Where is flagship merchant services

When you first contact the merchant service provider, you'll be connected to a sales representative who asks about your business, walks you through your options, and discusses rates and fees. You'll work with the same account representative each time you need help or have problems with the service.

The benefit of this is that each time you call for support, you'll speak to someone who already knows you and is familiar with your history as a customer. When we called the company as part of our testing, posing as a small business owner looking for processing services, we had a pleasant conversation with one of Flagship's customer support agents. We asked a long list of questions about the company's products and services. The rep we spoke with patiently explained how the pricing structures work and provided price quotes for both tiered and interchange-plus pricing.

The answers were direct, and we didn't feel pressured to sign up during the presale process. The rep followed up with us by email after the call with a written quote. Although we had a positive experience with Flagship's customer service, we know others might not. One of Flagship's biggest drawbacks is that, after being around for 15 years and serving tens of thousands of customers, the company has its share of negative reviews.

Many of these complaints have to do with undisclosed PCI fees, long turnaround times to process requests and difficulty contacting a representative after hours. To help alleviate this problem, Flagship has improved its customer service in recent years and has become more upfront about its fees during the application process.

The company also has been more active online, responding to reviews and helping customers who have posted their questions and complaints. Like many merchant service providers, Flagship doesn't post its rates, fees and contract details online, which is inconvenient for merchants who prefer to find this information on a company's website instead calling a sales representative. It also lacks online resources, such as a knowledgebase and how-to guides, for customers wanting to find answers to their questions online.

Although the company offers same-day setup once your application has been approved, there are several steps you need to take before actually becoming a customer. You'll need to apply for a merchant account, consult with a sales rep, and then wait for approval, equipment, and activation before you can use the service.

If you need to start accepting credit cards immediately, app-based credit card processors that don't require a merchant account — such as PayPal and Square — would be a better choice for your business.

Flagship Merchant Services Review. Donna Fuscaldo. Flagship Merchant Services The Verdict Flagship Merchant Services is our pick for the best flexible terms because it offers favorable month-to-month terms to all its merchants, and offers both tiered and interchange-plus pricing, so you can choose the rate model that's best for your business. Compare Quotes. Why Flagship Merchant Services? Month-to-Month Terms and Choice of Pricing Model Flagship Merchant Services is our pick for the credit card processor with the best flexible terms because it offers all of its customers month-to-month service with no early termination fee.

Flexibility As mentioned above, Flagship Merchant Services offers its services on a monthly basis to all customers, and there's no early termination fee. Affordability Credit card processing rates are based on several factors, such as your type of business, the ways you wish to accept credit cards, your average monthly sales volume and more.

Tiered Pricing This is Flagship's default pricing model, and it bundles different types of credit card transactions into three tiers each for debit and credit cards: qualified, mid-qualified and non-qualified.

Interchange plus a markup of 0. If you neglect to take the PCI self-assessment questionnaire, you're charged a PCI noncompliance fee each month until you take it and establish your compliance. Customers receive the following products and services free: Merchant account setup Shopping-cart setup American Express setup Flagship Merchant Services is confident it can offer you the lowest rates.

Features Flagship is a full-service processor so you can choose the payment acceptance methods that make sense for your business. TopTenReviews also praises the company's fast setup and dedicated account reps.

However, despite noting that Flagship isn't overly transparent about pricing, TopTenReviews neverthless continues by saying that the company offers "consistently good rates. CardFellow has statements, applications, and sales letters on file for Flagship dating back to , so we have a pretty good pool of data to draw from when outlining our experience for this review and profile.

We do our best to highlight the positive aspects of a processor, but it's tough to find something that stands out with Flagship. The company favors opaque pricing, it conceals its rates on statements, and even when it uses the more competitive and transparent interchange plus pricing model it often surcharges the majority of sales volume with a contrived "interchange clearing fee. One positive point that we have seen with Flagship is the applications we've reviewed have not had a cancellation fee.

Just to be clear, the information CardFellow has on file for Flagship has been sent to us over the years by businesses that have used our free service to secure the most competitive credit card processing company. It has not been provided by Flagship directly. Flagship's pricing follows the age-old formula of most other payment processors: it provides pricing and terms on a per-case basis. We've seen some pretty competitive statements from Flagship, but we've also seen some pretty uncompetitive statements.

The majority show the latter. Like many processors, Flagship's pricing model of choice is bundled pricing, sometimes called tiered pricing. With that said, Flagship Merchant Services engages in a practice that makes its statements particularly opaque.

Bundled pricing is opaque enough on its own. Flagship takes it one step further by hiding rates on its statements. The "NQUAL" label to the right tells us that Flagship charged this volume at its non-qualified rate , but it doesn't declare exactly what the rate is.

Once can't help but assume that Flagship knows its rates are high, so it prefers not to explicitly disclose them on its statements.

We see similar statements from other First Data ISOs that do disclose pricing, so we know it's possible. Another example for this point is shown below. As you can see, the Flagship statement discloses the lowest "qualified" rate, but the higher mid and non-qualified rates are not shown.

In an industry already full of smoke and mirrors it's unfortunate to see a company go the extra mile to conceal its pricing. Even when Flagship charges a business via the more competitive and transparent interchange plus pricing it often applies a surcharge.

This practice isn't unique to Flagship Merchant Services, and it's something we've explained in detail in our article that outlined why interchange plus doesn't guarantee competitive pricing. Flagship's acquiring relationship is through Wells Fargo credit card processing , and Wells Fargo often applies an "interchange clearing fee" to sales volume that it feels is "non-qualified.

Regardless of its source, here's how Flagship adds a surcharge to its interchange plus pricing. The snippet below is from a Flagship interchange plus statement. As you can see, the explicit interchange markup is 0. The business that provided this statement was under the impression that this was the only markup.

However, the fees highlighted at the bottom of the snippet are also markups charged by Flagship. These add another 0. The real shame in this scenario, which we've seen several times, is that the total markup of 0. That said, the "interchange clearing fee" is excessive in itself.

For example, it's meant to be a surcharge on volume that doesn't "qualify" for the original markup of 0. The bright spot with Flagship seems to be that it doesn't levy hefty termination fees. In fact, we have yet to see a cancellation charge on the applications we've reviewed. In most cases, the lack of a cancellation fee indicates that a processor is confident in its ability to retain clients through pricing, value, and service.

This is the part of the equation we're not seeing from Flagship to date. Have you used Flagship Merchant Services? Leave a review! Unlike general web reviews, verified reviews are posted by businesses that have chosen the processor's quote through CardFellow's marketplace, and CardFellow has confirmed with the processor that the business is using its service. Businesses can update verified reviews at any time to ensure the review accurately reflects the processor's performance over time.

Unlike verified reviews which are validated by CardFellow, web reviews can be submitted by anyone viewing this profile. While we validate these reviews as best we can, CardFellow does not verify that a reviewer is using or has used a processor's service.

Be careful They roll all types of additional fees into your bill like company. They make it very difficult to shut down your account as well. Started with Patrick Rogers telling lies, lies, and more lies! I have no desire to go any further into detail but this company is deceptive as they come. Do not charge too much watch out if business is good , they will freeze your funds for "security audits. I am stupid for doing business with them.

Started with teaser rates. I have had real bad experiences some identical to other reviewers, plus more. Now 5. They even signed me up for an internet account access service without my opting in. My card volume is substantial, I have excellent credit, never ever had a chargeback. The only reason for this must be that they try to get away with whatever they can and they are crooks.

Do not even think about using them! From the very start the salesperson was very misleading at best. For instance, we were told that all fees would be taken out at the end of the month at one time and that we would get a statement explaining all charges.

Never happened. Fees were taken out of every single charge, creating a bookkeeping nightmare. Worst of all was that after about one month into our contract with them we completed a very large job. The customer paid with a credit card at the time of pick up. It was right at Christmas time and we had gone on vacation a day or two later.

While on vacation, I start getting notifications that payments I had made were bouncing. Flagship had determined that the amount that the customer paid needed to be reviewed because it was too much and refused to put it into our account even though they had no problem taking the money from our customer for the work that we did.

During our repeated attempts to the customer service number we were told over and over that "That's the way all merchant services work" and "we are not responsible for any of your bounced items. Posted by Frustrated consumer on Sep 06, They are a fraudulent company and will rip you off.

During business hours, you are likely to get in touch with an in-house representative to help you which is ideal , but outside of regular business hours, you may see a decline in the quality of service. I like that Flagship keeps the person who sold you the service your continuing point of contact as a dedicated account manager. Unfortunately, this means that if you get an unresponsive account rep, you could be in for a bumpy ride. At the end of the day, sometimes you just need to be aggressive to make that happen.

We like to see a richer area of tools and material that help a merchant walk-through common issues. For these reasons, I am giving Flagship a fair rating for customer service and technical support. It had some turbulence around the time of the merger, as Flagship took a serious hit back in in the immediate aftermath of its acquisition by iPayment. Since then, the company has maintained a fairly high volume of complaints, for a business of its size, yet the BBB rating has improved.

Flagship currently has complaints with the BBB filed within the past three years. Flagship also has quite a few negative reviews on Yelp, with 23 reviewers giving them an average of 1 star. I then headed to Consumer Affairs and found reviews with an average of 4.

Consumer Affairs was a brighter place for Flagship, but the negative reviews told the same story. As I peruse all of the reviews, I note that small businesses seem to be hit the hardest in terms of fees that larger companies may not bat an eye about. For frustrated merchants, they leave a repetitive, boiler-plate-type response on each review. It seems like they could do a little better. Screen capture of Flagship review via Consumer Affairs. Screen capture of review via Consumer Affairs.

Overall, the reviews on each platform point to several common complaints against Flagship, including the following issues:. The good news here: Flagship is generally willing to provide at least partial refunds to make things right. As far as reviews from merchants, you can find a few testimonials on the Flagship Merchant Services homepage.

These do look legitimate and include the name of the reviewer and the business name. Flagship also includes a small display of logos for companies that utilize their services, including Subway, Verizon, Avon, and others.

That being the case, I thought it would be a little easier to find a positive review, but I had to scroll back to the early months of to start seeing the positive reviews.

The overall theme is good customer service, with specific reps called out by name. When visiting the Flagship home page, readers might be impressed to see that Top Ten Reviews rated them the number one merchant account provider in the industry for eight straight years.

I also like that merchants can sign up and get several freebies, even if they present them in a somewhat gimmicky way at times. Some of these issues such as chargebacks and funding holds are unavoidable but still incredibly frustrating for merchants. Anything they promise verbally needs to be reflected in your contract, and merchants should read that carefully.

For these reasons, Flagship gets 3 out of 5 stars, a slight decline from our last review. Visit Site. Read Review. These wholesale fees vary depending on the card, but the average is about 1. By separating out this unavoidable wholesale cost, you can ensure that you are not being ripped off on the markup. This is why we recommend interchange-plus pricing.

We've done in-depth research on each and confidently recommend them. Responses are not provided or commissioned by the vendor or bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the vendor or bank advertiser.

Terrible customer service, dealing with a non working machine and its been 2 weeks. I would never recommend these people and they raise your rates unless you call every 6 months to ask for a rate review. Am in the process of looking for another company. Excessive hold times, no manager. My sales person Redacted is lost in action. FInd someone else. Your email address will not be published. Organization Name. Your Review.