Beware the Wells Fargo Merchant Account

I’ve twice had a Wells Fargo merchant account. I should say the old adage holds true, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame of me. But I allowed myself to be fooled. Never again, nor should anyone else be fooled. Let me state clearly and firmly, avoid Wells Fargo merchant accounts, merchant services, etc. They have extremely shady business practices.

I first got a Wells Fargo merchant account with one business and after one year they jacked up the rate so I switched. Later when I was opening another business I got another account from them. I mentioned my previous experience and the guy said they would not jack up the rate or if they did I could cancel.

Wells Fargo you see operates with the classic bait and switch sales scam.

In truth my rate was jacked up, so I called the same guy who helped me last time Wells Fargo jacked up my rate increase, and together we set up a new account.

These were not small rate increases, these were large rate increases. Two totalling 0.8%. Which is huge. On $10,000 of volume in a month that’ll cost you $80, if you process more it’ll increase. It was going to cost me more. I was looking at an increase of a monthly fee of over $200 a month. What if your phone company could jack up your wireless rate in mid contract?

Wells Fargo claims that this increase was passed down from Visa & Mastercard. I don’t buy it. Why don’t I buy it? Because I have two merchant accounts, and my other one did get a rate increase as well at the same time. How much was my rate increase with the other account? 0.05%. Big difference.

So now, I call Wells Fargo to cancel, because why not? I’ve got another account already set up. They tell me I signed a three year contract and there is a $500 cancellation fee. I read the contract I have, the maximum cancellation fee is $200, and it was only if cancelled in less than 2 years, not 3. Are they rewriting contracts now? In addition to of course having their sales rep mislead me to originally get me to sign up?

Unfortunately I feel kinda stuck. Terms within the agreement limit my legal options, and terms within the agreement indicate that if I merely ceased using them it’d constitute termination. I don’t see how they feel they can change some terms without changing other terms. My only hope is pressure, if this post gets ranked high on Google they may cancel my account for me just to shut me up (and if you folks wanna link to this post to help, it’d be awesome). I’ll also be pursuing options with my state attorney general, and with the BBB.

In the meantime, let me recommend Mike Montefusco. mmontefusco AT banccard DOT com. He is the one who has twice helped me out after Wells Fargo jacked up my rate, and the merchant accounts he has gotten me have always had competitive rates and have never had their own rates jacked up by as much as .4% at one time like Wells Fargo. If you need a merchant account, contact him.

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Posted in: Ecommerce » by: Chris

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