I rarely bring up specifics about another business on this blog, because I think it is unprofessional and simply irrelevant to focus on other business’s poor practices, but this warranted a break from my norm.<\/p>\n
One of our agents was recently in the process of signing a customer up with a merchant account. The business they were talking to was already processing, but was somewhat unhappy with their current level of service and fees and was looking for someone better.<\/p>\n
Another merchant account provider that was also trying to gain this business’s merchant account was Heartland Payment Systems. Heartland is one of the larger US based providers ranking at number six in overall volume in the US. <\/p>\n
After a recent post<\/a> on the merchant account services blog, I thought that this was a completely appropriate post about deceptive merchant account fees.<\/p>\n What happened:<\/strong> Now, while the rate that our agent quoted to this merchant was not the lowest that ever existed, it was a fair, and completely honest rate. What heartland quoted was not an honest rate, it was designed to deceive this business owner.<\/p>\n <\/a>Heartland’s quote (exactly as written)<\/em>:<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nOur agent quoted the business a rate of about 1.68% and $.19 per transaction for credit cards (For times sake, I’ll avoid the entire fee structure)<\/em>. Considering that the company was paying over 1.9% on their retail account, this was a significant decrease in price.<\/p>\n