When you ask your provider to change something, document it and follow up!

I come across horror stories all the time about people not getting money from their credit card transactions, or that they are being overcharged for long periods of time after something was supposed to have been canceled.

It’s a certainty that at some point most companies are going to need something changed with their merchant account. This could be a change of address, change of service, new equipment, and almost inevitably a bank account change. For some reason, bank account changes cause business owners more problems than any other action that affects their credit card processing. I recently heard a story from a business that had not been receiving their transaction deposits for nine months. Even more disturbing, that it isn’t the first time I have heard of this happening to a business. Personally, I don’t know how you could not notice your money was missing for nine months, but obviously this does happen.

As a business owner, if you change your bank account, or anything else that may affect your business’s ability to receive money, make sure you get your merchant account updated, and check to make sure it got updated. Additionally, every time that you call your provider, write down and archive exactly what the expected outcome is supposed to be and how long it’s supposed to take (Even if it’s just on a sticky note). Whether it’s your provider’s fault or not that something got messed up is irrelevant, it’s your money that is not getting to where it should be. Call them every day to check up on it if you have to, but don’t be that person who finds out six months later that you haven’t received a single deposit since you made the bank change request. Don’t be that person who finds out you were being charged $10 per month for something you canceled four years ago. Your provider needs to follow through with the changes, and it is irresponsible when they neglect to or just mess something up, but again it’s your money, make sure that it is going where it should be going.