My Merchant Account Blog

First Data Might Be Over Charging Merchants

Thursday, December 31, 2009

What To Do

Since this part is important, we feel it should be first. Read on to see more information on being overcharged.

If you are currently with First Data, or used to be, we are requesting that you consider faxing the information over to Merchant Account Lab, LLC for review. It is possibly that First Data has been overcharging you and we feel this is very unfair, especially due to these economic times. There is a page set up at Merchant Account Lab, LLC that gives you an e-mail address or fax numbers (888-928-5280 or 303-990-5110) to send some information over to them. An attorney will be reviewing this information and hopefully you will recover some of the overcharges.

General Information

Unlike the post Some Basic Merchant Account Fees, we are not referring to First Data charging a merchant extra account fees (like a cancellation fee, ACH deposit fee, mid-qualification rates, etc). We are actually referring to your transaction fee. Most First Data resellers are posting 25¢ on their websites and they quote this fee on the phone as well.

However, when Mile High Merchant Accounts started offering their current merchants this First Data Special, they contacted us with this unfortunate discrepancy. They noticed that merchants were not being charged 25¢ per transaction, but actually 25.99¢.

This might not seem like a big deal, but if you are a current First Data merchant and processing 1,000 transactions a month - this comes to $9.90 extra than what your merchant account reseller explained to you and what was on your contract. What's more - they took a look at the contract the merchant signed with First Data and saw the transaction rate being listed at 25¢.

As Mile High Merchant Accounts was pretty familiar with the First Data contracts and how they changed over the years, we contacted them to ask how First Data is being able to charge merchants than what is listed on the contract. They explained that First Data changed the procedures how paper contracts were being prepared by its agents because some untrusting agents would change the price of certain things, like changing the monthly $10.00 to $20.00. This would ensure the agent would make $10.00 extra each month. The merchant could not do anything about it, since the merchant signed the contract. We are not saying all First Data agents were doing this, but you can see how this would give First Data a bad impression on how it was handling its business. We are hoping that the attorneys will be able to review irregularity and possibly have a class action lawsuit against First Data.

Not knowing how many merchants are paying this extra fee and guessing a low rate of just 10,000 merchants, First Data is overcharging those merchants $99,000.00 a month. This also makes us wonder if this is happening with other merchant account providers that rely on the LinkPoint / YourPay / First Data Global Gateway. If so, a very small estimate would be 100,000 merchants, totaling $990,000 - almost $1 million a month.

My Merchant Account Blog is hoping that ALL First Data merchants will review their contracts and statements from First Data and contact us to help see if you are being overcharged. Consider changing to a provider like CDGCommerce, who is more understanding of small to medium sized businesses when it comes to these matters and sign up with a merchant account with Mile High Merchant Accounts.

Of course, we cannot make any promises of any kind until your merchant account agreement and statements are reviewed by the attorneys. The sooner though you send this information to Merchant Account Lab, LLC, the better.

Disclaimer

The information above is for informational purposes only and not for the purpose of providing legal advice. Use of and access to this web site or any of the e-mail links contained within the site do not create any sort of attorney-client relationship between the webmaster and the user or browser.