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Retail Merchant Services (RMS) is a payment service provider for small businesses. Founded in 2007, the Milton Keynes based firm doesn’t have the decades of experience some payment providers boast, but it has managed to sign up more than 27,000 merchants in the UK and Ireland in its short lifetime.
RMS positions itself as a firm that helps small businesses delve into card payments, setting up online and simply creating a healthier business. You’ll find all kinds of advice on the firm’s blog – from how to capture more customers during the Christmas period to how the latest wage and pension changes affect small businesses. Clearly RMS wants you to know it can help you keep your business moving in the right direction, preferably with its payment services at the heart of things.
This means the firm puts a large emphasis on getting startups and small businesses set up quickly and without hassle. So whether you’re accepting card payments for the first time or switching provider, RMS aims to make the transition as seamless and possible.
RMS is confident it can beat your current provider for price (if you have one) and promises some of the lowest rates you’ll find in the industry. You won’t find any of these excellent rates listed on their website or anywhere else, sadly, so you’ll have to get a quote for an accurate picture.
We understand the firm levies variable rates for the card payments themselves – at different rates for swipe and keyed-in payments. That’s all we know at this stage about the regular service fees, but we’ll try to get our hands on something more concrete.
What we can tell you is the firm charges roughly £100 per year for its PCI compliance fee, somewhere in the region of £120 for early termination fees and another £100 for terminal refurbishment should you cancel. If you cancel the terminal lease without giving proper notice then you could be looking at a hefty bill of £1,000 or more from RMS.
Those figures are only slightly worse than the industry standard in truth. What this means is, if RMS really does offer cheap rates, the fees for individuals card payments will need to be considerably lower than its competitors. We’ve heard this is precisely the case, but we’ll have to stick with an average score because we can’t confirm how good the overall prices are.
RMS hands out contracts on a standard three year agreement (36 months) and that comes with an automatic renewal every year. So don’t fall into the trap of thinking your contract is up after three years. If you find a better deal with another supplier, under the assumption your contract with RMS is over, you’ll be facing those nasty termination fees.
What you’ll need to do is opt out of the contract renewal first, giving them enough notice (in writing, according to the terms of your contract) before you look elsewhere for payment services. This kind of rolling contract is becoming more common in the payment industry and they appear to be catching a lot of merchants out. It’s a bad mix of sales reps not mentioning the renewal policies and merchants not fully understanding the terms of their contract.
Speaking of sales reps, RMS largely markets itself through independent representatives employing the good old cold calling approach. As always, this results in mixed reviews from customers who feel they have been sold misleading terms regarding their contracts.
Most of the complaints about this will mention early termination fees and surprise charges on terminal leases – things that should be clearly stated in any given contract. As for the misleading and sometimes aggressive sales tactics other reviews mention, this certainly dents the credibility of RMS and the vast majority of firms that employ independent sales reps.
When you come across negative reviews about payment firms you’ll often hear poor customer service mentioned in the same breath. This is only natural when you’re not getting very far with resolving an issue, but there’s far more to customer care than contract disputes.
There are plenty of customers who are happy with the service they receive from RMS too. Chances are these will be from customers who have dealt with the firm directly, rather than dealing with sales reps.
"No qualms with RMS. Few issues initially when the terminal arrived but resolved easily over the phone with Mark Wood. Even late in the day and over the weekend too. Terminal cost is a little higher than previous company but offset by much lower card fees. Would recommend this company."
- Zoe Dunn, Google Reviews.
The point is this customer had some teething issues getting set up with the initial system, but praises a certain Mark Wood by name for resolving the situation. And there are bonus points for RMS in there too with Zoe mentioning that the firm’s slightly higher terminal fees are made up for by their “much lower” card charges.
Aside from the largely positive reviews for RMS on Google Reviews (3.9/5 from 78 reviews) the company also boasts a near perfect score with Trustpilot. We’re seeing these impressive Trustpilot scores crop up a lot lately and many high-scoring firms proudly embed an entire TrustPilot page into their website full of glowing reviews.
RMS have claimed their Trustpilot page and are likely paying subscribers to the service which means you need to be aware the reviews are likely be skewed to the positive side. Businesses paying for Trustpilot’s services can have much more control over disapproving negative reviews which is why scores can be so different on other review sites where there is commercial partnership.
If you know and trust the aptly named Trustpilot then positive reviews commonly talk about that winning customer service. The only downside is most of these reviews start with some sort of technical issue, but that’s typically where the customer service process begins.
There aren’t a huge amount of negative reviews about RMS, but you would hope not considering this is a fairly new firm that’s still growing its customer base. The bad news is the negative reviews you will find can be pretty scathing and you only have to visit UK Business Forums for a taste.
"They cold called me and basically lied about the terms and conditions included in the contract. More fool me for trusting the Retail Merchant Services rep! They have generated a cancellation fee which is around 25% more than I owe and simply won't listen to reason."
- Ddraffan, UK Forum Business post
This brings us back to the problem with employing third party sales reps – something the vast majority of payment firms do. And every time we mention this about a firm we have to go back to how important it is you understand your contract before signing anything. We can only say it’s far more common that customers fail to understand their obligations than payment firms breaking the terms of their own contract.
Overall RMS offers a wide range of services tailored for new and smaller businesses. Customers regularly praise the firm for its setup process and good customer support, while we suspect the firm deserves a spot in the good-value category by undercutting its competition on card payment fees.
The problems with RMS start when customers want to cancel their contracts or switch to another supplier. You can normally thank third party sales reps for leaving out that vital piece of information. But RMS is hardly the only firm to employ those pesky sales folk, so we can’t single them out as the only perpetrator.
With all that in mind RMS gets a fairly average score overall, but the fact the UK firm specialises in services for SMEs, this is an option you’ll cert want to look at as a small business owner.
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7 Comments
Useless
The first RMS agent did not even turn up… Do they not want my business, (this should have set alarm bells ringing) the second came and went through policy etc then promised to contact me… (still waiting) the set up agent over the phone was so unhelpful we ended up googling how to do it ourselves, they never as promised cancelled previous provider, this is now my 3rd phone all to resolve this issue as I’m now paying for 2 providers!!!!
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Worst company - please avoid
The worst company you can ever imagine. The sales reps are cons and misleading. Please record conversation with them as the rep lied about everything, didn’t give us a copy of the contract and communication is awful with the company. We’ve had to pay hundreds of pounds in hidden fees and made up fees that they do ‘t warn you about and just turn up with a bill to pay. Please avoid
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It happened to me if you sign up with this company they will refuse to give you your statuary consumer rights to 14 days cooling off period and they send me the bill for just over £1500
Don’t even let the salesman get in your doorstep
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Dont Use!!!
Same as above rep said he would beat current rates but when it came to it they were more expensive and want £2000 to get out of the contract. Terrible customer services and communication
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DON’T go with them ! Absolutely shocking
ABSOLUTELY shocking. Same as above ! They lie to you about promotions, hidden fees and dealing with 2 different parties RMS & elevon. I tried to get a reach of the old sales rep who left the company soon after. I think that was a lie. The area manager then pretended he couldn’t understand me I have a British accent. He then kept hanging the phone up on me and after a while just stopped answering and then blocked me! Customer service never return calls they pretend they will “investigate” i don’t know how they are still in business. Do not go with these people they are con artist. It’s honestly SHOCKING behaviour and they should be ashamed of themselves. I’m trying to get out a contact so let’s see how that goes. Please people do not go With them I would rather not have a card terminal & be at a loss then have them !
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By far, the worst customer service i have ever experienced. Total Con. Dodgy sales reps , misleading information. WOULD NEVER RECCOMEND.
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Terrible service
I can’t stress enough how bad this company is, we recently had a rep come round, promised they can save us on our monthly charge and also on transaction charges, they also said they would settle our existing card machine contract with another company…… Then when it comes to it, its all lies and they can’t get you out of a previous contract at all! we are now paying for 2 machines with 2 providers!! The customer service is a joke, there’s never anyone available who can actually help, just keep stringing you along, if you read and check online reviews you can see this is standard practice for these, don’t be had, we now have an ongoing case, I’m losing time on a regular basis trying to resolve this
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