I was thinking about registering for the WHT promo offered by CDG Commerce. On the promo page, it says "NO CANCELLATION FEE!"

However, upon reading their agreement, I discovered the following:

A. Term. The Agreement will become effective on the date Member executes this Agreement ("Effective Date"). The Agreement will remain in effect for a period of 3 years ("Initial Term")
and will renew for successive 2 year terms ("Renewal Term") unless terminated as set forth below.

iv. Early Termination. If you terminate this Agreement before the end of the Initial or any Renewal Term, you will immediately pay PROCESSOR as liquidated damages, an early termination fee equal to the greater of $250, or $35 multiplied by the number of months remaining in the then-current term, in addition to all other amounts you owe. You agree that the early termination fee is not a penalty, but rather is reasonable in light of the financial harm caused by your early termination.

Am I missing something, or is this promotion a bit mis-leading? Shouldn't the promotion read "NO CANCELLATION FEE IF YOU CANCEL AFTER THE THREE YEAR CONTRACT ENDS!"

Do most or all merchant account providers have contracts like this? If so, which company offers the shortest contract length, as that is what I'm looking for.

Edit: Just spoke with the company. I guess that contract has something to do with the bank and not CDG Commerce.

They told me that they do not charge any cancellation or termination fees whatsoever. I wonder if the bank will chage me then? What is the purpose of this fine print, it worries me a bit.

Feel free to comment.

It is becoming common practice for banks to charge termination fees. They are attempting to stabilize their customer base and discourage pricing wars.

This is out of CDG's control - but, it is irritating none the less.

My recommendation would be to make a merchant decision and be prepared to stick with them for 2-3 years - so, choose wisely. You are allowed to negotiate rate with them midway through a term, particularly if your volumes are growing and you have competitive offers.

Hope this helps....

BTW - if you are to select a partner for a 2-3 year period - CDG is a good choice...

Are there any merchant providers where both the company and the bank will not put me under a 3 year termination fee?

Looking into e-onlinedata. Are they good? (60 days contract only)

Please list some others that do not have long contracts.

Let me clarify this once and for all - CDGcommerce merchant accounts do NOT have ANY termination, early termination or cancellation fees under any other name - period. Never have, and never will.

In other words... if you sign up for a merchant account with CDGcommerce and cancel in 30 days, 30 months or 30 years - there is absolutely no termination or cancellation fee charged.

This is regardless of the circumstances present and there are no "catches" or "gotchas." It is exactly and precisely as stated on all of our marketing materials, e-mails and on the 3rd page of our merchant agreement at the very bottom where it lists this explicitly.

As many of you know, we have always been advocates of merchant processors to waive cancellation clauses and we most certainly stand by this policy for our own merchant accounts.

The reason that the verbiage is in there is because it is a bank approved merchant agreement and not subject to change outside of our ability to modify the billing terms & conditions since we are the ISO/MSP handling the merchant account relationship.

And as such, one of the key terms that we modify and waive for ALL of our merchant relationships is the No Termination Fee clause.

I don't really know what else I can possibly do to clarify further on this point outside of mentioning that I could possibly get permission from a few merchants who no longer needed our service and subsequently cancelled to get a first hand confirmation of the fact that we do indeed have no termination fee whatsoever.

Please let me know if I can clarify further on this and I'll be happy to do so. Thanks!

Thanks for clarrifying Chris,

I know the banks up here have become militant with enforcing this fee. It is nice to see a company like CDG working so hard to keep these fees away from consumers.

Andrew

Thanks for clarifying this CDG.

So the bank would not charge me that either?

Thanks for the kind words, Andrew. :)

And yes, Azo313 - since the cancellation fee is waived, you are NOT charged that fee by anyone including the bank.

Again, this is an area of the billing that we control and thus we have the capability to waive it for any merchant that we wish and in our case - that means everyone.

I too read many great things about CDG but have, in two hours of contact with them, hit a technical glitch and a different promo-related problem/question.

Technical problem: I connected to their website and tried to download the .FDF file they had generated and asked me to read and complete. But, in my Acrobat 5, the file appears as raw, unformatted data.

Promo surprise: The promo ("Per Transaction: 2.30% + .35; Monthly Statement: $10... Authorize.Net is also a FREE setup and $15/month") makes no mention of per-transaction payment gateway charges or per-transaction AVS/anti-fraud charges. I emailed them 1 1/2 hours ago but have not yet gotten a response. Since they seem to respond to this website, I'll post my question here too:

Dear Sir/Madam:

I submitted an application because your rates (cdgcommerce.com/whtpromo.php) seemed reasonable. But when I got to the second page of your application, it mentioned new charges previously unmentioned, including a $.10/transaction to use the Authorize.net gateway and an additional $.05/transaction for AVS/fraud.

Would you please explain these discrepancies?

Thank you

Authorize.net charges a per transaction charge in addition to whatever you pay the credit card processor so it can get pretty darn expensive whicj is why we chose Linkpoint. We pay a flat $15 per month only for unlimited transactions.

Hi Patriotsguy,

Regarding your questions, I will be happy to specifically respond & clarify on them for you.

First, on the FDF/PDF problem - one out of every few hundred apps runs into an issue with our online application system in terms of being able to download an app. If you can contact our support team, they can arrange to send you a copy of your app directly through an alternative means.

Second, the AVS fee of .05 is part of the total quoted per transaction cost... it is NOT an extra fee. We simply break out the total quoted per transaction cost into a per item & AVS component.

Third, on the gateway fees, on the 2nd page of our secure online app, there are several options listed with different pricing structures.

The option that you mentioned does have a per gateway fee but other options listed have varying amounts of free included gateway trans from 250-1000+ free gateway trans/month.

Lastly, in terms of some general advice - in most cases, you'll find that the per gateway trans cost is a relatively small component of the total cost on a merchant account, regardless of which merchant provider you consider using.

The biggest variable cost factor on most mail order/Internet merchant accounts are the downgrade fees associated with it - as well as the criteria for determining what downgrades to a mid-qualified or non-qualified transaction.

Downgrades are an area that can vary greatly from one provider to another and are definitely an area to inquire about with any processor that you speak to.

Hopefully this info is helpful!

1) Thank you for taking time to reply. You do a marvelous job of responding to WHT posts.

2) "one out of every few hundred apps runs into an issue with our online application system in terms of being able to download an app."

First, I confess that I'm using Netscape. (I was an avid Firefox user till I "upgraded" to 1.0 which repeatedly crashes on me... and others, judging by their bug report lists.) I HATE I.E. so much that I practically refuse to use it. I hate even opening it up to browse files locally because I don't trust Micro$oft.

With that background, I tried again today to view your file. I connected and downloaded the file to my computer. I then tried to open it using Acrobat Reader 6.0 (rather than the full Acrobat 5.0 as I had tried yesterday). Attempting to read your file (from my hard drive) into Acrobat Reader 6.0 automatically opens up I.E.!!! Didn't even ask me if I wanted to open I.E. Just did it "for me." This happened several times before I gave up. I'm sure this is not your fault. Almost certainly an Adobe issue.

3) "the AVS fee of .05 is part of the total quoted per transaction cost... it is NOT an extra fee." That's good news. Wasn't at all clear from your webpage. Would you please confirm that the $.35 includes the $.05 AVS?

4) "The option that you mentioned does have a per gateway fee." I realize that... NOW. But I feel misled by your "Note on Gateways" at cdgcommerce.com/whtpromo.php which states "Authorize.Net is also a FREE setup and $15/month." That statement is not false, but it sure seems misleading because it fails to mention the additional $.10/transaction charge. I wish I had known of that extra charge BEFORE I provided you all kinds of sensitive information about myself, including my SS # and birthdate. I even stopped my Costco/Nova application to apply to CDG.

Bottom line: given the many glowing posts about your firm on WHT, I still believe you're a caring, well-managed, reputable company. But your application process disturbs me. I really need to get a merchant account and payment gateway set up quickly to sell a book I have written ("Management Secrets of the New England Patriots"), but I can't even view the CDG file and may go elsewhere rather than use I.E.

I broke down and fired up I.E.

I connected to your website, logged in, and tried to view the file. Acrobat 5 then tried and failed to open the document. It objected to the .fdf file, complaining that the document is not a .pdf file.

If I knew how to associate .fdf files with Acrobat Reader 6, I would try that.

It works after I manually changed the file association for .fdf from Acrobat 5 to Acrobat Reader 6.

BTW, as a further update on this... I believe that we have fixed the FDF/PDF online application generation problem for even the very small % of times that it has been an issue.

So it should work properly now in all instances but let me know if not. Thanks!

I want to follow up and thank CDG Commerce for getting me up and running. After the initial challenges I detailed in this thread, things moved smoothly and quickly. The folks at CDG have been quite responsive, helpful, and friendly. Cathy called me yesterday just to see if everything was OK. I mentioned that Amex still wasn't working (though the other three cards are), and she made sure to look into that for me.

Thanks for the kind words, PatriotsGuy. We are always happy to help and I'm glad to hear that everything is going smoothly for you. :)