Pay Anywhere Leaves Customers Scrambling During Holidays

In an economy where every dollar counts, Pay Anywhere credit card processing center crashes during the largest holiday season for the second year in a row leaving its customers scrambling to process credit cards. We personally potentially lost thousands of dollars as a result of this crash this year when Pay Anywhere went down during our last Trade Show of the Year. First We could not pull up our stored inventory, then we could not process charges and then we could not prove a charge actually went thru. One customer received confirmation he was charged but we never got confirmation of the sale going thru and we were scared to let them leave with merchandise without proof the sale went thru (large sale). Our customers got tired of waiting and just left. Just before noon, something told me to check the daily reports and not one sale we processed appeared to have gone thru from that morning; hundreds of dollars in sales never showed up as going thru and yet we had initial confirmation when the sale happened. Moments later, we could not prove or show what we sold because their terminal did not record what was supposedly sold. Later that night the digital report came in but we have no way to verify it recorded every sale from that days sales. Pay Anywhere founded in 2011 is a credit card processing center dependent on third party companies such as Andromeda Pay to bring them business and they get a commission of the sales generates by the business they sale each week, month, quarter, etc. Andromeda promises the customer i.e. me what services will be offered, including 24 / 7 customer service which since day one neither Andromeda Pay nor Pay Anywhere has provided!

Andromeda Pay underwriting Director and managing partner: Marlen Vega was the one that visited our Trade Show Industry for months to sign up as many vendors as possible, talking the promoter into giving her free or low cost booth rental for exchange for her offering deals on credit card processing to his vendors. While some like me took initial advantage of this service, some saw thru curtain of lies and found other, better card processing companies to work with.

I will say from day one Andromeda Pay has been a challenge to work with or should I say their representative: Marlen Vega has been and over the past 6-9 months Vega refused to answer calls, texts, emails and the last communiqué she pawned us off to Pay Anywhere for customer service which is like dealing with a computer service where there are no human responses. If you got thru to a human, they barely spoke English and that phone call took over an hour to get any one thing accomplished! During our first year of service Pay Anywhere thought it would be a good idea to run a update on their terminals vendors use without verifying the update worked and the entire system crashed nationwide and vendors where without the ability to run credit cards throughout the holiday season. 2021 this started during Thanksgiving and we were told they would not fix it until January 2022, first of year. In 2022 this mandatory update happened I think the first of December. Every time you turned on the Terminal or Phone App, you were prompted to update or the system would not work! Once again, Vega was useless and could not or would not answer anything, thus why she avoided calls this year when the same thing happened again during the largest holiday weekend sales before Christmas and once again their system crashed. Vega has yet to return our calls, emails or text from the Dec 17th, 2022. Here we are at the time of this post almost the end of the year and Vega and / or Pay Anywhere has still not contacted us or anyone that has had their terminals or software other than a vague email making excuse for their crash but not offering any confidence in their system going forward or offering its customers a refund on this months service fee's! Have to wonder how many others like us will be exploring other credit card processors going forward? Pay Anywhere’s 24/7 customer service is a joke and we are still waiting on a return guarantied phone call from December 17th where we were guaranteed to get a return call in 20 minutes. We did get an email Sunday, the 18th making excuses and informing us their system crashed the previous Friday and Saturday, like we didn’t already know this. We also got another email Tuesday of the following week making more excuses for their system crashing again Monday.

Please keep in mind Pay Anywhere and Andromeda Pay have left their customers hanging during the largest holiday season of the year. In one of the worst economies in US history, this is not the time to mess up and who ever thought it was a good idea to update computer systems and terminals before Christmas should be fired! It is hard enough to make money now days and when you have a opportunity you have to have a reliable company you can depend on. Pay Anywhere & Andromeda Pay are NOT the companies we can depend on! We do not know if their system is back up or not, but we have lost faith and Pay Anywhere as well as Andromeda Pay and Highly Do Not Recommend either companies, nor Marlen Vega based on our personal experiences. If you are looking for a credit card processor, Do Not Read The Reviews alone, actually speak to people that use the system, reviews can be manipulated and faked. We are currently looking for another credit card processing company as is many in our industry that feels Vega duped them! Do your home work before signing up with anyone!

Foot Note: These are my personal experiences with these two companies over the past two Winters and those of what I have personally seen others go thru when dealing with Pay Anywhere and Andromeda Pay.