My company works with several hundred small businesses, providing a wide range of Internet and printing-related services. We have built online commerce websites for many of our clients. In some instances, these small businesses have not made arrangements to process credit card transactions or are seeking to make a change in their credit card merchant services provider. After a bad experience with another company, my research led me to Sage Payment Solutions, a division of Harris Bank, in late March of 2009. I set up an account for my own company and agreed to provide referrals to clients who might be in need of these services. The referral agreement that I signed is dated March 27, 2009. I never should have signed that agreement, and the working relationship with Sage proved to be even worse than my bad experience with the previous merchant services provider.

Soon after I had made the first two or three referrals, I began to realize that Divina A. Rutherford, the “senior account executive” (called a “referral agent” on the agreement) assigned to our account at Sage Payment Solutions, was using high-pressure sales techniques and attempting to sell our clients services that they did not need, a practice which was totally inconsistent with our company’s standards. At that point, I stopped referring our clients to Sage Payment Solutions and found another merchant services provider for my own company’s credit card transactions.

Unfortunately, once you sign an agreement with Sage Payment Solutions, it is very difficult to terminate that agreement. Time and again, over the course of these two years, I have had ACH debits from our bank account for specific services which we were not utilizing and which I had not authorized. I had to contact Sage Payment Solutions on several occasions to get these debits credited back to our account. Each time, I would explain that I would like to end our agreement; however, entering into an agreement with Sage Payment Solutions is akin to being held hostage.

On March 7, 2011, I received a statement in the mail from Sage Payment Solutions with a charge of $11.35 that was deducted from our account. This charge consisted of $9.25 for an “Annual 6050W Tax Filing” and $2.10 for “6050W Monthly Reporting”. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I contacted Ms. Rutherford and James Cummings, the Director of Project Management & Compliance working out of Sage’s offices in Lawrenceville, Georgia, who had assisted me in previous instances. My only response came from Ms. Rutherford, who wrote, “The charges for the IRS annual 6050W filing is (sic) required by the IRS from reporting entities to report payment card transactions and third party network transactions to the IRS for each calendar year beginning January 1,2011. As a result of this, we, Sage will be required to file an annual information return with the IRS and provide merchant payee with a corresponding form 1099-K, reporting monthly and annual gross sales, thus we have also the monthly reporting fee of $2.10. Again, this is a requirement from IRS and we are just in compliance. All processors not only us are required to do so. Thank you.” I replied that I understood the new IRS filing requirements; however, the IRS does not require that any fees be charged for the preparation and filing of those forms. I pointed out that I supply my company’s independent contractors with 1099-MISC forms, and that I never heard of a company attempting to charge a fee for doing so. I made it very clear that I wanted to cancel our account (that we have not used in nearly two years) and terminate our agreement.

I was sent a merchant account cancellation request form, which I faxed back to Sage Payment Solutions on March 9, 2011. The single-page form included two instances of language which referenced termination fees. I crossed out and initialed both occurrences of that language. Nobody subsequently contacted me with any indication that there was any sort of problem with those revisions, which were an essential part of the document that I signed. A week later, a $600.00 termination fee was debited from our bank account by Sage Payment Solutions. This is a serious matter and a charge that was made, not only without my authorization, but contrary to my specific intention. I called this to the attention of Divina Rutherford and James Cummings in an e-mail on March 16, 2011, clearly expecting to be reimbursed for this fraudulent charge. Other than an e-mail read receipt, there has been no response from either Ms. Rutherford or Mr. Cummings.

I cannot overemphasize my warning to anybody who may be considering doing business with Sage Payment Solutions. Based upon my experience, and the experience of others, you will get burned. Visit the following online resources, and you will discover that there have been instances upon instances of bad experiences with Sage Payment Solutions, with almost all complaints documenting excessive termination fees. Start with the Better Business Bureau, where Sage Payment Solutions has an “F” Rating … the worst possible business rating, based upon “failure to respond to 5 complaints”. I have filed my own complaint with the BBB of Metro Washington DC & Eastern Pennsylvania.

Another website, called “Rate Credit Card Processing Services”, includes 5 customer reviews for Sage Payment Solutions. Four of the five reviews gave the company a “1 star” (lowest possible) rating, citing unauthorized charges, difficulty in closing accounts, automatic renewals, and “early termination” fees ranging from $525.00 to $800.00. Can you imagine the average business attempting to charge a customer a “termination fee” of several hundred dollars because they wanted to take their business elsewhere? This is absurd!

The popular “Complaints Board” website shows 3 recent complaints against Sage Payment Solutions, citing unauthorized charges (including a $550.00 “cancellation fee”) and questionable practices. The complaints against Sage Payment Solutions even go international, with the Indian Consumer Complaints Forum posting a recent complaint for questionable practices.

I sincerely apologize to any clients who were referred to Sage Payment Solutions in early 2009. To anyone else, at the risk of repeating myself, I can only suggest avoiding Sage Payment Solutions under any and all circumstances!

April 2011 Follow-Up: After this post and the filing of a complaint with the appropriate office of the Better Business Bureau, Sage Payment Solutions has refunded the fraudulent charges that I have addressed. I appreciate the refunds; however, it would be nice if the company routinely did the right thing without requiring this type of pressure.

The most successful businesses these days are those that are able to communicate with their customers in real-time or near real-time. Often, one of the accompanying risks is a tendency to hit the “send” or “submit” button too quickly, prior to proofreading or taking a few moments to determine whether a message may be subject to potential misinterpretation or may be less than professional in appearance. When you are communicating with a customer at any level, you are either directly or indirectly representing your business, whether your business is a one-man show or a large corporation. To avoid disaster, always spell-check your work, but never put your total trust in the spell-check process. Spell-checkers will not catch grammatical errors, most punctuation errors, use of an incorrect word or phrase, use of most language which is inappropriate in a professional environment, or the use of language which is basically unclear. An effective message must be crystal clear and not be subject to misinterpretation. Review your message, not from the writer’s perspective, but from the reader’s perspective. You already know what you are trying to say, but what you are trying to say must be accurately conveyed to another person. In a face-to-face setting, gestures and facial expressions can serve to clarify a message and provide instant visual feedback in the event of miscommunication, but an online message does not have that advantage. When you review an unsent message from a reader’s perspective, you may be in for some surprises, leading to close calls that can be avoided.

Equally important to the clarity of your message is the content of your message. There is a difference between conversational language and the written word. Unfortunately, that difference has gotten increasingly blurred in recent years. Many of us are losing our ability to effectively communicate. It has been fifty years, and I would venture to say that we may never again witness political oratory on a par with President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address. On the same token, although we are unfortunately no longer a nation of readers, it is impossible to read a newspaper, book or periodical these days and not find grammatical and typographical errors throughout. If standards have slipped for our professional writers and public speakers, where is our inspiration to be found? For a combination of a variety of reasons, our overall communications skills have been seriously degraded, perhaps the result of an overall lack of disciplined learning, compounded by exposure to an “anything is acceptable” use of language that is prevalent in our mass media.

First and foremost, the language of effective business communication should not be confused with the language that has gained popular acceptance in casual conversation. Any intelligent person understands that there is no place for profanity in business communications. In a more perfect world, most people would consider that same profanity to also be an inappropriate component in their conversational language. Unfortunately, familiarity breeds acceptance. Profanity is an obvious example that I have used to make my point; however, I would like to offer a list of overused words, idioms, and phrases that I would like to see banished from our language, in the interest of clarifying communications.

1. “How come” is an idiom that is usually used at the beginning of a longer question. Usually, the word “why” will be a perfect substitute. Beaver Cleaver used the term “how come” in every episode of “Leave It to Beaver”. Miss Canfield and Miss Landers were probably both appalled.
2. “Make sure” is an idiom that is riding a wave of popularity these days, since it is used in almost every unscripted sentence that comes out of the mouth of President Barack Obama or anyone else in the White House. (Even his last State of the Union address, though carefully scripted, contained five uses of “make sure”.) “Make sure” has become the post-election equivalent of the word “change” from back in the campaign. Even proper language that is overused loses its effectiveness.
3. Additional idioms that we could do without are “a lot” (which some people think is actually a word, spelled “alot”), “find out”, “right away”, “take off” (as a synonym for “leave”), “figure out”, “make off with” (as a synonym for “steal”), and “all the time” (almost always an exaggeration.)
4. The phrases “to be honest” and “to tell the truth”, each of which implies that the speaker is otherwise lying.
5. Single words that are used as complete sentences, typically an adverb that is used in response to another person’s statement. The worst offender is “exactly”, generally used in conversation and typically without pronouncing the letter “t”. Other offenders include “whatever”, “precisely”, and “seriously”. I believe that this use of language originated with girls in middle school, then infected the general population.
6. Phrases that are used repeatedly in conversation, as reactions to basically anything. The worst offender by far is “Oh my God!”
7. Words that are used as verbal substitutes for stammering, most notably “like” and “you know”, can only serve to distract and annoy the person who must endure the other end of the conversation.
8. Starting sentences with the word “so” or a conjunction, most typically “and”, or ending a sentence with a preposition.
9. Use of slang in a professional setting. For example, news reporters who use the term “cops” instead of the word “police”.
10. My final complaint (today) is slightly off-topic: The use of unnecessary gestures in spoken conversation. Some people’s hands just seem to be continually in motion. The most annoying gestures are pointing and the “flip phone” sign language symbol that some people think is a necessary accompaniment to any statement involving a telephone.

Some people will argue that times have changed and that language continually evolves. That may be true, but the ability to effectively communicate will only find itself in ever-greater demand. Without basic rules and guidelines, there will ultimately be little distinction between language and noise.