Merchant Account Reviews - Learn to Recognize the Useful & Avoid the UselessBy BENJAMIN of Adsenselover.com
Accurate, useful merchant account reviews do exist, but they're not always easy to find. Many reviews aren't worth the time it takes to read them, but there are helpful ones out there and we're going to show you how to recognize them.
This article explains the downfalls that plague many merchant account reviews and it shows you how to tell the useful from the useless.
Rates and fees change often and for many different reasons
Merchant account reviews are often presented in the form of a table that compares rates and fees offered by various merchant service providers. These tables are nice to look at, but that's about the extent of their appeal.
Credit card processing rates and fees aren't structured like the typical retail pricing that we're used to. Sales agents don't operate with fixed pricing, instead, they use a range of rates and fees to create offers based on what the market and the competition will allow.
In a company with 50 sales agents, it's theoretically possible for a single merchant to negotiate 50 different rate and fee packages just by talking to each agent individually.
Affiliates offer biased reviews
Many online reviews are created by affiliate marketers whose goal is to create sales for the company that is the subject of their review. For obvious reasons, affiliate marketers are biased toward their partner provider. Later on we'll tell you how to spot an affiliate review.
Different reps at the same company give different levels of service
Merchant service companies can employ tens or even hundreds of individual sales agents that sell merchant accounts under the parent company's name. Quality of customer service, sales approach, experience and other important factors that create a good representative will vary from one agent to the next.
Often, reviews that attempt to evaluate an entire company's performance are really just focusing on a single agent.
Merchant service providers have their specialties
Merchant service providers often specialize by focusing their product offering on a specific type of merchant account. Reviewers seldom recognize specialties and they lump providers together under general comparisons leaving the important information out.
For example, a provider that specializes in offering wireless merchant accounts may perform poorly in a review focusing on Internet merchant accounts.
Individual agents work with some people better than others
Going back to the idea that an entire company can't be evaluated by the performance of a single agent, it's easy to see how personal chemistry can make or break a business relationship.
Some people work well together and others don't. It's very possible for the same merchant to give a glowing review for one agent and a poor review for another at the same processor. The review shouldn't reflect on the company as a whole, it should reflect on the individual agent.
How to recognize good merchant account reviews
The focus is on a consistent features & aspects
As explained above, it's virtually impossible to create a useful review around merchant account rates and fees. Reviews that focus on more consistent topics will always prove more useful. Look for reviews that focus on areas like quality of customer service, industry experience, and depth of product offering.
These things take quality and effort over time to accomplish. Rates, fees and other things that can be easily changed with minimal effort don't make for good reference points from which to compare providers.
There's a specific focus
Look for reviews that compare and contrast specific agents or specific types of merchant accounts. Services like CardFellow that review every provider individually are good examples of this. Discount reviews that attempt to generalize entire processing companies.
Reviews are based on multiple first-hand accounts
Reviews that are constructed around first-hand accounts have a better chance of being fair and balanced than those created by a single researcher.
There are no indications of an affiliate marketer
Affiliate marketers tend to offer biased information. Affiliate ID numbers within links, calls to action like "Buy Now" buttons and overly positive ratings for one company are all solid indications of an affiliate marketer.
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