Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Top 10 Ways Merchant Companies Rip You Off...And How To Stop Them...For Good!

Introduction

You are either a new business looking for your first merchant account, or you're an existing one looking for better rates or better service. Either way, you are going to remember the day you found Total Merchant Success. I know that sounds rather self serving, but once you read this document and understand what sets our company apart it should be a conclusion you will willingly confirm for yourself.

Did you know that in the merchant service industry there are currently between 20 to 30 methods that are regularly used to increase your merchant account fees. Most of these are applied without you ever noticing. When they are noticed they are seldom understood and even much less questioned. In this revealing ebook we are ripping the cover off these scams and exposing their detrimental effects on average business owners and consumers alike. Information is power. As you read this document you should find yourself becoming increasing empowered to take control over a segment of your business that will make up one of your largest single income sources. If statistics and predictions are correct, your merchant account will increasingly make up a larger and larger portion of your overall income flow. This is due to how the entire world is becoming highly automated and technologically connected. Right now the credit card industry is already processing some GLOBAL transactions. Soon this will become commonplace as the world grows smaller and as paper and coin monies are used less and less. In this new ecommerce world your merchant account will be more and more valuable. You therefore owe it to yourselves to become as informed as possible. We want to help you do this. In fact, our entire business model is built upon the premise that we win, we realize success, only as we help you do the same.

Rip Off # 1 The “Promise of a new LOWER RATE” Trick:

This is the most popular, yet seldom caught rip off. It's also the number one question that business owners ask when looking for a new merchant service company. What is your discount rate? Often, if a company can answer with the lowest number they get the sale. What the business owner does not realize is that hidden behind that fantastic rate, the one you are now bragging about to your friends, is an unknown tactic that's about to bite you in the wallet over and over again. I know, I know, you are about to say, "If they promise you a rate in writing they have to stand by that rate, or it's against the law." And you are right. However, the way they legally do this is to wait for Banks to move first and then they are no longer bound. For example, did you know that Visa, Master Card and all the others execute a rate increase between one and three times a year? When this happens your merchant service company uses this unfortunate occasion to pad their own bank accounts. Not only do they pass this mandatory increase on to you, they conveniently add a little increase for themselves, and this is all perfectly legal.

For Example: Let's say your rate is 1.95% when you start. Then, sometime shortly after this Visa applies a Global Rate Increase of.03%. Your rate would automatically go up to 1.98%. But the majority of merchant card companies use this as an opportunity to simultaneously add an increase of their own. Let's just say they add the same .03%. Now your rate, which started at 1.95%, has shot up to 2.01%. That may not sound like a lot, but over a year’s time it can quickly add up to hundreds or even thousands of dollars depending on the size of the merchant account.
Here is a fact that ought to help you understand how these merchant card companies can get away with this systematic rip off. Whenever we are asked to give a business owner a quote for new service we always ask them to give us their past three or four months of merchant history to evaluate. We obviously cannot do this with a brand new business, but with an existing one this helps us to give a comparable quote that is based on their processing history. We are frequently shocked to find many merchants who have never opened their processing account statements. One of the reasons why they don’t open their statements is because they trust that the merchant service company is going to honor their word and not increase their rates and fees! When we ask about this another reason we frequently hear is that they are too busy and all they care about is the money that goes into their bank. They focus on the bank and not that little bandit that lurks just outside the bank, the one that's quietly scamming thousands... and that's a big mistake, one we hope you will not make yourself.

The Cure #1 The “Pass Through” Solution:

At Total Merchant Success we have a great cure for this rip off. First, we not do play the rate game at all. Instead we offer something that is much more valuable to every business owner. We guarantee that once we set your rate we will not increase that rate BEYOND that of Visa, Master Card or the others. We call this the "pass through guarantee". Instead of padding our rates we open the gates and we refuse to be led only by greed. Don't misunderstand us here. We are not saying that money is not important to us. Not at all. In fact, we believe that our philosophy of business is so appreciated by other business owners that we make more money than many of our competitors. The reason for this can be found in a very simple principle: "Give and it will be given back to you, in greater measure." Instead of seeking a business relationship that lasts only up to the moment you discover our rip off techniques, we are seeking a LIFETIME CUSTOMER. Very few people leave our company. They can't afford to. We honestly do not know of a single merchant service company that has a TOTAL package that can beat our rates. That's why we call ourselves Total Merchant Success. If we can make an honest profit and keep you as a customer for life we will, in the end, make more money through volume than we would by having fewer customers who we are gouging and ripping off. If you are a business owner we believe that your business could benefit by adopting this principle as your own. By the way, we teach these principles to average business owners through our parent company, Total Biz Success.

5 comments:

Merchant Account Services said...

That is superb article to notice such things while dealing with service providers in transactions.

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