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  • buddman
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    CDG is a corrupt company. You will be sorry if you decide to do business with these guys.
    1. They quote low rates for unqualified and qualified cards but what they don’t tell you is they charge both cards rates for same card transaction. Example off my CDG statement: 161.00 charge 2.28% Qualified Rate and for the same transaction at bottom of statement 1.59% Non-Qualified rate. That is a total of 3.87% plus all the other fees they charge.
    2. The qualified fee and non-qualified is charged on every transaction including there system running credit card twice by mistake of if you refund a charge to customer. There gateway accidently ran the same transaction twice and I was billed two transaction fees for same purchase…
    3. Approval codes mean nothing, CDG has the power to not pay you and close your account even when you have an approval code and nobody at visa, government will help you. I sold to my customer a small manufacturer $10,600 worth of products as I always have in the past, he paid by visa, ran it through CDG, got a approval code, than because I was over my limit, even thought the processed this transaction several times in the past for same customer, they closed me account. They are still holding onto the Money since they were paid by visa and my customer’s bank and will not refund it and will not release it to me. I told them if they do not refund the customer, I will have no choice but to get an attorney. They saw that as a threat and now will not refund the money and will not talk to me. They also took out the $529.00 processing fee and refuse to refund it even though they never completed the transaction. I am now trying the OCC and FTC Government to see if they can help out.
    3. Too many financial institutions involved in layers. The hidden shell game, under what egg is your money kept. So far and I have not scratched the service yet, CDG, United Bank, First Bank of Omaha is involved in this and not one of them will help.
    There is more but if you value your business, do not sign up with CDG…
    Very frustrated small business guy…

    • RobertEvans
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      Buddman, I am so sorry to hear about these issues. This seems like a very strange situation with a number of different issues. I know the frustrations must be immense, hopefully someone from CDG will reach out with a better explanation of what occurred. Typically funds are held if the activity is deemed as a potential fraud case, very strange that this transaction had already been run multiple times with this same processor and there was still an issue. Please keep us updated if there are any new developments.

      • gnuman
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         I also had several accounts with CDG and it was a complete disaster. They seemed straight up, their rates were ok and their customer service was helpful. Then I had an order on one site that was larger than normal so I called to warn them and was told it would be treated on an individual basis… no problem. Next thing I know, all my accounts are locked because the fraud division of the bank behind CDG pulled the panic alarm. There wasn’t anything unusual about the transaction… all the required info, including c v v  was accurate and the ship to address was the same as the account. The only problem was that they called the customer to verify and couldn’t reach him. He might have been on vacation… I don’t know. I asked why all three accounts were locked up and CDG said it was bank policy. The guy I had to talk to when all this happened was not the sharp, helpful customer service rep but some idiot who didn’t have a clue what he was doing, couldn’t answer any questions and just kept repeating the same phrases over an over. I couldn’t talk to anyone at the bank and was so frustrated with the idiot on the phone, I would have strangled him if I could have. When your cash flow goes to zero, you have to do something quickly so I switched all the sites over to PayPal until I could get setup with another provider. I had to wait 6 months to get the money that they held… several thousand dollars (keeping the accounts open and paying the minimum service fees). As far as I’m concerned, anyone that uses CDG is making a huge mistake. No matter how smooth an image Chris West presents, the reality is far different.

    • Chris West
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      Hello Buddman,

      Since our start in 1998, CDGcommerce has always been 100% upfront and clear with full disclosure on ALL aspects of our merchant pricing. In fact, we explicitly list out all of the pricing for the various line items including Qualified and Non-Qualified on the pricing page on Web site, our online application and the merchant agreement that is signed and sent back to us.

      If you accept payments on certain cards such as International cards or certain Rewards cards, the cost to the merchant processor is much higher and as a result those types of transactions fall into the Non-Qualified category which means you pay the Qualified Rate + Non-Qual Surcharge = Total Non-Qualified Cost.

      This is definitely NOT an error in billing nor are you being “double billed” in any way, this is being billed correctly just as we outline and explain on our pricing pages. If you refund a charge to a customer, you do NOT pay again either. While some processors do indeed charge a % on a refund, CDGcommerce does not do so.

      Regarding your comment on approval codes, an approval code is an automated authorization by the card issuing bank. It has nothing to do with any risk limits setup on your merchant account. 

      As a merchant who signs up with ANY merchant processor, whether it be CDGcommerce or another, you are approved to accept certain maximum ticket sizes. If you dramatically exceed that, I can pretty much guarantee you that ANY merchant processor’s risk department will investigate it. Part of a merchant’s responsibility is to abide by the terms of their processing agreement.

      It is important to understand that if you run through a $10,000+ sale and you were not approved to do so that represents a substantial loss risk to the merchant processor if that sale were to be charged back and you did not have sufficient funds to cover that.

      Out of the many, many thousands of extremely happy merchants that CDGcommerce has – there are perhaps maybe a few that have accounts on hold at any given time. It is very much so the exception to the rule. I would invite you to contact us further to discuss your situation to see if we can further assist you because this situation seems VERY far from what a normal CDG merchant experience is.

      Our entire business is based on the great reputation that we have built over the past 14+ years and the happy clients that we have so again I would encourage you to contact us to discuss any concerns that you may have as this definitely is not a typical situation.

      • RobertEvans
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        Chris, thanks for your response. Everything you stated makes a lot of sense specifically with regards to the issues with the large payment, I think as you would agree this can be a large pain from a merchant’s perspective as they have tried to do everything correctly and are still getting hung up. 
        In the past I have recommended that if a merchant knows they are going to have a large payment that is out of character, they are best served to try and contact their processor; but often even then the system is automated and there are issues. Any advice you could give on the steps a merchant should take at CDG to avoid an issue like this one would be greatly appreciated by all our readers.While the processing costs for unqualified may have been explained I have found this is often the issue a large number of merchants face. They hear 2.28 and 1.59 and assume that those are separate individual %s, as opposed to being ones that in fact at on top of each other in the event of an unqualified transaction. Thanks for your response, it goes a long way towards helping to understand both sides of the issue.

        • Chris West
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          Thanks for the reply, Robert.

          Our recommended advice to all of our merchants whenever they have a very large transaction that is beyond their approved limits is to simply contact us (phone, live chat or e-mail) and let us know in advance.

          That way we can help them get together the documents that will be required before they even process the transaction so that it can zoom right through and get funded without delay. We’ve done this countless times with our merchants over the past 14+ years and almost all of them go through very smoothly when it is done this way and if there IS an issue – the merchant knows it before they even run the transaction.

          • RobertEvans
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            Thanks Chris, really great information for business owners that have issues like this come up from time to time.

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