if any of you use Moneris as a credit card processing company for your business I suggest you have close look at your statements.

Just to explain, merchants who accept credit/debit cards use a processing company which typically leases the machine and takes a percentage of your transactions (anywhere from 1.7% to 3 -4% or more depending on the card and your agreement) plus other fees - machine rental, minimum charge etc..

Recently I noticed one of my statements had an obvious math error in it
ie. $6134.31 transactions times a 1.75% rate total = -166.69    (which should be $107.35) for one card, and another $15 error for mastercard so it was out total $75.17. In their favour.

Now the reason I checked was because I happened to see someone elses statement that also was out (for quite a bit more).

When I phoned Moneris to question it, the customer rep I talked to had to look into it check with a supervisor and call me back with an explanation. Some time later she called back and said that somehow for that month my non-qualified fees were lumped in with the transaction fee.   (Non-qualified means they charge an extra 1% because the card was not present at the transaction ie someone phoned it in, which is a common thing in my business. A lot of customers collect air miles etc. They also charge an extra 1% for those gold company cards. Supposedly they charge that extra 1% because if the card is not present it could result in a chargeback - except I'm going to be paying that so I don't know what their risk is.

When I pointed out that the Mastercard entry actually did list a separate line for non-qualified transactions and it was only $5.99 not the $15 discrepancy, the service rep said she would check again and call me back. A few minutes later she called and said that the additional included an MDR fee (a minimum fee if you don't have any transactions ie. $20 which they charge you at the beginning of the month and credit you if you meet the minimum transactions) which makes even less sense as I had over $8000 in card transactions.

I said neither of the explanations were satisfactory and she said they would look into it and send me a written explanation with everything itemized.

So I'm curious to see what that is, now I'm not saying they're ripping me off or anything but I suggest anyone else who uses them check their statements carefully.