The ecommerce nightmares: Well everyone knows the vicious cycle of our reliability on credit cards in our cyber world today. The high processing fees, strict contracts, plus added security issues online cause my head to spin at the thought of it. Let me tell you for the small business owner, it really sucks. New security is AVS, is the address verification system & it causes a lot of general errors for people not understanding that their BILLING addresses must match exactly.
Total Escape has been online now nearly 11 years, so I've seen the best & the worst of the ecommerce world. I sell mostly maps on my little store. Total Escape signed up with The Credit Card Store years ago & was not happy with their service at all. A portion of the amount, 2.30% of each sale is taken out, plus a per transaction fee of .30 cents per sale, then of course we all have the government entities added on, like the sales tax & the rising USPS postage on shipping. So you can now easily see why a $12 map ends up costing so freakin' much. There are 4 components to these online sales: the e-commerce store, the gateway, the merchant service provider & my bank, where the funds get deposited automatically.
Many times when a person orders a map online, I send Priority (2-3 days), & the camper is off enjoying their vacation - with map in hand - well before the monies get deposited into my bank account. And so goes the convenience of online transactions.
Recently I shopping around for better rates on my credit card processing. Cynergy would not lower their rates. I was offered a much better rate from my own bank, so I jumped at the chance to save some cash. The money gets deposited into my account one day quicker now. There was a hefty cancellation fee (within the first 3 YEARS) for Cynergy, so I decided not to cancel, but just let the contract run it's course. The need for a paper statement was a $6 per month fee & have no need for it. Cynergy suggested I make this request thru my original provider. I called James Jones at The Credit Card Store to try to get him to wave that once per month $6 charge & asked very nicely. He was very rude & hung up on me. Now that's what I call Professional (with a capital P)! After 2 years of taking my money, he now needs to continue the $6 per month. Whatever dude.
I will never recommend or use the services of James Jones at The Credit Card ever again. The 3 year contract was excessive, the cancellation fees were $250 & the customer service was awful.
