Visa Trial and Subscription Mandate Explained | Subscriptions, Recurring Billing, and Memberships Get Gut Punched! | B2B Vault | Episode 168

Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the Mark McGuire of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. And we'll be providing you educational information about fintech payment processing, small business, and the technology businesses are using in the world today. And in today's podcast, we're going to be talking about subscriptions, recurring billing, and memberships, and how the FTC punched them dead in their mouth. They did not like what they've been doing.

It's a gut punch. And—

or yeah, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Mike Tyson is That's one of my favorite plants. Yeah, but they got, they got gut punched. They got punched right in the gut. I was gonna say something else again, but you know, yeah, um, a lot of stuff going on with that. Yeah, I, if you're using PayPal, I'm hoping that you're staying in, in the loop with this. And if not, then this is the perfect podcast for you, my friends.

Anybody using a facilitator, PayPal, Stripe, Square, etc., Shopify? And you're running—

um, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! Here we go jumping right into the whole— okay, how are you doing, Alan?

Great. We went to a nice event last week.

It was 2 weeks ago.

2 weeks ago already? Was 2 weeks ago?

Well, by the time this podcast posts it'll be 2 weeks.

Okay. 2 weeks ago. Broward and Beyond was an interesting event.

Yeah, there was a lot of people there for the first half. Yeah, and then it poured.

Yeah, massive rains.

When I, when I walked out of— when you guys were still sitting in there and I walked out, I thought to myself, yeah, they're going to be leaving any minute because it was literally no cars out there.

Oh well, no, besides the people who were there, got like a little wave Yeah, people that were probably like on the way over. Ah, so there was like a wave of people that came through, and then it really started thundering and lightning, and then people started leaving.

Yeah, especially booking up out of there.

Especially when a bunch of people start packing their boots up. Of course, like all the government booths and all that, they're not going anywhere. They're on the government, you know, clock roll. Yeah, they're just gonna sit there. Collect that check, collect their money and not, not leave. But it was interesting because they give you— you know, we spoke to some people about the opportunity, how to do business with the government. Uh, you know, it's not easy, especially for payment processing. For other companies, it's a little bit easier, like if you sell physical products, right? Let's say you provide— let's say you own a cleaning company, right? Uh, it's easy for them to give you a contract. So you could get a contract to clean maybe one of their offices, right, and go there every day or every whatever the schedule is and clean the office. Or let's say you sell— I don't know what it could be— an item, maybe like— probably not printing because a county probably has like a lot of machines that do tons of printing, their own printing machines. Um, a lot of them do.

I know that they do their own maintenance, they do their own janitorial stuff.

Some of the— some— they farm out a lot of janitorial.

Well, depending— yeah, right, depends on the facility.

I'm sure to like small, like their satellite offices, that's all farmed out. I mean, opportunity— but yeah, there's opportunity for some businesses to get in there and do some business. Maybe you sell something that they need to buy and you're a local company. And it was interesting that a class— they were— they had all the agencies there help you get set up for that special designation because governments are supposed to do a good percentage of their business with the local community.

You could have a whole podcast on this one.

Exactly.

So, but yeah, the, the biz to biz— what was it called again?

Broward and Beyond.

Broward and Beyond. That was a— it was a nice event. Um, I want to make a quick announcement here. Next week when the podcast— we're going to be at the SEAA convention on Monday, Tuesday, and then Wednesday we have another event. So you probably won't see a podcast this Wednesday.

Really?

Why not?

Yeah, we're gonna post this one. Oh yeah, that's right.

Yeah, never mind. But yeah, anyway, we're going to SEAA next week and that's the Southeastern Acquires. Yeah, it's my first time anyway, and, uh, it's also Mental Health Awareness Month. So I wanted to, uh, you know, make sure that everyone out there, if you need any help, to go and seek it. I'm sure if people watch the podcast, you could see that I was going through some stuff, uh, And I started therapy about 2 months ago, and I mean, I feel much better. Um, thanks for everyone who called and reached out and could obviously tell that I wasn't all right. Um, yeah, man, you know, take care of yourself. You know, that's, that's, that's my announcement. Always take care of yourself.

And it's definitely important, you know, to take care of your mental health, your physical health. Yeah.

Yeah.

Keep your head on straight. I applaud you.

Because I've been working out for, I don't know, I started working out like 8 months ago and I just wasn't feeling better. And I don't know why. Like there's no, there's not, you know, I was always trying to find this answer as to why. Yeah. Like what's wrong with me? And there's no answer to it. No, there's no answer. It's just a bunch of stuff that you, you know, a whole bunch of stuff that I've packed up and I'm, you know, I'm holding on to it. And I'm learning how to let go of it. And, uh, I hope that everyone out there does the same, man.

I've been through those times in my life.

Well, thank you for being cool and making sure that I'm going to, you know, take care of that.

I understood and I worked with you to make sure you were able to go do what you needed to do.

Yes, sir. Anyway, on a much lighter side, we're going to be talking about subscriptions, recurring billing, and memberships. So what do you got for it? What's up?

Well, what I was going to say is The first thing is, is, you know, we just did a pod about the PayPal, Square, and Stripe.

Yes.

And Shopify.

One thing, episode 166, if you were in, you know, if you want to check it out.

One thing is, is that with this subscription thing coming down from the FTC and the recent rule that went into effect last year with Visa and MasterCard, which they announced all the way back in 2020, then they enacted it in 2022. So with all of these things on the horizon, if you're using one of those companies, we have no, you know, we don't have no idea what they are going to do, right? You have to remember, they are the merchant of record, so if they decide you can't run a subscription anymore, they're not going to give you a warning and go, hey, we don't like the way you're doing this, or Yeah, they don't have to give you a reason at all, right? They just pull the plug and you're gone. So I would say if you don't have a backup merchant account, now is the time to get one so that you have a merchant account and you have a payment service. I would not run a payment service all by itself on one of these with doing any kind of subscription, recurring billing, memberships, you know, like people do these you know, clothing subscriptions.

And oh, I was about to ask you, give an example.

You know, food subscriptions, you know, where you get, you know, you sign up Threads in a Box. Yeah, you just pay $25 and they send you plants every month, or they send you shoes or whatever it is. Or there's a guy that was— is a client of ours and have a tech box.

That's cool.

Yeah, it's $19.95 a month. What is—

what do you get in here?

You get a lot of junk.

It's not cool.

It's cool, some of it. Yeah, some of it's cool. You get like, you know, USB stick, and you get some other like tchotchkes, you know, like little things. And then, and then the whole pro— the thing is, is that randomly you could get an iPad.

I'm trying to find this one.

No, but what I'm saying is randomly you could get an iPad You could get, you could get some Meta Quest goggles in there. You could get something like—

there's Loot Crate, that's the one I used to be a part of.

So you could get— yeah, for a long time the guy had me on the list, I was getting it for free, but he stopped doing that. But you could, you could get it, you could get like a really good gift in there. Like when I was on there getting it every month, like I got some Bose, uh, headphones. Headphones.

Oh nice.

You know, because randomly, like, depending on how many people are getting the subscription, randomly, you know, 5 to 10 people get like a premium item.

Oh, premium box. Yeah, because that's, that's how the one thing was, but it's a guess. Oh really?

You get it?

That's kind of messed up.

They're giving you like a $300, $400, $500 item, but there's only like 5 people get it. So you could win it, you know.

I get it, that's cool.

They don't know who's getting it either because that's cool, box it up and then they put the labels on.

Yeah, no, that's, that's cool.

And all of a sudden they just walk up to one box and throw an iPad in there or something like that, or, you know, Samsung tablet.

Yeah, the Loot Crate box that I would get, they would send you like— there would always be a mystery item too, right?

So you could win something really cool.

That's awesome.

So one time—

that's the Tech Box? No, no, no, that's the Tech Box and it's $20 a month. I'm doing it. Send me the link.

I'll have to find it again. Where are you guys' website?

It's— I got at least look at it. I don't know if I'll sign up.

I mean, I, I, I, you know, I wasn't good. I paid for it for a while, one, one time, but it's just a lot of stuff in there and I was like, I don't need boxes of stuff. So this is what, this is what happened. So this week, the Federal Trade Commission, otherwise known as the FTC, FTC has a proposed requirement that merchants, business owners who are doing subscriptions, recurring billing, memberships, etc., have a click to cancel button available on the website. Now, they're obviously doing this because back in 2020, Visa, MasterCard issued the rule slash mandate saying that by June of 2022, you had to have this click to cancel button. Now, if you have the click to cancel button on your site and somebody goes on there and they click and they cancel, and then they don't get charged and they try to do a chargeback, they're not going to win the chargeback on previous, right, one's subscriptions. Now, if you don't have a click to cancel button on your website, it's like send in an email. Like, we just had a situation where we had some software and there was no click to cancel. We had to send them a note right through their support, right, a support ticket. They never canceled and they kept charging me. What happens? Oh right, the credit card company goes in.

Even though you're like, what are you talking about?

Even though I did one, requested one, they actually charged back three.

Oh nice.

And the reason they charge back three, no click to cancel button.

That's what your bank did?

Yeah, my bank. Yeah, your card issuer will enforce the rule. So the rule is if you have the button, the customer can't do 3 chargebacks. If you don't have the button, then the bank will do—

oh no, what? Oh, that makes so much sense, bro. Like that, okay. So because I, I recently got a refund for something and I had— because I said to them like, yo, I, I get it, I've been signed up for many years, right, right. But I stopped using the service recently and I swore to God, like, I canceled.

Right.

And, and so, you know, the person on the phone, and then I looked and I did cancel, but the company said I didn't.

Right.

So I called my bank and that's when they, because it was really hard, same situation, no click to cancel button. And then all of a sudden I got $100 in my bank account because it was— they did multiple, they did 3 of them because it was $33 a month for the subscription.

They did 3 because they went to the website and the, and the website does not have a click to cancel button.

That's new. That was— that's, that's good info to have.

And, uh, yeah, let me tell you something, and I've talked to business owners, oh, put it on there. No, we don't want to do that, we'll lose too much business. I go, yeah, but then when someone does a chargeback now You're getting 3, you're getting hit with 3 chargebacks and you can't win because you don't have to click the cancel button.

There's nothing to dispute.

When the bank sends the dispute over, says, hey, we noticed you don't have click to cancel button on your website, therefore, you know, adios. Sorry, you could send in proof. Unless you had proof that like Justin logged into the software, right, and was using it, he wouldn't win the 3 chargebacks. But if you have no proof that you logged in—

it's funny you say that because literally I asked, I said, I said, listen, I haven't logged into like in, in, you know, whatever. And she's the woman who, who canceled the thing. She's like, yeah, I could see that you haven't logged in since 2022.

Wow.

So it was even longer, right, than what I, you know, I had been giving that money along to, you know, 6 months almost.

Yeah, I get it. So that, you know, so they get punished, you know.

So it's good for them, get punished.

So if you don't have a cancellation button on your site, the cardholder can charge back up to 3 payments, and the bank will usually do it even if you don't ask them to do it, because they'll go look, and when they don't see it, that's it, they're going for the money. They're going to get you back your money. Now merchants can fight that, but the only way they can win is if they prove that the customer logged in and they sent information showing, oh yeah, Justin logged in 50 times, right? Then, you know, they're only going to lose one chargeback. So, you know, you have to weigh it out. Like, do you have a lot of people canceling? Do you want to make it easy? You know, you got to look at it because, you know, you have this— you're going to get— and, and also, you know, if the FTC puts their rule, their rule You know, they propose the rule, right? So it doesn't take them very long to institute a rule. Now, if they make it a rule, then you're going to have real problems, because when they make it a rule, now you're dabbling in the— the FTC could come knock on your door and go, hey, Justin's, uh, Justin has Justin's juju box, right? No, you have no cancellation button, Justin. We have a whole pile of complaints over here from customers saying you keep sending them a Juju box every month, right? Or Allen's apple box, right? Or Rocky's treat dog sack, dog toys, right? They could— they're going to come after you. Then you're going to get a fine from the FTC. Forget chargebacks. You have a— you could have a whole nightmare on your hand. Who wants a 3-letter agency FTC over at your business.

You can keep all the alphabet boys away from me.

Yeah, so you know, what can merchants do? You're either gonna have to make sure you keep your chargebacks down and also monitor that you're not getting too many complaints that are getting posted online, because once that happens, that's when your— the FTC comes for a visit. The other thing you can do is to stop the, uh, the flow is make sure you're enrolled in RDR, which we've talked about a couple times, the Rapid Dispute Resolution, which can cut down on chargebacks. So when someone does come in and let's say you don't have a cancellation button but you want to be proactive, you have RDR. Boom, the person does an RDR, does a chargeback, you RDR the money, goes back to them right away, and then you don't have to deal with, um,, you know, getting 3 chargebacks. So that's another way. You don't want to put the cancellation button, but I would definitely be keeping an eye on this FTC announcement because they don't need Congress to vote. They don't need anything. No, they don't need a law. They don't— it's not a law, it's just an FTC rule. They call, you know, they're the Federal Trade Commission of making sure people are treated fairly.

What they say goes, man.

Well, you know, unlike the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, who courts have ruled has no power, right? FTC does have power. Mhm. So an FTC rule is, is something to watch out for.

Put the cancel button on your website, bro. It's not a big deal.

Yeah, you know, if you have a good product, you know, like make it hard for them to—

you could, you know, as long as it's there.

Yeah, listen, I have a client and they have a they have a product, it's $49.95. So when you hit cancel, it says, hey, we can sign you up for this other service, it's only $29.95. You say, no, I don't want that. Then they go down to $19.95. Then it goes to the next one, it's $9.95. Then it goes down to $4.99 a month. And then if you say, no, I don't want that, or it says, no, no, forget it, I don't want, I don't want it. Yeah, then you're at— at— well, you could get out of it, but they go all the way down to the $4.99. But you could just say no, forget it, and you don't want any— you don't— you know, the offers don't matter. Yeah, but they take you down through a—

that's a good funnel.

Yeah, they take you down through a funnel and they try to keep you. For the $4.99, you just see really old content from there.

And I bet you a lot of people get— well, you know what, I'll do the $4.99.

Yeah, they actually get a lot of people go to the $9.99, and then people will go to the $4.99. And the $4.99 people never quit. Exactly, because they're getting content, so they, they're happy. So that's one way, you know, that's another way to consider doing it, is saying, oh, you want to quit? Let's say you have a package like a social media thing and it's $4.99. The person says, oh, I want to— oh, I want to cancel. Oh, well, you know, we have the $2.99 package, and We also have the $199 package, and then we also have this month's special, $29.99, where it gets nothing, but you could sign up for it right here, right? Whatever it is, you could, you know, you have to, you have to take steps to try to save, save business, not just be like all or nothing. So those are approaches that you can use to save customers, you know.

And the other thing is, is let's say you basically just tell people how to increase their subscription as well. You can reverse that model as well, right? So instead of, you know, you charging the $59.99 right off top, you also have the $39, $49, $29, $9.99, and you wouldn't have to deal with as much canceling.

Well, no, but I'm just saying when someone wants to cancel on a higher tier, you give them the offer to go down.

For sure. And I'm saying like you just have those offers upfront as well.

Just, you know, well, they're usually there up front sometimes.

Yeah, not all the time.

No, you know, but RDR can help save, save all that. So I think you have to just look at it like, hey, how can I employ this on my website? How am I going to control this and be compliant with what the card brands want and what is— and what is the FTC? Because I can tell you, the FTC is getting tons of complaints about subscriptions, recurring billing, membership. They're getting tons and tons of complaints. It's been going on since 2020. We did a podcast, one of the— in the very beginning called The Subscription Economy.

Yep.

All about how it's a growing trend to have a subscription.

We should probably do a part 2 of that.

Yeah, and it's still a huge, huge business, a subscription economy. And tons and tons of businesses have gone to it. Air conditioning companies, everything is a subscription. Pest control, your pool cleaning, the lawn guy.

I've even got— gotten myself duped into the music subscription service. It's just, it's just ridiculous.

I have Sirius Satellite.

Exactly.

Now I don't really get— I'm not in the car that much, right? But I also have it on my phone. So what's cool about that is, you know, so I can look and have news on there. So I like— yeah, I like news, so I can listen to news, I can listen to music, and it's, you know, and, and like even like a podcast app like Spotify, I'll listen to podcasts on there. But then let's say I want to listen to music, they have too many commercials and stuff, I can just listen to the music on the Sirius satellite. What's cool is I'm older, so I'm 63. So it's funny, they have a few of the DJs from MTV from back when that—

oh nice—

VJs, and they host some of the shows.

That's cool.

So, and they're, you know, so there—

can you— but how easy is it to— well, that's XM, you could cancel that easy.

Yeah, you can cancel it and then you just have it in your car. But you know, but you know, there's sports on there, there's all kinds of different different shows that are on, on there. But I'm just saying, like, everybody has all these, you know, different subscriptions.

Dude, I have a subscription to so many different things.

Yeah, it's nuts.

Rocket Money will find all your subscriptions. Shout out to Rocket Money.

Yeah, Rocket Money used to be called something else. Now it's Rocket Money.

Yeah, it did used to be called something else.

It was called something else.

It was all over TV because Rocket Mortgage bought, bought that company. Bought that company and turned it— yeah, so shout out Rocket Money, man, give us a sponsorship.

So in 2020, this is what Visa said. They said it went into effect, they changed the rules of subscriptions. Merchants must now allow customers to cancel online, notify them before each payment is processed, and a link to the cancellation page. That's another thing, like, most companies don't don't do. I can tell you, like, Xfinity does— like, they'll send you a thing, oh, your bill is due soon, blah blah blah. Um, the, you know, so there's a— the merchants must provide customers with a digital receipt when they enroll, the terms and conditions, the timeline, amounts of future payments. Customers must be able to cancel their subscriptions online even if they didn't enroll online. The billing descriptor for recurring charges must clearly indicate the merchant and what the charge is for. The customer must be notified by email or text at least 7 days before the end of the trial period, if you're doing a trial. And this notification must include a link to the cancellation page. And, you know, MasterCard and Visa both, you know, they they announced it in 2020. They didn't institute it till June 9th of 2022.

And now literally one year ago today, right?

And then here we go, a year later, the FTC is probably not seeing enough companies comply with that, hence they're going to make a rule.

Got them.

So they gave Visa a chance.

Two years they gave them.

Well, that— Visa gave merchants a two-year warning.

Right, right.

Now the FTC is not seeing enough compliance with that, still dealing with complaints, and so they go and they propose a rule. When they propose a rule, they just have like a board— they just have like the FTC as like a committee. They just go to committee, they vote on it, and then that's it, it's out of here, it's a rule. And then you see it, you know, seeing announcement. I mean, I follow the FTC, so I've signed up for their alerts. Yeah, so you see all their alerts and they come in and you, you see, you know, you see the alerts and then you deal with— you do, you know, we see what, what do those alerts mean to the— our merchants, things like that.

I mean, it's definitely important stuff to— yeah, I don't, I don't get the FTC alerts, but I could see why you would.

Yeah, I get it because it's important to know what's going on, otherwise I wouldn't know about this.

Exactly.

So it's important to follow, follow these things. But like I said, you know, one of the things, you know, we gave tips to merchants, like what, what the requirements are, what you can do to help save businesses when you do have the cancellation, you know, have a step down. So you don't want people just to leave. And then the other thing is to, you know, the other things are You know, enroll in RDR. RDR is important. Let's say you have an item under $35. I would RDR everything. That's it. Just give people their money back. But then you block them from your site. You know, you did a charge. We gave you your money back.

She can never buy anything.

You did a chargeback. Now you can't buy anything from us anymore.

I like it.

You know, and that's what— that's what merchants—

how difficult is that to get set up?

It's not difficult to get set up. We even have like one of our processors has it built into the— as long as the merchant—

excuse me—

they enroll in it through us, that you get signed up with your merchant account with us, then we get you enrolled in it through our credit card processor. So you don't have to use a third-party service because they charge you for it. We're not gonna— we don't charge— we don't charge you for the for enrolling and the transactions and all that. So it's very beneficial to have RDR.

I, I agree.

And more and more people are trying to do subscription boxes. I, you know, I've, I've had a couple of people come to me, say, oh yeah, we're thinking about doing a subscription box, you know.

I think it's oversaturated, but yeah, the market's kind of saturated. I mean, there's snack boxes, there's food boxes, there's tech, pet dog boxes, there's stuff for pets.

Like, I had Rocky getting a subscription box. After a couple months, I was like, man, I got like a gazillion toys.

Exactly. You know, you don't need that.

I don't need all the— I mean, I have like a whole— I gave— I had so many toys, I went and took them over to the Humane Society.

Exactly.

Because I was like, what am I going to do with all these toys?

Yeah, I wasn't getting all the cool stuff from Loot Crate that I thought I would get.

You know, every month, kind of the problem with a lot of stuff, it's people get it for a few months and then they forget. Like, I was over at a friend's house one day and she says to me, she goes, oh, I don't know how to cancel this thing. She goes, these people just keep sending me, uh, eye cream every month. And she goes, look, she goes, I have like, I have like 10 of them. This is enough to last me for the rest of the year. So I looked up the website, there was no cancellation button. None. No cancellation button. Called the 800 number, they didn't answer the phone. Left a message, they called me back and I said, oh yeah, I need to cancel this for my friend, blah blah blah blah blah, the last 4 digits of the credit card. They canceled it over the phone.

Nice.

But what a pain in the butt. Yeah, no, she was trying and, and she had sent like messages through the website, they didn't cancel it and they just kept shipping it. They were Now she could have done a chargeback and she probably would have won even if they delivered it, but they gave, you know, they canceled it and then she didn't get any more deliveries and that was the end of that. But you know, but that's what happens with these things. But you know, you get the wrong person, what do they do? They write, they go on BBB, make a complaint. Then they go on the FTC website, make, make a complaint.

They go bad Google reviews.

Yeah, you get a bad Google review, they go to your Facebook Facebook page. They go wherever they can go because they always say a happy customer will tell 1 or 2 people, a mad customer will go tell 10 or more. Somebody doesn't like what you did to them, they'll go tell 10 or more people. It's the same thing with, you know, say any business, doesn't matter what it is, a restaurant, retail store, a website, recurring charge. Whatever it is. If you treat your customers right, then you'll, you'll do it, you know. You'll, you'll have good business and you'll have decent reviews. You won't have a bunch of complaints. There you go. Yeah, somebody came to us with a merchant account the other day. I went, I put the place in— no website. I went and put them in Google. I was like, wow, this guy was on ripoffreport.com. He was on some complaint board, some I never even heard of. It was on another website I never heard of. And then he had— the Google reviews were trash. The guy's Facebook page, even though he took it down, the complaints were on Yelp because Yelp and Facebook used to be connected.

What? And he's still trying to run a business?

Yeah. I'm like, how? I, I called him on the phone. I go, how are you running this company and you got massive amount of complaints? Like massive.

Yeah, what'd he say?

The guy said, oh, you know, this is the collections business. And I was like, well, you know, we can't help you. Like, you're trying to collect like really old debt. So that was a no-go. So people, you know, that people don't— I hear people— I have— I talk to people all the time.

Yeah, I— speaking of that, what you're saying, Florida is really messed up with that, with collection agencies. Yes.

Yeah, well, the root— this is the thing.

Florida made it legal for these people to buy your—

no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not true. The, the thing is, is that these companies go out, this is what they do, companies go out and they go and they try to buy your debt, old debt. Yeah, right now, all Visa and MasterCard have a rule on that. We cannot set up a merchant account if you're trying to collect old debt. That's a no-go from Visa, MasterCard. It's a no-go. You cannot collect credit card debt. You cannot collect all the medical debt. We have some collection companies like that. We have a company, they do collections for a bunch of hospitals in Georgia.

Okay, right.

But it's basically all 90-day bills that are not— haven't been paid for 90 days.

Okay.

And they call the— they actually call up and get, you know, try to collect the money for the hospital. And that's how it works. But if they don't— but they do not collect— once the hospital charges it off, they're not involved anymore. So they're not trying to collect debt that's no more there. They start trying to collect it at 90 days, and then after another 90 days, they're done with it. That's it. The hospital, that's it. The hospital can go get a lawyer or whatever, but they're out of it.

Putting you in collection.

But you cannot collect debt. Like, I was reading complaints online about this company, and the complaints were, oh, the guy's trying to collect the debt from 2009 that was charged off or something, or they're trying to collect judgments that were judgments from like 10, 15 years ago. I don't know if that's legal or not, like, to try to, to be harassing people about collecting a judgment. I don't make calls on that, but Visa and MasterCard have strict rules about old debt. And so therefore, then, and the guy, then the guy told me, oh yeah, well, the other company we had shut our merchant account off. Yeah, well, that's why, because you're collecting old debt. Don't be a douchebag. The same thing, like, you know, you're running a subscription company and let's say you're trying to grow and then you need to get a merchant account. The credit card processor is going to go look at your reviews, and if there's a lot of reviews complaining about your cancellation policy—

no kidding—

it's going to be hard for you to get a decent merchant account with a good price.

Wow.

You know, with good pricing and a low reserve.

That's interesting.

But if you have good reviews and you have the cancellation button, hey, you probably can get better rates, right? Better rates for your merchant account and maybe not even get a reserve or a very small reserve. Instead of 10%, maybe you can get a 5%. Maybe you can get a fixed reserve, you know, have it be fixed after a while, you know, you know, that's how merchant accounts work. It's like going to the bank. You want to go get a car loan? They go and look, okay, how's your credit and what's your bank account look like? What's your, you know, how much money do you make? That's how you get a car loan. Same thing with merchant accounts. If you have good credit, you had good— they look at reviews. Someone told me the other day, oh, our processor doesn't look at reviews. I was like, yeah, I don't believe that for 2 seconds. They might not look at it, but when it goes over to the, to the acquiring bank, yeah. Because they have final say on every merchant account that does over $80,000.

The merchant told you that the processor doesn't look at—

some guy from a merchant, another company, like a competitor.

I don't believe that at all.

He's like, oh, we— our underwriters don't look at reviews. And I was like, that's not true, because they do look at reviews. It's required for them to look at reviews because nobody wants to bring on a— I mean, I could see where he's coming from too, because reviews can be very biased, Well, no, well, they understand that, that your certain businesses are going to have complaints. Like if you're a used car lot, you're going to have a used— you're going to have complaints. If you, if you have a collection company, there's probably going to be complaints. But if you have certain types of complaints, right? Like, oh, I can't cancel my subscription.

Or, I mean, I, I don't know what other businesses should have complaints. Really, there shouldn't be any other business that has complaints. Shouldn't be many businesses that have—

well, businesses get complaints because maybe the customer instead of contacting—

no, I mean like some— a business that's like popular that would be like always getting complained about. I can't think of one that would always get complaints, like a collection company. No, you said that one already.

Uh, that would always get complaints, let's think.

Insurance.

Uh, maybe insurance. They would complain that, you know, they didn't get their claim settled, you know, a lawyer didn't settle your case.

Oh, lawyers, lawyers have tons of bad complaints.

But you have— and lawyers have to be careful because there's rules, you know, they have to abide by the Bar Association rules and all that. So, you know, so that's our, you know, that, you know, it's important to keep that— it's important to make sure you have, uh, your reviews are under control, you respond to them. Same thing, like, you have complaints on Better Business Bureau, respond, respond to them. But you have to, you know, you have to remember there's, you know, two sides to every coin, buddy. There's two sides to every story. And, you know, listen, we've had people— we had somebody the other day calls up, my credit card machine is broken. I'm like, you're not even our customer. I said, if you can't get your credit card— I found—

then I said, oh yeah, real quick, just so you know What if we weren't ranking for anything? Yeah, then that guy wouldn't have found us when we were on the internet.

That's true.

So tell that to Dave, and next time put that in your pipe and smoke it, bucko. Anyway, yeah, no, yeah, we get people that find—

yeah, we— because we do higher risk, you know, high-risk credit card processing. But there's high risk and then there's, you know, companies we don't want to associate— we don't want to associate with somebody that's getting a ton of complaints because we're going to work hard to get you approved and then the bank's going to shut you down.

Yeah, no thanks.

It's not, it's not, it's not, uh, you know, viable unless you want to improve what you're doing. And then we submit a plan. That's what, you know, like let's say we had a client with a lot of chargebacks, we put a plan together for them to lower their chargebacks and we submit that to the bank. Oh, here's the plan to reduce chargebacks.

That's smart.

And they get approved and they got to institute the plan.

Super smart.

So there's ways to work around things.

There you go. Well, and that's—

so if you want to find out more about how to do a subscription and offer subscriptions and do recurring billing memberships, we can show you all kinds of software that we have that can help help you facilitate that to happen and make it run smooth. And if you're on a payment service and you're running a subscription, I would definitely suggest that you run a side-by-side merchant account with that, because there's no telling what could happen if one of those companies gets a warning from the, uh, the FTC. That could make ripple effect across the network of merchants that they have. That's the— that's what you have to worry about. And they don't have to give you notice or anything.

No, they do not.

They could just pull the plug.

I don't want any parts. Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening to another episode of B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast. I'm just kidding.

Peace out. Carpe diem.

Catch us on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, and yeah, that's about it. @B2BVault. And you can go over to b2bvault.info. Um, the new site's up. Got a couple of images to throw up there, but other than that, I'm pretty happy with the homepage. The mobile version is not done, so stuff, whatever.

Yeah, we're work— work in progress.

Yes.

All right, everybody, peace out.