Pivotal Payments was founded in 2003, and is headquarter out of New York. However they also have a strong Canadian presence and appear to have a number of satellite offices around the US.
They are currently rated a C+ by the Better Business Bureau, with a large number of complaint levied against them over the previous 36 months, especially when considering the size of the organization. According to their own website they have over 350 employees and 1,000 agents; we’ve discussed this in earlier reviews but when your sales force is as distributed as this one there are issues that accompany it. One is the lack of quality control and knowing their sales representatives are “selling” the same merchant contract that the small business owner is signing. The next comes with the customer service angle, when so many of the sales are handled by individuals that have no contact with the customer service aspect of the business there is always going to be issues with connecting the dots, if you are a merchant who has an issue with your service.
These problems are highlighted in the various online forums that various Pivotal Payment customers have taken to to voice their complaints about Pivotal. One of the main issues merchant comes across is the terminals themselves, this is not directly Pivotal’s fault as they outsource their merchants terminal leases through a third party. However, we always advise small business owners to avoid leasing credit card machines, and to always buy. That Pivotal is advocating for their merchants to lease terminals rather than buy them is a red flag for us.
The other main issue that merchants seem to mention is undisclosed fees and poor customer service. These are both symptoms that we have found align very closely with the sales model currently employed by Pivotal Payments. While many merchants who understand merchant accounts contracts and can handle the most frequent types of customer service issue would likely do well with Pivotal Payments, it seems as though many first time merchants or those that are interested in being less attentive to monitoring all their processing statements may wish to do their due diligence in their search for a merchant account provider.
Stay or Switch from Pivotal Payments To Another Merchant Service?
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Note: Before you get started here is a final piece of advice from our co-founder Robert Evans on the importance of calling a merchant service provider and avoiding the temptation to ask for rates and quotes through email alone. Why You Should Always Call
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Advice from Fellow Small Business Owners
I am having the worst time being a Pivotal merchant! I am not complaining about the processing fees they are reasonable for my situation Im not even complaining about the 99.00 compliance fee (that no one forwarned me about) but I have been asking for a statement of all fees besides the formentioned that they have charged me and the hst attached to those fees because quite frankly I believe they are stealing from me they are just randomly taking money out of my account with no explaination and are not included in my contract. I have been chasing them for this information for the last two months, they told me i could retrieve this info off the internet…I can’t…One agent said she would email it to me….she didn’t…on the same day one agent said she would resolve this matter more money came out of my account…I am sick of dealing with this …not to mention this company has left me stressed and poor right at Christmas…nice people to deal with…I could never reccomend using this company and its services