Authorize.net Overall Rating
*This provider has yet to receive a rating. Learn more in the review below.
Rating Criteria | Top Rated Processors | Get Instant Rate Quotes | Write a Review
About Authorize.net:
Authorize.net in is not a merchant account provider or a credit card processor. Instead, Authorize.net is what is known in the merchant services industry as a “payment gateway provider.” This means that Authorize.net provides software and applications that route credit card payments from the point of sale to the actual credit card processor. Payment gateway providers like Authorize.net are an additional but necessary service if a merchant wishes to use a virtual terminal, website shopping cart, or some mobile processing applications.
Authorize.net is one of the biggest and most well-known payment gateway providers in the credit card processing industry. This provider has its own virtual terminal which turns any Internet connected computer into a credit card processing terminal. The virtual terminal can also be used with a USB card slider allowing merchants to take advantage of lower processing rates by swiping the credit card.
Along with the virtual terminal, one of Authorize.net’s most popular services is a secured, hosted, and PCI compliant shopping cart. The hosted shopping cart allows merchants to easily sell through their websites by inserting “Buy Now,” “Add to Cart” and “Checkout” buttons without going through the hassle of setting up their shopping cart and their own server. Merchants that have a large product selection and need a robust shopping cart can use Authorize.net’s API to access the payment gateway service. Authorize.net is compatible with nearly all well-known shopping cart packages. Along with all of this, Authorize.net partners with several 3rd party applications to provide a variety of other electronic payment solutions.
[Need to take credit cards on the go? Checkout the free GoPayment mobile app]
Authorize.net Pricing
Authorize.net is often sold as a package deal along with a merchant account; however, merchants who already have a merchant account can add Authorize.net’s services depending on the merchant account provider they have. The prices for Authorize.net’s services vary by how the merchant entered into the the company’s services. Not only that, but Authorize.net’s services are often sold by 3rd party resellers and independent agents who can set their own pricing within certain guidelines. This means that the rates and fees for Authorize.net are highly negotiable. Business owners would be wise to ask for lower fees after receiving the first price quote.
Authorize.net Complaints
Authorize.net has an average amount of complaints for an electronic payment company of its size. In other words, relatively a lot compared to most other industries. According to the Better Business Bureau, Authorize.net has a rating of an “A+.” As of this review, the BBB is reporting 100 complaints filed within the last 36 months with 64 of them related to billing and collection issues. This usually indicates a lack of fee and collection disclosure during the setup process. Providers that rely heavily on 3rd party resellers often have this problem because the resellers are focused on making high commissions and tend to be poorly educated on policies and procedures.
Authorize.net has a few dozen complaints outside of the BBB that are mostly due to poor customer service. It was also apparent that several merchants were confused about the merchant account/payment gateway setup and which company to blame for their problems. This, again, can be traced back to resellers who did a poor job of explaining the merchant account and Authorize.net payment gateway relationship.
Bottom Line
Overall, Authorize.net scores well as a payment gateway provider. The company provides an easy way for merchants to accept credit cards through their computers and websites, and is widely accepted as one of the best gateway providers in the merchant services industry. Despite several complaints by unhappy merchants, the majority of Authorize.net’s customers appear to be satisfied with this company’s services.
It is evident by the type of complaints that Authorize.net has received that the company could stand to improve upon its customer service and reseller training. Merchants are advised to negotiate rate and fees and to thoroughly read the agreement before signing.
Leave your review of Authorize.net in the comment section below.
Featured Provider:
Merchant Warehouse (866) 460-5538
Review | Website
- Check Our Recommended Processors
- Compare Processor Rates & Fees
- How to Avoid Scams, High Fees and Long Contracts
- Merchant Services Jobs
Copyright © CardPaymentOptions.com (Digital Fingerprint: 0d38c6720f0d78a701b74d58653af608)
5 comments
April
March 13, 2012 at 12:45 am (UTC -7)
I work as the General Manager for a banquet hall. We process all types of transactions from small $10 ticket sales to a couple thousand dollars towards a client’s event balance. At first we didn’t have a problem with Authorize.net until the past 2 months.
First, they would hold funds stating that we hadn’t paid our fees, when they could easily take the fees out of the transactions like PayPal when they are processed. It was also odd that this had never posed a problem before. We decided not to complain, and just requested that they continue to just take the fees from the transactions. After that was fixed, things got even worse.
Our owner decided to change the checking account associated with the credit card transactions for ease of banking. He called and completed all of the required paperwork and was told we’d receive our funds in 3 business days. 3 business days come and nothing is in the bank. Unlike Paypal which offers a free debit card so you can have instant access to your funds even if they haven’t been transfered into your checking account, with Authorize.net if the funds haven’t been released to your checking account there is no way to access them. So of course this is causing issues, since the money that is in that account is there to pay for the catering for the events, not to mention payroll and maintenance of the property.
He calls the first time and is told it’s okay, that it should be in the account tomorrow. There was no money transfered the next day. 2 calls later {almost 3 more business days later} finally someone notices that the billing address doesn’t match. Instead of just updating the billing address he has to re-file the paperwork again. 2 weeks into this the bank calls and informs him that they are changing the routing numbers {I believe it was due to a merger or take over at that bank}. Again we have to resend the information. 3 weeks have passed and still no funds. To add insult to injury when we call the next time they are now holding our funds again over the transaction fees, which we have already told them to pull from the transactions in the first place. Now we’re into 4 weeks.
We finally get our first few transactions and I get a call from a couple that wants to go ahead and pay for the bulk of their guests’ plates for their wedding in July. This is pretty normal, since it’s tax time, and a lot of the time brides and grooms want to pay off their event as soon as possible. Or they like to pay it in portions that they can handle over time. So I send him our authorization form. Our authorization form is very detailed including the billing address for the cards they’re using, phone number, what they’re paying for, what amount, a copy of the card and matching id, and they have to sign off stating everything is correct. It’s made rock solid so that a client can’t decide to dispute a charge in order to get their money back since we don’t do refunds.
The gentleman made payment with a debit card for $5,000, and most debit cards have spending limits on them to prevent fraud, so his card declined twice. I gave him a call, and he took care of the situation and within 10 minutes the card ran perfectly.
We receive a call the next day saying that since it was such a large amount {although we’ve done charges similar and larger than this before} and since there were two previous declined transactions, they would need proof that it wasn’t fraudulent. I honestly didn’t mind, I thought this was good, and would help prevent those bad people out there from running credit cards online fraudulently. So I gladly faxed over the information expecting it was a 2 minute fix.
Alas, it was not ment to be that easy. The authorization was concrete, they were no longer worried that we were running fraudulent transactions, instead they decided to question our billing practices. “What if they cancel their event?” With the authorization form they can’t dispute the charges even if they cancel their event, and if they did and we needed to pay them their deposit back we would handle that on site. Just like any other normal business. If I return a shirt to JC Penney’s I don’t call in and dispute a charge with VISA, I go in and hand them a shirt and they hand me some cash. It’s really pretty simple. She didn’t stop there though. “Their event is in July why would they be paying now?” Because they want to. Are you really expecting that a business will turn down revenue because it’s not “due” for a couple more months? I bet if I called my electric company and said I wanted to pay towards a bill that wasn’t due yet they wouldn’t say a word. So why would we?
It only got worse over the day. They requested to speak to the client to verify the transaction. Again, that’s not a problem, the problem began when the representative decided to tell him “You shouldn’t pay this early. Most event venues don’t collect payment until after the event is over.” I didn’t know that she also managed a banquet hall. Not just any banquet hall but ours, obviously. Not only that, but she must know where we are going to get the revenue to pay for the catering for the event that we have to order BEFORE the date of the event, since we’re just going to wait to receive funds. Or maybe she knows a caterer who is willing to purchase food supplies for 200 guests, cook, serve and watch us eat and then send a bill. Since I can’t think of any. Thankfully our client was not swayed by her obvious lack of knowledge. He is now taking time off to get a cashier’s check and we are switching to PayPal. Nothing should be this complicated.
Denise Clark
March 5, 2012 at 8:39 am (UTC -7)
Authorize.net put a “hold” on my account without letting me know, which resulted in part of December and all of January transactions not being deposited into my account. I was not aware until I received my January bank statement. Upon calling them, they fixed the problem that day and deposited the funds into my account. When I received my February bank statement, I noticed that I was still short funds. I called them again and they had “missed” some transactions. They immediately resolved it. How can a company “hold” funds I have collected for up to 60 days? That can’t be ethical. My statement showed that they collected the funds, which led me to believe they had been deposited. It was an accounting nightmare and could have caused me a great deal of financial problems.
Olga
February 10, 2012 at 9:31 am (UTC -7)
In short, we attempted to use Authorize.net services and we were not able to process transactions. The problem was not solved and we had to close our account, nevertheless, we got charged a bunch of fees. Our business would not recommend using them. If you are looking to run your business flawlessly, then think twice. We would give F rating.
Chris
February 9, 2012 at 2:06 pm (UTC -7)
Authorize.net and its affiliate companies are horrible. $99 fee just to see if your ‘eligible’ for their services. No particular advantage on rates VS paypal.
Sales/Support is awful, they disconnect you when trying to transfer from one department to another, and you on hold in the middle of your call several times in a few minutes!
I never used the service once, and I yet was billed. Never logged to a control panel even once. When you create an account, you get other companies that handle part of service. It’s a mess. I thought I was waiting for approval for weeks when the sub company was requesting more financial information, even though my ‘gateway’ account was approved. Now of course you can get a refund because you’ve exceed the 48 hour mark. I was told my account was approved but locked. Meaning that I couldn’t withdraw anything from it till I supplied the paperwork, but I could only put money into it.
Even though you’ve signed up with one company you’ve got to track down the scraps of your account that are located else where. They continue to bill you, but pretend not to know about the sub accounts. I had to ask over and over to cancel my merchant account.
When is the last time you bough a car, but the lug nuts were from a different company and that company had separate billing? And because you didn’t ask for a refund on the lug nuts they wouldn’t let you return the car? That’s the kind of service you get with Authorize.net.
In my opinion their signup process is a nice little scam. Who else wouldn’t offer a refund to you if you didn’t use the product, and the account was locked so you couldn’t withdraw any money from it.
I’ve had a paypal account for years and never any any issues like this. I can only imagine what kind of hell those people have had that trust them to manage their sales.
Tim
May 12, 2011 at 12:10 pm (UTC -7)
Stay away from Authorize. Net at all costs! Terrible Customer Service!!
Authorize.net double charges our customers without admitting their mistake. Several of our customers got charged again by Authorize.net two weeks after the original charges were processed. We only have one on-site accountant to manually input credit card information when it comes to charge customer’s credit card; however, Authorize.net keeps accusing us for having two accountant submitting charges at the same time. Their customer service is very awful or virtually non-existed. Below are the brief conversation logs with Authorize.net:
5 May 2011
When we first contacted their customer service representative, named Jessie, we were told that Authorize.net will never and ever initiate a duplicate charge without its customer enrolls in the payment reoccurrence program. We never enrolled in payment reoccurrence program in the past. In addition, our own investigation indicated that the duplicate charges were not the errors caused by our own employees.
6 May 2011
The next day we contacted Authorize.net again in seeking for an explanation. The call was handled by a person named Gunner. We requested to speak to his manager or supervisor, but were rejected. We told him we have had several customers who got duplicate charges by Authorize.net, but he was only willing to take one set of duplicate charges. We wanted to give him more information about other duplicate charges, but he refuses to take them. A ticket number (29063597) was issued by Authorize.net as the result of this conversation.
9 May 2011
Monday, 9 May 2011, customers have kept calling us and questioned the pending duplicate charges. We called again and were helped by someone named Brandon M. At the end of the conversation, we were told that both the original and the duplicate charges came from the same IP address: 10.1.186.51. However, we did our own research and found that the IP address given is inconsistent with the IP address we use. IP address stating with 10 indicates that the address belongs to a private network. Authorize.net has been telling us that the case has been escalated for the review of its management. They still did not have a conclusive answer toward this incident.
10 May 2011
Called Authorize.net again and spoke to their supervisor, named Ben D. He kept insisting that the duplicate charges were caused by two accountants submitting payments at the same time. This time, their supervisor said the charges came from 208.57.144.25, which is the different IP address from the address they told us yesterday. Ben mentioned that 10.1.186.51 was authorize.net IP address, but had no idea why this IP address was given to us yesterday. However, based on our record, the duplicate charges are submitted at least one credit card information every second. In some cases, the two credit card numbers were submitted instantaneously. In other words, this is not likely to be submitted by a human being since the average processing time to input credit card numbers takes about 45 seconds or longer. We have urged Authorize.net to get back to us with a solution before 5:00pm PST or we will file a lawsuit against the company if no results are given before deadline.
To Authorize.net Management:
The duplicate charges made by Authorize.net without our consent are illegitimate and have severely damaged our company’s business reputation. We do not mean to leave this negative feedback online; however, we have no choice. We have been using your service over three years and we know how to use your virtual terminal when it comes to charge customer’s credit card. Your customer service representatives have failed to address this critical issue in a timely manner, talked to us with a terrible attitude, refused to take immediate action for further investigation, and accused us of submitting duplicate charges. We hope the management of Authorize.net will call its own customer service number at 1-877-447-3938 and get a feeling from its unhelpful customer representatives. We hope for those who have viewed this message to think twice if they decide to use Authorize.net as their payment processor.
Our company has saved both regular and irregular transactions processed by Authorize.net. Any person who has questions about details of this incident can email us at: chantinglin@hotmail.com
Tim Lin