Elavon Credit Card Processing 2023: Reviews & Complaints

I started with elevon about a month ago. Everything had been great until I have a few customers cards flag the charges as fraud but of course they told their banks they were legitiment charges and then the charges went through. I have never had an issue with a credit card in the entire 10 years we ahve been in business. Then all of a sudden a customer made a paymant yesterday, a customer who I might add has paid us on the platform one other time, well they flagged his payment as fraud for absolutely no reason at all. I got absolutely no notification on anything. i had to call and find out why I had not received my money. They proceed to tell me Ive had too many declines and they are closing my account?? I have had 6 declines lol and they werent anyones fault. Are you kidding me? Worst company ever!! Literally ever!!

I signed up for a U.S. merchant service on 5/19 for and this has been nothing but a nightmare. I feel I’ve been scammed. The lady who talked to me to initially onboard said that I have been way too much with other processors and she said “you’ll pay almost nothing with us!”. She said that all I would EVER pay was a small percentage (0.5% or so?) for each transaction, that was to be ALL that I would every pay. No mention of monthly charges or additional charges, EVER. So she told me to just sign a docu-sign and I did. Then a few days later, a surprise, I get a payment hardware in the mail WHICH I NEVER ASKED FOR. I also saw a charge for $53.65. Somehow I found someone to complain to on US Bank site and the person named Jung H Kang agreed that I was unjustly charged for something I never agreed on and promised a refund (screenshot attached). Weeks go by and I don’t see the refund. I contact him again twice, but he decided to completely ghost on me. Today, a month and a half later, still no refund. Then, on 7/3, I see another new charge for $35 labeled “Misc Debit Merch Los Ange Billing”, which I have no idea what for. What the onboarding lady said was that you pay only when you use the service, in a tiny percentage. They just keep taking money from me for no reason. This is completely unacceptable. I cannot remember the lady’s name but her phone number I have on record is ‪(818)854-5097‬.

I can not get rid of Elavon who keeps emailing me that I am not pci compliant despite the fact I Never used them!! I have contacted them twice but they keep contacting me. Next stop: the better business bureau.

Elavon stinks!!

Theifs! Steel your money!!! RUN!

Today I dropped Elavon. I’ve had them since 2019. At that point in time I would have given them 5 stars. They had/have a small business plan similar to Square: flat rate: 2.6% + .10 per transaction. Unfortunately, last year, in September, they started adding on all these annual merchant fees even though it’s a flat rate plan. You had to pay $35 to $45 a year to process Discover, $35 to $45 a year to process AMEX, $35 to $45 a year for MC, etc. You even had to pay an annual fee to take debit cards.

Last year when I questioned it, they refused to return the over $160 in fees they had taken out of my bank account, but the rep promised me it would never happen again. They had changed the name of the program to BAY and something must have gotten lost in the transition. So,I signed another FLAT RATE contract, and double-checked for annual fees.

This month it happened again, I noticed the extra fee. They had started in March vs. September. Strange for an “annual” fee to start in March vs. Jan. When questioned — I spent over 2.5 hours today with 12 reps — no answers just lots of “we understand your frustration,” and transferring me to the next rep. The last one said they sent a letter. I never received a letter. Then he said they put a notice on my statement. But the notice didn’t give you a chance to reply.(In other words, they put it on my February statement, but I didn’t don’t look at my February statement until the beginning of March. They took the fees out of my account on March 1. Again, no time to question. No time to drop their services. And once they have your money…

To me this is fraud — unauthorized charges from my account. Now I’m trying to do a chargeback. But again, it used to be you could get a good rep and start a charge back. Now you just get people that are like “a chargeback?” I’m not sure I can do that, let me “transfer you.” All this, even when you’re calling the tel # that’s listed on their website as the number to call.

I don’t like putting businesses on blast but Elavon is one of those companies that shouldn’t even exist. There is nothing about their platform which exemplifies what a business should be like.

Their operations are a mess. They themselves don’t know where half of their charges come from. If I had to listen to one more rep say, “I’m not sure. I’ve never seen that charge before” I think I was going to break my phone.

I was with them for a total of about 18 months and in that time I ended up with 7 reps. The first guy seemed great then he just disappeared. They kept assuring me he was just in a different department. After 10 seconds or research I discovered he left the company.

Why lie, you might ask? Because that’s what they do. They lied to me constantly and cost my company thousands of dollars. Their sales reps will talk about the 1.7% rate until they’re blue in the face but in reality their all in fees are closer to 4 – 5 %. When it works out in the wash, they are more expensive that Stripe!

Their 3rd party vendors like Mondo are absolute trash. They debited random amounts from our account and the amounts kept increasing with no reason. When I called them on it, they hung up on me and never answered my calls again.

The weird thing was that they were solid for 24 – 48 hours and then we would spent 8 – 10 hours a day on the phone trying to get tech or account issues answered when we had time. All in, we wasted over 400 hours trying to get support.

When their service went down and it cost me clients they had nothing to say but “that’s tech for ya”. So they cost me thousands and then I leave and they sent me a credit letter for $50 while also still trying to take money out of my accounts. I had to run a stop payment on my accounts just to get them to stop.

I’m a reasonable person but the fact of the matter is I was too patient with these jerks. I never get mad but I found myself screaming at their reps because they don’t solve for anything, they just try to deflect.

I could go on forever, and I have the emails/recorded calls to backup everything; liars, thieves, asshats, and useless policies abound at Elavon.

Oh, one more thing. I had a list of over 50 issues with them and they tried to blame us for each and everyone. Switched to Stripe and haven’t had A SINGLE PROBLEM in months. That should be all you need to know.

I wish I was a billionaire that could buy them just to shut them down just to watch their entire C-Level do the walk of shame.

Absolutely disgusting company.

TL;DR You will have a better experience with, quite literally, ANY processor other than Elavon. Stay clear!

For the most part what I see in these other comments is true. We run a company doing about $1.5MM a year. Elavon is now owned by US Bank and we have been a great customer of their’s.

We set up Elavon, charged $19,000+ (one large transaction and a number of smaller ones) and then waited. It took days for the transaction to auto-batch (no one told us we had to manually batch transactions during setup, like it’s still 1980). Then, they told us our account was in review. This isn’t uncommon for a new payment account, so we waited. Then they told us that our account was being cancelled due to risk.

No explanation for the risk. Stripe and Paypal have no issue with our “risk”. US Bank has had no issue with our “risk”.

I have used dozens of payment processors in my life and Elavon is the absolute worst I have ever encountered. Their sales are dishonest. Their processing is expensive. Their software sucks. Their team has less than no concern for your business. Their hardware is antiquated.

For those of you that have been through a similar experience, I am sorry. I know the headache, the loss of revenue, the loss of customers etc. that come from a bad payment processor and I only hope that this review and the others prevent anyone from having the same experience.

I am absolutley sick of dealing with the same thing time and again. I run a small business with less than 8 card transactions a month.
Elavon was re-recommended to me by my bank when they started claiming *no more hidden fees* (I had used them previously, but started charging me $100 every year for no apparent reason, so I left years ago)

More Recently,
I needed a service with no monthly fees because it just doesn’t make sense for the low volume of transactions, and my current provider at the time was still charging a small monthly fee of around $8/mo.

With my bank manager, we talked with Elavon on the phone to discuss the new plan. Elavon stated: *there is no monthly fee for this particular plan*
This was a plan that has high per-transaction rates. However, I was okay with that because it didn’t have a monthly fee. I remember specifically asking: “Will there ever be a monthly fee? Because I don’t want to start this and find out there’s a monthly fee all of a sudden.” They said “No, there won’t be any monthly fees.”

Keep in mind, I remember this very clearly as I otherwise would not have gone with the service had they not said that.

For the next 5 months it was great. Exactly what I needed. There were no monthly fees, and I didn’t have very many transactions.

Then, 5½ months later they send a letter stating that there will now be a minimum of $25 every month. Yep. That’s right. A plan where there will *never be any monthly fee* has a minimum transaction fee of $25 per month. Sounds about right for a company that tries to get every cent they can.

I closed my account immediately. I will never again *ever* do business with them or any other card company that has ever had monthly fees. I’m 100% going with Stripe. I’ve had a Stripe account for over 10 years, never used it, and never had a single fee charged to my bank just for having the account.

I give Elavon 0 / 5 for lying through their teeth, and for taking advantage of me as a customer twice now!

P.S.
My bank manager also was very shocked about the situation and will no longer be recommending his own bank customers to them anymore.
Looks like Elavon just made another big mistake which just cost them a lot more customers than they probably bargained for.

Please do not trust this people they really take your money and they never give it back to you they are not responsible and they workers the same do not trust this guy his name is Christian Vernaza they always lie to me for 3 month they stole my money they even told me will send it to me and then they lie,never do business with them please. I have all the emails he send me telling me that his problem should never happen and then they keep me like for 3 month and then at the End they stole everything.

How do I post on this Facebook page about my customer service with Elavon?

They’re a scam. 2 months after returning their card reader I still see equipment charges on statement. Refund is taking forever. Now a new $50 charge for PCI non-compliance, well after I thought I’ve cut ties with them. But no, returning card reader not enough, gotta call them and tell them you want to close your account. They still refuse to refund me the $50 non-compliance. Elavon is a scam!

Do NOT use Elavon they can block your account with no notice. They will hold ALL of your funds and not tell you they are doing this. AVOID AT ALL COSTS.

Stay away. Canadian POS talked me in to signing up with promises of cheaper fees. First time I tried to charge a card on line it did not work, so I asked them to close my account. They keep charging my account and I might have to close my bank account to get rid of them. Between Canadian POS and Elavon, they keep pointing the finger at the other. These guys are scammers!

Worst customer service. I just joined 3 weeks ago… and needed some help and I found them to be very unresponsive. I was shuffled one department to another. My phone calls were not responded to. And I said I was looking to move to another merchant service they said sorry we could not help and let me go as if it didnt matter. Overall I’ve had a horrible experience.

We have dealt with Elavon, as our credit card processor, for many years. It is nigh unto IMPOSSIBLE to get a rep on the phone. We had an issue where a certain transaction would not “go through”. When we finally reached someone, were told there was a “cap” on our account. We are a fine jewelry store, and have expensive things to sell – no one told us about any “cap” that was in place. That, was resolved.

HOWEVER, in the last 2 years, we changed the name of the business. We told them to close our old account, and we opened a new one. Due to some unforeseen difficulties, we were not as “on top” of our bookkeeping as usual, and found out almost a year and a half later, that they were STILL charging us for the old account. In total, they took almost $3,000 out of our bank account, for the old account which no longer exists!

To top that, when we log into their “mypaymentsinsider.com” website, to check our account, the account number listed is still the OLD one.

I have emailed them, repeatedly, with no responses. I have been on the phone with them several times, each time getting a runaround. The first person I was able to speak with said she was only authorized to refund us back 3 months – but has done nothing. That was over a month ago. I have spoken with them several times since, and been promised a resolution. As I said – that was over a month ago.

I emailed them more than once, through their “Customer Service at Elavon” email links, and — no response other than an automated one.

We are not happy at all, with the service that Elavon is providing us, and warn others that they will promise you excellent customer service, and deliver – basically – none.

Very, very unhappy with them at this point in time.

I tried Elavon and the card processor didn’t work with my IPhone 6. Returned the card swiper and I didn’t received my payment back. Elavon has very unreliable communication, the account manager did not respond to my numerous emails, their software people are just kids that don’t know what they are doing!

This post will help: Best Mobile Card Processing Apps

-Phillip