Marketing
CutPay Merchant Services is pretty direct in terms of marketing. It promotes itself as a merchant services provider that provides online and offline card payment solutions. Good luck trying to get a deeper feel of that as you browse its website. Failing to include all price points or ranges for services and a lack of further explanations of packages that are only priced at “starting” amounts, makes the marketing seem less honest.
Also, get ready to get frustrated as you scroll page by page trying to find new information. Most pages make the same claims no matter what subject it is discussing.
Honesty
Its site has a snake oil salesman undertone with is many promises of discounts, cheap rates, and free products or services.
Unfortunately for customers, nothing is backed up with how they can actually make this happen. In addition to not disclosing rates, termination fees, and terms of contracts, it does disclose any of its partners. We find this a problem, especially since many other providers have no problem providing this information.
Sales
Sales
One of CutPay Merchant Services promises is that it will beat competitor’s prices by 40% or give you $70. If it cannot beat your quote by 40%, it will give you $70. There is an asterisk marked next to this claim but there is not footnote that explains it. We are wary of any site that make too-good-to-be-true claims, marking it that it needs further explanation, and then, fails to provide it. Fine print and sales gimmicks are two of biggest red flags when it comes to misleading sales tactics. It not only waters down advertising transparency, we find it especially questionable when a site is riddled with promises price-matching, free items, and fine print notes about eligibility.
The fact that CutPay Merchant Services also fails to discuss all of its pricing and it terms also is concerning.
Finally, CutPay Merchant Services notes that is has numerous working partnerships with businesses across many sectors. By partnering with the company, businesses are rewarded for successful referrals. CutPay offers three membership levels: Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Silver members gets a revenue share for every successful referral. Gold members get the same as Silver members plus a dedicated account manager, and partner tools, like landing pages and marketing materials. Platinum members get everything the gold members get plus the opportunity to run its own brand with dual brand option availability and the opportunity to set their own prices.
We see the platinum level as not only a way for customers to get sucked into paying higher rates for services that they could get cheaper at CutPay, but we also can see this tarnishing its reputation. Neither of these should be taken lightly.
Staff Education
Overall, the staff seemed competent and professional. However, they were either trained to offer very little information or didn’t know. The answers we received were incomplete and confusing.
Staff Interaction
We were happy to report that our initial email to CutPay Merchant Services was answered within two hours of it being sent. Unfortunately, our email response was never answered. Our phone interactions were confusing and the staff was not very forthcoming with any information other than what you could find on its website.
Unlike many other larger providers, CutPay Merchant Services does not offer 24/7 live chat support. Though it is not a required feature, we find that is very helpful at a time when most people set their own hours. Since most chat services are simple to operate and use, fairly inexpensive, and can be integrated over many channels, we find it disappointing that CutPay doesn’t take advantage of it. Many people don’t want to sit on the phone or a follow-up email when they are encountering a service problem. If CutPay offered a live chat option, it would cut down on any confusion and be a huge help for new customers.
Also, though CutPay Merchant Services has Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ accounts, we don’t feel like they are used to their full potential. Staff tweets regularly on Twitter and it has a fair number of followers but it doesn’t seem like any customers use it to reach out to the company with good or bad comments.
Support
When it comes to responsiveness, the experience with CutPay Merchant Services was very consistently inconsistent. Whether you were calling, emailing, or messaging, you never knew what to expect. Get a return email within hours was very promising but then, we never heard back from anyone again. We also did receive an automated response immediately when we filled out an inquiry form. However, it did not trigger any additional communications.
The company’s aim to hire additional staff may be a good way to fill in the gaps in service.
Availability
CutPay Merchant Services is available by phone, email, and via instant messaging during business hours. You are encouraged to leave a message on the instant messaging chat, however, ours never received a response.
We were happy to receive such a prompt response via email, but again, no one ever responded to our follow-up email.
We did reach someone by phone, but we were patched through several times before someone was able to discuss a support issue.
Complaints
We find it rare not to uncover any customer complaints, comments or feedback about a company. During our search, we didn’t encounter any bad reviews or complaints on the Ripoff Report, any online forums, or anywhere else.
We couldn’t even find a single negative or positive testimonial on CutPay Merchant Services’ own site.
Since CutPay has partners that it does not disclose on its site, we wonder if this is a true assessment of its customer service. When resellers can white label their credit card processing services, using the respective company’s own internal branding, it often leads to serious customer service issues. Many time customers of resellers complain of misleading and untruthful claims and tactics.
Though this is a common practice in this industry, we wonder whether customers who use CutPay’s services through an affiliate are really pleased with what they are getting.
Pricing
At first glance, the pricing that CutPay Merchant Services provides on its site may seem too good to be true. It probably is considering the only figures they promote are starting prices for packages.
Virtual terminal and e-commerce packages start at about $21 per month and allows you to accept 400 transaction through your payment gateway. This is the equivalent of $340,869 in transactions on items with average ticket values of $71 each.
If you take card payments through your website, and use CutPay as your payment service provider you pay about $21 per month plus taxes for 400 transactions.
CutPay Merchant Services does not provide pricing for extra transactions and whether there is any extra charge for credit cards over debit cards.
Both packages allow merchants to accept all major credit cards and debit cards and supports multiple types of currency. Additionally, the packages offer real-time authorization, processing through a PCI-compliant network, and fraud screening and prevention tools. Though none of the below information was found on its site, a cost comparison on its Google+ page, provided the following rates:
Monthly cost: $28 plus taxes
Extra transactions: $0.11 each.
Credit card processing rate: 1.96%
Debit card processing charge: $0.30 per transaction
Total monthly cost: $40
The monthly estimate is based on $2,130 in turnover per month on items that have an average ticket price of about $65 with an average transaction split of 60% paid with debit cards and 40% paid with credit cards.
Unfortunately, when it comes to termination and set-up fees and other rates, CutPay Merchant Services falls short. It does not include any of this information, as well as pricing for mobile transactions and other contactless types of transactions on its site.
Throughout its site, CutPay Merchant Services promises to save customers up to 50% on services, in addition to beating any “like for like” quote but does provide the actual prices for you to effectively compare it.
Also, it provides some free services, like a free intelligent merchant portal, when customers sign up with the organization.
Hardware Costs
In terms of hardware, CutPay Merchant Services sells portable card machines Spire and Ingenico Terminal. Unfortunately, it does not provide any pricing for this equipment. Also, it promises two free machine paper rolls when you sign up for services.
