Having spent more time than I would’ve liked with Authorize.net support on the phone over the last week, it’s clear to me that our current account with them will simply not work with our hosted service products.
Should you be looking to buy a gateway + merchant account package from Authorize.net, DO NOT GET THE SECURESOURCE PACKAGE. The third-party merchant account for this package is WellsFargo (none of this was disclosed to me as I was signing up btw). They sound like a decent bank, but with this package, you have NO CONTROL over your acceptance of credit card orders. You want to turn Address Verification Services (AVS) off? Nope, can’t do it (even though the Authorize.net payment gateway interface lets you check off those little boxes–it actually doesn’t do anything). You want to be more lenient on accepting international orders? Not if WellsFargo isn’t comfortable with that too, you don’t.
Our nightmare with Authorize.net started when a few of our customers’ credit card transactions started being declined, and we couldn’t figure out why this was the case. We kept receiving a “general decline” message from our “payment processor” aka WellsFargo. After a few calls to figure out the problem, we find out that it’s a simple case where we have no control over what we accept as valid orders. They were being declined for possible AVS issues. Now when you run a web service, the rate of credit card fraud amongst your customers is going to be extremely low, especially if it’s a business tool. People are not going to jeopardize their business data by putting in a hokey card to save a few bucks a month. So we have reason to be very lienient with our credit card processing parameters.
We are now left with no choice but to move our recurring payments over to another processing setup. Authorize.net is already hinting at the need for me to go through their usual sales channel (i.e. pay another set up fee?–no thanks). In any case, I’m glad this problem has surfaced now rather than later and I hope you, dear reader, will be wary of Authorize.net’s package products which you have no control over.
UPDATE: We’ve been using TrustCommerce as a payment gateway and Bank of America for our merchant account, and things have been running butter smooth. The transaction statements from our merchant account is crystal clear and the reporting and management capabilities of TrustCommerce’s admin panel have been a pleasure to use.
Remember, when you’re selecting a provider of these services, you can always negotiate your rates. Do yourself a favor by researching your various options and then enter into the negotation game with your prospects. The credit card and banking industry will never give you a good rate up front.
3 Comments
Nate / 11 September 2006
Wow, sounds like Authorize.net sucks! What else is there? I would assume some service specializing in web app subscriptions would have popped up by now. Where’s PayPal in this mix? I would hope Meg Whitman would see the need to serve the Web 2.0 community.
Authorize.net Sucks / 16 August 2007
Authorize.net is is absolutely the worst company I have ever dealth with. They keep blaming all the problems to either your bank or customers, but of course, it’s never a problem with them. Their customer service on the phone and chat line is absolutely horrible. They are incompetent of running a business and providing decent customer service. I have been with them for many years now and every single year their customer service gets worse and worse.
They put a few people for the Live Chat and when you ask them questions, they are so incompetent that instead of just saying “I don’t know or I will find out”, they try to relate the matter to something completely different, as if you’re dumb enough to buy it. They never accept responsibility for any declined orders and they have the nerve to say “call the number on the back of the CC that is being declined”. Gee, let me sit by my computer all day and night, make sure I catch every declined order, and then call the customer for the “number on the back of the card”.
Their detection suite is completely messed up. It doesn’t work properly and has a lot of issues. I brought this up to their attention, but of course, it’s not their problem.
They DO NOT care about their customers at all. Whether you e-mail or call or use the live chat, you can be sure that they will treat you as if you’re just another number. They make things a 100 times more difficult than it needs to be.
Authorize.net sucks! And don’t bother asking for a manager to call you back. He will completely ignore the fact that their customer service is very poor, will not apologize for it and he will make sure to make you feel like it’s all your fault or the bank’s fault. He will also try to sound intimidating so you just end the call.
Authorize.net has a very bad customer service and their Website does not work well, which means I, as a merchant, have lost a lot of orders - simply because they don’t want to accept that there is something wrong with their system.
But what really gets me is how their manager is and how little they show that they care about you as a customer.
PB / 30 April 2008
One problem I have had with Authnet is their inability to send emails regarding crucial transactions such as:
Denied Credit Cards
Returned Checks
Cleared Checks
And others..
If the merchant is expected to live in their online interface to get this information, it’s really
not told to them. If you are a customer of Authorize.net make sure you know how to read their reports, don’t ever assume that you are getting your money. Chance are you are not and there is just no report to tell you that there was a problem.
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