Charge.Com claims to NOT BE ANYTHING to do with linkpoint!

Charge.Com no longer offers LinkPoint? (I was set up with securepay)

On Alex's suggestion we selected the Linkpoint API as a payment processor and signed up through the linked site, charge.com.

Charge.com sent welcome information under the name "Pipeline Data Processing," and we finally received further welcome information from "securepay.com" instructing us how to use *their* system.

On calling to find out what is going on, securepay said they are the same company as charge.com, who they say is their sales office; with Pipeline Data Processing being the company as a whole.

They insist they have nothing whatsoever to do with Linkpoint. They say charge.com's only payment processing system is securepay, as located here:

https://www.securepay.com/merchant/merchantlogin.cfm


I called charge.com's number and the the person I spoke to didn't even know they had a website, and thought the business only served point-of-sale/swipe machine merchants! They gave me a sales rep's number, and I left a message.

I understand if personal assistance can't be offered, but it looks to me like charge.com doesn't do Linkpoint as indicated. If anyone can help, I'd appreciate it a great deal.

UPDATE: I received an email from charge.com's president and he apologized and said that they can switch me to authorize.net without hassle. As authorize.net is compatible with amember and does recurring billing, this sounds good. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

I ran across this post to the forum and felt compelled to respond. I have a merchant account from CardService International who is Linkpoint. I did indeed get this account through charge.com in 2004, and for that reason I became a charge.com affiliate back then and have a link on my merchant web site for that purpose.

Here's what I found out: I went to charge.com and got their toll-free number and called them, I chose the option for "sales". I was on hold indefinately. After 20 minutes I gave up. Then I went to cardservice.com and called their toll-free number (800-456-5989) and was connected to a rep in 30 seconds. Although they do not directly sign you up, they can give you a current list of web sites to obtain a CardService merchant account. They no longer refer you to charge.com because of some complaints they received. I checked Google and found the site http://www.cardservicesales.com for getting a merchant account that uses Linkpoint. I had really bad credit when I got my account so credit problems are not an issue unless you have a bankruptcy that is 1 year old or less. The Visa, Mastercard, and Discover current rates are about 2.65% and my American Express rate is only 1%. Your monthly discount minimum is $25 which is about $1000 in Visa/Mastercard sales, and if you don't make your minimum you are charged the difference at the end of the month. I usually make the minimum sales and my month-end fees are about $45.

Hopefully this clears things up and I appreciate knowing that being a charge.com affiliate is no longer worthwhile.

JackHandy

Charge.com finally set me up with authorize.net, and seemed to be quite apologetic and helpful. I have full access it seems to the authorize.net config, so my guess is they just get a skim on fees once they ve set up a customer.

They confirmed that by default they will set up customers with securepay, and you have to specifically ask them to get something different, and that something different will be authorize.net.

Why has the link not yet been changed on the payment systems page?
http://www.amember.com/paysystems.php

I just had a client contact charge.com to setup a linkpoint account, only to have them told that it was not possible. It looks like I'll be going with cardservicesales.com instead, but it came as something of a surprise and wasn't the best presentation of things to my client.

Charge.com set us up with authorize.net eventually, which is great.

But charge.com didn't set up amex or ACH, and it has been impossible to get in touch with anyone who can help me since. Calling their phone number gets you tranferred around a robot phone system that seems to cover several different companies that are associated with charge.com (you call charge.com, you choose support, you get put through to pipeline processing inc or whatever.)

So far I am extremely concerned about charge.com's apparent inability to communicate with me now I am set up.

I tried to call charge.com today and waited on hold for over an hour for a sales rep before finally giving up. These guys may truly be worth avoiding...