my web logs, I can see that some folks at Pipleline Data Processing were able to find this entry quite quickly and there have been quite a few readings of this from computers at their company. Isn’t the Internet great? Although it allows companies like Pipeline to make a fortune, it can also come back and bite them in the rear once in a while. Let that be a lesson to you. When you provide service that is not satisfactory, expect that information to get around.
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