Merchant account fees (bait and switch?)
 

OK, so I signed up for a "no set up fee" high risk merchant account through ECS Commerce, and was promised no annual fee. Other account vendors at the time (April 2005) were making similar offers. In fact it was through a GFY post that I got connecting with ESC Commerce. The bank I was set up with is Woodforest.

Now, out of the blue, they shut off my merchant account, b/c they say they now have to collect the high risk merchant fee of $500 per year.

Has anyone out there had a similar experience?

Hi,

We actually have an account with Woodforrest (and other banks as well - all processing through Netbilling). This has nothing to do with ECS as they are just an agent for the bank. Woodforrest got busted and fined by Visa for setting up high risk accounts without registering them as high risk. Now they are backtracking and regostering them all so that is why yoou have to pay the fees. They should have been collected to begin with.

Thanks for the quick reply. I knew ECS didn't technically have anything to do with it, but if I were ECS I'd be pretty angry with Woodforest. Woodforest basically stuck ECS's dick out to be chopped off, as they say.

I just wanted to make sure no one was trying to pull a fast one.

Oh, well, gotta join the rest of the high risk working class.

And what gateway are you using?