Charge.com Review
Merchant Maverick's Rating: (3 out of 5)
Last Updated: January 27th, 2010
Overview:
With a great domain name like Charge.com, I would expect this company to be at the top of the food chain, but unfortunately I was wrong. I expected to find a spotless record of great customer service and ethical business practices but unfortunately, I was wrong again. I'm not saying that Charge.com is all bad, but the countless public complaints of undisclosed contract terms & fees, withholding of funds, horrible BBB rating and bad customer service are hard to ignore. Not to mention that their parent company Pipeline Data Processing Inc. has two separate Better Business Bureau (see below) listings with sub C ratings. That is not good fellas.
I think it would be wise to keep in mind that since Charge.com is one of the larger ISO/MSP's out there, they'll obviously have more negative reviews than their smaller competitor's. Which is one of the reasons why I gave them a 3 out of 5 instead of a lower score. I didn't want to hold their size against them too much.
With that said, instead of basing your judgement on the sheer number of complaints, it would be better to look at the commonalities amongst them and use that as your bargaining chip.
Date Established:
1995.
Parent/Partner Company:
They were bought out by Pipeline Data Processing Inc. (OTC:PPDA) a little while back. They usually partner with either First Data or Pipeline Data for their transaction processing, and use Linkpoint or Authorize.net as their payment gateway.
Type:
Registered ISO/MSP of Wells Fargo Bank.
Trust Symbols:
Here is the Charge.com BBB profile. They have a "D-" rating as of this review, with 52 complaints in the last 36 months. Also, their parent company has two BBB profiles here and here.
You can find the Charge.com corporate info here.
Security/Privacy:
The Charge.com site is "https" secured, but not sure by which company. They do have a decent privacy policy.
Customer Service:
A business partner of mine has personally dealt with their pre-approval customer service, and He said that they were quite pleasant and knowledgeable. I haven't dealt with their post-approval customer service, but judging from the complaints (see below), I'm not too impressed.
Negative Reviews:
Check out RipOffReport.com with 20 reports (as of this review), ePinions.com (Pipeline Data Inc.), a wonderful thread at paypalsucks.com and a personal account from a blogger who had a less than stellar experience with them.
Common Complaints:
- Bad post-approval customer service.
- Withholding of funds. This is usually the third-party processor or the bank's fault. Better MSP's will work with you to get those funds released.
- Undisclosed charges (PCI compliance fee $150).
- Undisclosed contract terms (36-months).
- Undisclosed cancellation fee ($300).
Verifiable Testimonials/References:
I attempted to contact all of the testimonials that were listed on the Charge.com site, and was unable to receive a response from any of them. A couple of the companies looked like they were out of business. It might be time for Charge.com to update those bad boys.
Locality:
Sunrise, Florida.
Product Offering:
Online/Internet Virtual Terminal & Retail.
Specialty:
Online/Internet Virtual Terminal.
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