An Open Letter to the MyGate MD
Dear Dan
I hope you don’t mind me calling you Dan. I know that’s your name because I asked your employees the name of MyGate’s managing director. I left several messages for you to call me, but perhaps your telephone lines are down, the way that your computers so often seem to be. By the way, I don’t mind if you call me Oscar, should you ever get around to returning my phone calls.
I’m not one to dish out gratuitous public criticism, but seeing as you didn’t make yourself available to hear it direct from me, this seemed to be my next best option.
The online shops I run are dependent on our customers being able to make online credit card payments. This cannot happen without a payment gateway, for which I selected your company.
Two things happen when MyGate goes ‘down’. Firstly, we don’t have any sales, which, I’m certain you understand, is quite a serious problem for any business. Secondly, our customers get frustrated and generally disillusioned with us. We therefore run the likelihood of losing those customers forever.
Trust is one of the most critical factors for online retailers. I’m sure you can imagine how damaging it must be to our reputation when our customers have dodgy payment experiences.
As ‘luck’ would have it, MyGate’s crashes have coincided with peak sales days, following on us launching special offers. I’m sure you know online retail well enough to know that call-to-action campaigns are most effective in the first couple of hours after they are launched. You can see how detrimental it would be to our business to miss out on the feverish excitement that our sales messages have incited in our customers.
Perhaps most alarming of all is that your people often don’t know there is a problem until I let them know (13 June is a case in point). What generally follows is a most unsatisfactory experience, which seldom involves any proactive feedback and always takes a long time to resolve, by which time the sales opportunities have passed.
And yet, when your charges are debited to our bank account, there is never an adjustment for the time that MyGate’s servers were down. At the very least, an apology would have been appreciated. I know it may seem outrageous to suggest that companies should apologise when they’ve let their customers down, but perhaps I’m just old-fashioned.
In closing, Dan, I think I could forgive some of your servers’ unreliability if the service was good. Sadly, both are poor. The type of function your company performs isn’t life-and-death, like flying passenger aircraft, for instance, or open-heart surgery, but it requires a similar degree of reliability.
I really just wanted you to know exactly why I’m no longer a customer. I would have been quite happy to tell you on the phone, or even face-to-face, but apart from the fact that you never gave me the opportunity, I don’t get the feeling you’re that interested in hearing back from customers. Certainly not ones that are really, really pissed off.
So what does one take away from the experience? The key – without deviating too far into pop-psychology – is frustration. When customers are not being ‘heard’ they get more frustrated (of course, it doesn’t help if the product doesn’t do what it’s supposed to).
I really hope they teach this stuff at Harvard Business School, because it’s important (much like sunscreen – and in both cases you don’t discover until later what damage has been done). You see, if you listen to your customers the first time, they don’t start looking around for someone else to tell.
Kind Regards
Oscar
Johann - June 15, 2011
I wrote an equally frustrated letter to Dan last night. Needless to say, no response from him or any of his lieutenants CC’d (Glen Ross, Ray Thorpe, Dean Steenkamp).
We are urgently putting effort into moving to Safeshop. Fortunately we only have one small site with them, but they have caused so much reputational damage to that site that I’ve at time considered closing down the ecommerce facility until we sort things out with another payment gateway.
The fact that MyGate has been down so often is one thing, but the way in which the company has handled this crisis is unforgiving. Little communication, and if it happens at all, it’s usually late on a Friday afternoon when they know no-one is around to respond.
MyGate = bad service.
Claude - June 15, 2011
What an utter joke these Guys are. We have made a contingency plan but use mygate when we can beacause they are the cheapest – and there is good reason for that. They are utterly incompetent and clearly don’t have the need or will to change the way things work inside their company. In truth they deserve to go bust and lose money and experience sadness, frustration, anger, helplessness AND MONETARY LOSS like most of their clients. Spit
Glen Ross - June 16, 2011
Good morning all,
Rather than repeat everything I have said in an email to Johann this morning, please see below an extract of the email that was sent to him:
“Johann, on behalf of MyGate I would like to apologise for the issues that we have been having. I would like to go on record by saying that we are in agreement with you that we have let our clients down and in some causes this has resulted in a breakdown of trust.
The frustration within the business is that we have built our reputation over the years on exactly the opposite of what our clients have been experiencing over the last period.
With that in mind, I would like to confirm some of the action points that are currently in place to address the issue of lack of communication and instability that we have been experiencing:
Closer relationship with our Technology supplier.
As you know Route Logix, who is our sister company, is the owner of the Switching Platform that we make use of. We have engaged with them with a view of getting a closer more proactive working relationship, with immediate results being seen within the stability of the Platform. This is not a short term agreement, but rather a focused combined effort to improve the stability and performance within the platform.
Implementation of Ticketing System
MyGate are in the process of implementing an end to end Ticketing System to assist with the flow of communication through the business and to our client base.
Implementation of Incident Response Plan
We implemented an Incident Response Plan this week which will work hand in hand with the Ticketing System, as well as the closer working relationship with Route Logix.
Virtualization of Infrastructure
Due to the rapid increase in the number of transactions, we signed off a “refresher” project of our environment, 2 months ago. Unfortunately due to the nature of implementation, this project will begin in the next 4 – 6 weeks and we look forward to the improved hardware reliability this will bring.
Johann, while I understand that none of these action points will address the issues that have taken place, I can assure you that everyone within the business have been working tirelessly in addressing these issues.”
On behalf of MyGate we would like to apologize to you our loyal customer base and trust that you can support us during this difficult time as we feel extremely confident that when the above mentioned projects along with the other strategies that we are busy driving are concluded, our clients will be proud of the gateway that they make use of.
I will be available for any queries / questions / frustrations that you may want to discuss, so please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Regards
Glen
glen@mygate.co.za
083 776 5202
Glen Ross - June 24, 2011
Good morning all,
I hope that you are well,
To Oscar, Rob, Johann and Claude, could you please confirm your contact numbers, as I would like to get in touch with you.
Could you please email me on glen@mygate.co.za
Regards
Glen
Craig - June 24, 2011
Good afternoon,
How long have you folks been using Mygate? I was meant to go live with my site yesterday but Mygate cant tell me what the problem is. The support is shocking and ,as mentioned by Johan, it’s Friday afternoon and nobody is around to give me an answer. I just gave Glen a call, thanks for leaving your number Glen. It’s close of day and another sun will set without my site being launched.*sigh*
Would you recommend finding another gateway?
Craig
Oscar Foulkes - June 25, 2011
Craig, it’s your call, but thus far I’m very happy with the move I’ve made to Paygate.
Because of an issue connecting with FNB (our bank) they didn’t want us to switch over immediately. However, they communicated this proactively. I don’t need to speak to the MD/CEO, but it sends out very strong customer care signals when that call does, in fact, come from the boss … as it did in the case of Paygate.
I have yet to hear from MyGate. As requested by Glen above I emailed him my cell number. No call.
It’s beyond me why he needs me to send my number – I’m an existing customer!
I commend Glen for joining the conversation, with a detailed explanation of what went wrong. And, it certainly helps that he acknowledged their shortcomings.
But, in my opinion, he let himself down by not getting around to taking any action. This thing has been going on for more than a week and he hasn’t actually got on top of it yet. That doesn’t send the right kind of signal, as far as I’m concerned.
We all screw up from time to time; none of us is perfect. It’s how we deal with the situation when things go wrong that can save the situation.
KUBEN PILLAY - August 20, 2011
Hey Mygate i was about to sign up with you people when i accidentally scrolled down to the complaints section and to my dismay had to bear the stories you guys have put the clients through.
You guys need to do damage control soon or you will disappear.
You need to convince me otherwise..
JadedCustomer - May 14, 2012
Although this article is old, I want to warn all people that come across this. Do not use MyGate. I should’ve realised when they took 8 times longer to complete my registration than they promise. But alas, I read articles like this and thought they have probably improved since Glen was active in contact complainants. I can only say they are surely worse. Every single (I mean 100%) of payments MyGate owes me on debit order have been paid late to me late. Not 1 day or 2 days, multiple days late and not 1 month, every month. So every month, I fight to get not only my money from them, but I fight to get a response. Since I asked where my money was for an April debit order, I have had no response but managed to complete Netcash’s entire registration process! Cash flow is king and how a payment switcher thinks its ok to breach contracts and make payments 5 days late is beyond me. When companies start to make payments late regularly it usually indicates they are in financial trouble. All I know is that its a risk thats not worth taking. So DO NOT USE MYGATE.
Jacques - May 21, 2012
Our company has been having a similar issue over the past few months with mygate, where the reliability of their payments has become more and more unreliable. Our debit order runs amount to over 200k each month, and this month we have only received half of the payment due. I am concerned that mygate have been unable to manage their internal cash flows and are going to take a number of companies down the hole with them. I spoke with Dan, the MD of mygate on Friday afternoon (18/05), where he committed to paying us, but only transferred half of the amount this weekend. I’m worried, and I’m starting to get the impression I’m not the only one at risk…
Cheers Mygate - June 19, 2012
I with a happy face am saying goodbye to mygate. I have tried with open arms to deal with there poor service, lack of response and constant technical issues delaying payments. I cannot remember when last we were paid on time and even after following up six or several times via phone and email we still wait for a response or payment. I agree too with the comments above that late and missed payments every month spells major trouble, just a imagine not seeing a single cent of an entire months debit order collections. MY OPINION DO NOT USE MYGATE AND IF YOU ARE GET OUT.
Jukov - July 1, 2012
And I thought my problems with Netcash’s payment gateway were bad…goodness…this is shocking. I was about to move our business (R350k p/m collection) to MyGate but I stay put.
Considering PayGate for now.
Thanks for this site. And without doubt, there is massive financial distress alarm bells here.
NO RESONPSE MYGATE - August 23, 2012
AFTER NO RESPONSE FROM MYGATE I AM SENDING THIS EMAIL TO THE DIRECTORS IN HOPE OF BEING PAID SO I CAN STAY A FLOAT.
23/08/2012 Hi Glen / Johnathan
We run a small IT Company and rely on mygate to Debit our customers and pay us the money so that we can survive.
When we started with you years ago things ran smoothly, but over the past year or slow things have really got out of hand.
What used to be 3 or 5 days late has now become weeks, so much so that we are about to run another batch and don’t yet have payment from the batch run on the 31 JULY 2012.
You are putting an extreme amount of pressure on our small business to the state than we cannot pay our bills, VAT and salary expenses.
Please can you respond to my emails as I have not heard back from the one I sent last month when our payment was late.
Please can you pay us immediately. How can we correct this going forward.
THERE RESPONSE BELOW
From: Glen Ross [mailto:Glen.Ross@mygateglobal.com]
Sent: 23 August 2012 16:00
To: Dan Edmiston; Dylan Jenkins (dylan@hiresoftware.co.za)
Subject: FW: Debit Order Payment
Importance: High
Guys, seriously now
I am getting phone calls from clients and I am in Sales……
Do I just tell him to use NetCash?
Jackie - August 26, 2012
I have to say nevermind the problems you are all having above, one of the hardest things to do is cancel your MyGate. They lock you into a 12 month contract that automatically renews every year! I have been looking into teh CPA, I am sure they cant do that anymore?
We are now very happily using PayFast, much easier and so much cheaper for our store. Still fighting with MyGate about the debit order tho.
Bill - January 17, 2013
MYGATE: LATE PAYMENT AND VERY POOR COMMUNICATION
Over the past nine to ten months or so I have been tearing my hair out trying to get someone senior within MyGate to acknowledge my concerns about late payment of monthly debit orders. After searching on Google to see if I was alone in my frustration, I came across this site – so am adding my bit to the site in the hope that it may serve as a collective wake up call for MyGate.
My business cash flow, like so many others, I am sure, is very dependent on timely payment for monthly debit order batches that we run between the 1st and the 7th of the month through MyGate. Payment for these debit order runs should be forthcoming seven working days after the debit order action date, which in our case would be before the 20th of the month or thereabouts. Unfortunately the payment service has become very erratic such that in a number of instances payment has only been received well into the following month. This creates all sorts of knock-on problems when it comes to timely payment of our suppliers.
After numerous emails to the customer services team, who always claimed to have ‘passed them on’ to the department concerned I got frustrated at not having received a proper explanation or even some form of reply. I took it upon myself to write a formal letter to MyGate in June 2012. Again, no response was forthcoming.
In October I wrote again, citing many more emails to the customer service department that had gone without any meaningful reply. Again, no response.
After a number of further emails bemoaning the lack of response to my letter, I finally got a simple email back on the 22nd November, saying my letter ‘had been forwarded to the financial manager who would be investigating my complaint and would respond.’
On the 7th December I emailed to say that I was still waiting for a response. Some six months after my initial letter, on 11th December, I finally got an email message of apology from Jonathan DeOliveira (position unknown) who cited problems with the MyGate debit order/payment reconciliation system which he said would be resolved in January 2013.
Today is the 17th January and we have still not received payment for the December debit order run despite me having sent two follow up emails to Jonathan on the 11th and the 15th, neither eliciting a reply (unsurprisingly!)
I have to ask … What on earth is going on at MyGate?
Mygate is the worst ever - January 24, 2013
All that I can say is that MyGate is the worst ever.
We can relate to most of the complains posted.
Do MyGate have any financial difficulties or do they just give a damn.
We’ve given up on the idea that Mygate will rectify this as we’ve been with them for over a year now.
Marius - August 14, 2013
We have been STRUGGLING to get payments on time from Mygate for MONTHS now… EVERY month we complain and get told NEXT MONTH it wont happen again.
We submit over 6000 debit orders a month. We should have been paid out on the 5th already. Today is the 14th of AUG and STILL NO PAYMENT after I was promised since Thursday EVERY DAY the payment has been released.
Do they know companies can loose their business?? But sure the employees of Mygate got Paid…. Nevermind the companies that makes it possible for them to GET PAID… We pay a lot of money for a NON SERVICE and this has to be reported!
Werner - November 12, 2016
Mygate no response, Mygate have taken over Setcom’s credit card business thus subjecting my to their terrible service. I’ve been on this line for an hour an no response. I’ve tried contacting senior managers to no avail. Incompetence it seems is the order of the day with these companies.