How Heartland Payments Uses Scare Tactics to Justify Overcharging Merchants

Is Heartland using scare tactics to justify overcharging you? If you’re like most Heartland customers, you have a pretty substantial bill for credit card processing. Maybe you even got a competitive quote that looked MUCH better.  And then it happened. You told them you were leaving. But they didn’t match the price. They didn’t apologize for overcharging you. Instead, they started slinging mud.

You see, Heartland “doesn’t compete on price” but instead just seeks to scare merchants that any offer from another company is too good to be true. Sure, there are some bad companies in the merchant services space who might have bad business practices, but that doesn’t mean Heartland is the best or only option.

Here are some lies frequently told by Heartland Payments:

  1. Heartland likes to tell people they are a direct processor and that ISO’s and smaller processors can’t compete with them. This simply isn’t true.  Host Merchant Services, an Independent Sales Organization (ISO) of TSYS (8th largest direct processor), has extremely competitive rates and can easily beat anything offered by much larger companies including Heartland.  In fact, Heartland rates are frequently higher than average because they make it a policy not to compete on price and use scare tactics to retain business.
  2. Heartland frequently scares their merchants and tells them that ALL other offers have hidden fees. Host Merchant Services is 100% transparent and discloses all fees in advance. If we say we’re going to save you $100/mo, we’re probably going to save you more (under promise, over deliver). When we give you a proposal in writing, there aren’t any other fees – period.  We don’t have long-term contracts and we earn your business every day.
  3. Did they tell you to have competitors fill out a ten-page questionnaire? And if they didn’t, they MUST be lying? Another scare tactic from the Heartland playbook. They give you a ridiculously long form they call “truth serum” to have competitors fill out. Is it for your protection? No. It is simply to distract, delay, and prevent you from accepting a better deal elsewhere. Most processors aren’t going to take the bait, and most of these questions are covered in the sales process.
  4. Did they tell you that Heartland is the highest rated processor with the best customer service? Heartland is rated a “B” on CardPaymentOptions.com.  Concerns include pricing, early termination fees, EMV fees, rate increases, and unexpected costs.  Host Merchant Services is rated “A+” by the same website.  com rates Heartland “4 stars out of 5” while Host Merchant Services is rated “5 stars out of 5.”  Additionally, Heartland is owned by Global Payments Inc. which is rated “C-“ by the BBB.

So, if you’re ready for lower rates and a company that is small enough to give you excellent customer service but large enough to meet all of your needs, make the switch to Host Merchant Services today.

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