James
'No Hidden Fees' then change their…
'No Hidden Fees' then change their terms and conditions to include a $150 fee. That's a shake down. Bye. Ok, so you'll read the reply. Here's my reply to fastspring. This was never stated, it's never happened in the 3 years I've been a customer, all of a sudden 'its annual'. The email itself comes from a different email address, the logo and typeset look wrong. The whole thing looks like a scam. I would maybe have been ok if I'd been informed of this in advance, but to get a deadline and threat. Sorry, that's not the way to do business. More thoughts. Generic replies to support emails and going over the exact same point. 'Earn under 5 grand it's a 150 a year'... that's not what was advertised. It was advertised as 'no cost up front' I'm absolutely ok with things changing, but to not even discuss or inform that, is rubbish - especially as I've routinely received emails highlighting changes over the three years of custom. Just sending a 'final reminder' and an invoice from a shoddily constructed round robin email is not the way to do business. Anyway, I've changed provider.
Response from FastSpringJan 4, 2024
Hi James, Thank you for being a customer for 3 years! We're sorry the notice felt like a threat and was not enough for you and other sellers. We have been listening more closely to our sellers' concerns with our changes with risk screening and aim to do better in future communications. After over 18 years in business, we’ve built up a large number of customers who either use FastSpring as a backup or may maintain their FastSpring account despite only using FastSpring for a small amount of their sales. As the number of such customers have grown over the years, the administrative costs of risk audits have grown quite high, so we decided to introduce this fee. To clarify more on your comments above, as a payment provider, FastSpring is required to perform ongoing risk assessments on all of our customers in order to comply with various regulations and rules. For customers processing more than $5,000 annually through the FastSpring platform, ongoing risk assessments are free. For customers processing less than $5,000 annually through FastSpring (e.g. using FastSpring as a failover / backup payment solution) there is a $150 per year fee to cover the administrative costs of ongoing risk assessments which isn’t fully covered by FastSpring’s fees for customers processing less than $5,000 annually. If you’d like more information on the fee or have additional concerns, please contact us at [email protected].