Fee audit
Your statement is designed to be hard to read. That is the product.
Send one month. We come back with your real effective rate, where the margin is hiding, and what it costs you a year. Then we quote our own number, because we are a processor and you should be told that up front.
Send a statementWhat we look for
Two patterns cover most of what we find. Both are legal. Both are invisible unless somebody adds up the right columns.
Pattern one
Tiered pricing and the downgrade
You were quoted a qualified rate. Most of your volume never qualifies. A roofing contractor we audited was on a 2.99 percent base with a half point surcharge, and 86 percent of their volume was landing in the non-qualified tier. Blended effective rate: 3.55 percent on about $2.06M a year. Roughly $73,000 in cost.
Their own statement disclosed a further 0.75 point increase and, buried in the same notice, a 120 day window to leave without a penalty. That window was the reason to move, and nobody had read it.
Pattern two
Interchange plus with a padded pass-through
The markup on the front page says 6 basis points. The card brand fee bucket, sold as network pass-through, is running 0.52 to 0.66 percent against a true cost near 0.18. On a platform we audited that gap was about $70,000 a month, and the real margin was around 54 basis points rather than 6.
Page one showed “amount deducted: $19.76” because the fees were pulled as daily debits. Actual fees that month were $37,797. No single scary number ever appears.
Where we stand
We are not a neutral marketplace. We are a processor.
FeeFighters used to run a bidding marketplace where processors competed for your account. It does not any more, and pretending otherwise would be the same trick the statements pull. FeeFighters is a product of Phase 3 Business Services LLC, and accounts opened here are placed with GAM Payments. When we finish your audit, the number we quote you is our own.
The audit is still worth having even if you never talk to us again. You keep the teardown, the effective rate, and the specific line items to take to your current processor. Several merchants have used ours to renegotiate and stay put. That is a fine outcome.
Our chargeback tools are the separate case: those work with any processor and never require you to move. See how that works.
Send one statement
A single recent month is enough. Two consecutive months is better, because it separates recurring fees from one-time hits.
- 1. Fill in the form and we will reply with a secure upload link.
- 2. Or email the PDF straight to [email protected].
- 3. Black out your account and routing numbers first. We do not need them and do not want them.
Turnaround is a couple of business days. If you would rather just talk it through, call (646) 448-8804.