Refunds and Fee Recovery
Refunds and fee recovery
Lowering your rate from here is not the same as getting your money back.
Almost every firm in this business stops at your go-forward rate. The overbilling that already happened, sometimes for years, is simply left where it sits, because chasing it is work and lowering a rate is a phone call.
We document what you were overcharged, line by line. weAudit is not a law firm and we do not pursue refunds ourselves. If you want the claim taken further, we deliver the evidence to attorneys in a national network who work on contingency, and they pursue it from there.
The problem
A lower rate quietly forgives everything that came before
When a merchant discovers they have been overbilled, the usual outcome is a better rate and a handshake. It feels like a win. It is also the cheapest possible resolution for the processor, because the money already taken stays taken and nobody has to admit anything.
Most consultants are fine with that, because their fee is a share of your future savings. A lower rate pays them. A refund does not. So the past never gets examined.
We charge a flat fee either way, which is why we are willing to go back and look.
What comes back
The overbilling that is worth pursuing
1
Fees that were invented
Official sounding line items that correspond to nothing the networks charge. One we found was a settlement fee of 60 basis points that does not exist anywhere in the card rules.
2
Pass-through costs marked up
Charges presented as network costs, billed at more than the network actually charged. The statement shows the fee and not the markup.
3
PCI penalties you did not owe
Non-compliance fees charged to businesses that were compliant, or that were never given a workable path to compliance. See PCI compliance.
4
The same fee under four names
One cost, billed several times over on one invoice, each instance named differently enough that nobody adds them up. We found four of them running at 41,000 dollars a year.
5
Pricing that never matched the agreement
What you signed and what you were billed drift apart, usually after a repricing nobody told you about. The agreement is the evidence.
Interchange downgrades are the exception, and they are worth being clear about. A downgrade means a transaction settled at a worse interchange category than it qualified for, and that cost is set by the card networks rather than added by your processor, so it is not something a refund claim reaches. We still find them, and correcting them is usually the single largest saving in the audit. It is money you stop losing rather than money that comes back.
How it works
We document it, attorneys pursue it
Recovery is not an argument, it is an evidence exercise. Nothing is pursued until the overcharge is documented line by line against the published network rates and against your own agreement.
The audit establishes what each charge should have been, and what it actually was
Your agreement establishes what was permitted, and what was added later without your consent
Together those set how far back the overbilling can be traced, which depends on your contract and the facts of the account
We deliver the completed evidence file to attorneys in a national network, and they pursue the claim if you want them to
Those attorneys work on a contingency fee, agreed directly between you and them
You do not have to leave your processor for any of this to happen
The mechanics, including what is realistically recoverable and how far back, are set out in full in overcharged by your credit card processor. If the charge in question is a PCI penalty, start with PCI non-compliance fee? You may not owe it.
What it costs
We keep 0% of what comes back
This is the part that matters most on this page. Recovery firms almost universally take a percentage, and a third of your own money is a large price for work you are already paying someone to do.
The first audit is free. After that it is a flat monthly fee based on your volume and the complexity of your account, never a share of what you recover or save. The fee is published here for merchants processing 5 million dollars or less.
weAudit is partly owned by attorneys, but we are not a law firm and we do not practice law. Our work ends with the evidence file. If you decide to have a claim pursued, the attorneys who take it on work for a contingency fee, agreed between you and them, and that is separate from what you pay us.
Recovery is not a separate engagement. It comes out of the processing audit, because the audit is what produces the evidence.
Find out what you are owed
One recent statement is enough to tell whether you have been overbilled and roughly by how much. The first review is free, there is nothing to sign, and you can see what we have found for other merchants before you decide.
Want to talk?
- Call us today 800-672-1292
- Book a free consultation
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