American Express

[AikiDale]

rtr,

I guess that has happend to me. Once I went to a bar here in Vegas, They has really good nachos , Anyway got my AMEX statement and low and behold it said " Power Company" That screwed me up for some time until. I looked at the date.

Ivan

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas....

[AlamoShooter]

In the Early 80s we did a lot of Suba and suba teaching. in Cozumel Mex. American Express was paying the local shops with a 'Slidding" exchange rate. If the exchange rate was lower at the puchase time = that is what they payed the merchant. If the exchange was lower the next month at the time AX payed acounts they would pay the lower amount.

Not a big deal until the big Flux in Mex curancy happend a few months had it at 50% in one month. AX played it on both sides = the consumer payed the high rate and Merchant recived the lowest.

By 1983 you could not find any one willing to take AX eccept for the big hotels.

[blackdragon]

Aikidale,

Oh I forgot!

Ivan

[chuckbradley]

I accept Visa, MC, Discover & American Express. Discover used to have a great merchant rate but they are going up soon. American Express is ridiculous, like 3.5% but I still take it. I do not have an American Express personally and dont intend to. I have a problem with paying them for their card. Of course its been so long since I had one who knows what they do today.

As far as chargebacks I have done more chargebacks as a customer than as a merchant. That happened when somebody got my numbers a couple times. One time I didnt recognize a charge , in fact my web page host changed their name so I didnt know. Once I found out i called the card company back to stop the chargeback.

AS a merchant for over 10 years with probably over 20,000 credit cards transactions I have had to deal with 2 chargebacks total. One was a guy from Portugal who came here to visit his sister and used his dads card to buy a box of primers. I challenged it and dont think it ever was debited from my account because I was calling the guys sister about it. The other time I actually punched a wrong number on an order and it billed somebody elses card by accident. Thats really hard to do but it happened. AS soon as I got the notice I researched and issued an immediate credit and rebilled the correct card.

Of course I do think Shooters Connection appears on my customers statements and that clears allot of things up from the start. I am suprised I havent had any fraud. Not to say I havent had many try but I verify by matching the shipping address with the billing address on new customers.

I may be sorry I said this, now I will get a slew of chargebacks and fraudulent purchases.

[blackdragon]

I used to deal with most of them, when I was a Chef. People would get drunk and forget they ate at our resturant. As odd as that sounds. I would read the bill back to the CC company and when I got to the liquor, They would say " We understand".

Ivan

[kimel]

Alamo: That is why a class action suit was recently brought AmEx for the Exchange rate thing. I was notified because I used AmEx in Mexico a few years ago.

I am down to ONLY using AmEx online because of the built-in protections. Visa/Master/Discover claim to protect you but the burden of proof is on you, the consumer. AmEx is way more customer focussed.

I got a low limit AmEx Blue card just for my online stuff and that is all I use anymore unless I absolutely need the item and they don't take AmEx.

I recently returned my Visa "corporate card" (which was a joke because it was issued on my credit score, I get the bills, I pay the bills, I get a reimbursment check) because the lack of fraud protection exhibited by the issuing bank was minimal. I now just travel on my personal AmEx.

Stupid corporate card kept showing up on my credit reports as an open account without recent activity.

[Cactustactical]

Brian,

I was referring to changing your merchant name with Amex directly, not with your credit card processor which apparently is giving you some sort of "security " excuse not to do so.

You have a merchant account with a credit card processor, eCommerce exhange, National Payment Services, Authorize.net, IPS or someone similar. You enter your customers payment number and charge amount into the machine they provided you or online via the wb if you go that route. Your CC processor will directly process the V / MC payments and pass all of the Discover and Amex payments directly onto Amex or Discover for processing. The CC processor does not process Discover or Amex, those companies have their own reconciliation and billing systems. As I said earlier, I worked on 1 of Amex billing systems for over 15 years and also did a few partnership projects with V/MC's billing systems which is being done in Atlanta by TSYS Inc. Yep, that right, the billing for 90% of V / MC banks in the US is done by a 3rd party and not the banks themselves. Economy of scale. But, I digress.

So, you will have 3 separate merchant accounts: (1) with your processor, (2)Discover and (3) Amex. It is a simple process to change yor name with Amex if you get to the right person in Estabilishment Services. It is done literally 100's times daily due to buyouts, takeovers, mergers, and just plain company name changes. You can change your merchant info with Amex directly and leave your acount with your main processor alone if they are being difficult about it. This is a very easy thing to do because of how often companies change their names.

If your main processor is giving you grief about changes you need to support your business, it sounds to me like it is time to shop around and find a different processor. You can do so and keep the same Dis / Amex merchants numbers and be changed over in less than a week. We changed our main processor last December and knocked 1.5% off the discount rate and the transaction fee down to 24 cents per transaction. Makes sense to shop around, there are literally 100's of main processors doing business who would love your volume.