Worldpay - goodbye.

I just got a letter (on paper) from Worldpay, telling me that they're about to merge with Vantiv Inc, a US company.

Groan.

Worldpay is one of the companies (originally RBS, then after the takeover it was Natwest, then the payment processing division was spun off into a separate company called Worldpay which I access via Bucksnet who changed their name to BNS Payments) that I use for credit card processing.

This chain of companies happens to me a lot. I've been running this for 20 years now, throughout the internet boom. My DSL and megastream provider was originally Nildram, Nildram sold the DSL business to one company and the megastream business to another, and I went through several changes of ownership, leading to all sorts of problems later. I got the same when I colocated with Energis, who became Cable and Wireless, who then decided to bill indirectly via some third party Civitas, and the ensuing confusion led to me dumping a perfectly good colocation for a company called Saxon (who then changed to Safehosts) ... you see how this goes.

Each time there's a change like this, I get grief. I have to change this, or that, or the other.

My experience is that this change will lead to all sorts of hassles for me, including (but not limited to) huge volumes of paperwork required from me to assure them that I'm not a naughty person (it being well known that naughty people never lie about this), and annual reassurance that I haven't become naughty since the last time I told them (I get this from my bank in New York). Worse, I'm expecting a change in the way they want me to ship data to them. Perhaps a change in the file format, perhaps in the address I ship the file to, perhaps in the crypto system I have to use. Or perhaps all three.

So I phoned them, and told them loudly and clearly, that if they do wind up making changes in any or all of these formats, then they lose a customer, and I continue my business with one fewer payment processor.

I'm fed up with the way that I get forced to do significant amounts of programming in order to ease the life of people supplying me with services. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to change the way I do billings.

Plus their telephone menu system is very annoying. When you try to choose an option, it's not good enough to tap the number you choose, it doesn't recognise your choice unless you press and hold for a couple of seconds. And when it's offering you a series of six options, it won't let you interrupt with your choice, it insists on droning on through the full message before you can choose. And when it asks for ID, it asks for the 8 digit customer number, and I had to look that up because I had the six digit account number ready to give, and by the time I'd looked it up, it decided that I needed to go round their menu system again. And then the second time around, I took too long to enter the 8 digits, and it sent me round *again*. I've told them about this too, but I doubt if they care.

And although I tried to talk to the man who had sent me the letter, there is apparently no chance of that.

So I suspect that Vantic Inc aren't going to get quite as many customers as they thought.