I wanted to give the ePassporte service a try with their virtual online debit card since I had a wonderful experience with Webcertificate.com (a similar virtual online master card) product in the past. Webcertificate however, was not designed for personal use but to be given to others as a mastercard gift certificate.
Their ads looked the same but epassporte advertised it was designed for people who didn't want the chance of overspending or being taken for credit card fraud or multiple unauthorized transactions. However, once I pre-paid my card with a PayPal debit card and tried to use it, the "Everywhere Visa is accepted!" turned out to be a bold faced lie.
I tried to use it at a few merchants and was declined at all of them even though they all accepted visa and there was money in my epassporte account. Their product just didn't work period. I called the company and they said my transactions were not going through because I was not selecting merchants they "choose to do business with" and explained that this was because some online merchants were "high risk".
They the proceeded to tell me all credit cards did this. I have never heard of such a thing. A Visa should be good wherever merchants take Visa right? This should be especially true when your USP is "Visa that can be used online anywhere Visa is accepted"! So, I requested a refund on my purchase since I apparently could not use their service after all. But I was told they could not re credit anything as it was "my fault I was choosing the wrong retailers".
This was just 1 day after making the initial purchase of their virtual card and I had been rejected 5 times in a row. They encouraged me to keep searching for companies to buy things from who would accept them. Frustrated at their response I went to simply purchase a webcertificate, at least someone would be able to use the money I thought and of course webcertificate accepts Visa.
However again it was declined however this time webcertificate told me it could not be authorized because epassporte won't confirm the address matches mine. But then because I tried to get a Webcertificate with me epassporte this must have really upset the company as they locked my account and funds completely.
Then they had me have WebCertificate send them a fax saying that they would not charge any funds from the epassporte account. After all this I still hadn't been able to spend a penney from this virtual visa. I called epassporte again and they said my funds were once again available in their account... But really I still had no way to use them. I demanded my PayPal account to be re-credited as this was turning into a long day of hell trying to use the $42 I put on this virtual visa that was good nowhere visa was accepted.
They would only need to send the same type of fax as PayPal who funded the account to have the funds re-credited to my PayPal account however JB Johnson the supposed Operations Manager who just accepted the WebCertificate fax to unblock epassporte charges then blatantly state "We won't send a fax to another company, we can only accept them to add funds to your epassporte account." Furiously I protested and finally I was told they would close my epassporte account and re-credit my PayPal debit the $42 in 3-4 business days. Fine. I asked for it in writing and then JB just stated we can't send you anything in writing in any way. They were "not allowed" to send an email or personal fax to verify what he was telling me.
Skeptical, I grabbed a voice recorder told him that I simply wanted to record his promise and he said he would not give me permission to record that he would re-credit the money from this product that never worked in the first place and that I had for only 1 day. After telling him that I was recording I finally did get him to say on tape that my account would be closed and the money re-credited to PayPal in 3-4 Business days.
But to say the least with their shady business practices and after literally hours of saying that no-one can ever get their money back I am to say the least still not convinced I will ever see that $42 again. Pleas don't allow others to use this service as no-one deserves a day and a half trying to get their money back from a corrupt company with a defective product. Maybe it would work with some merchant out there but in case it doesn't I don't wish the nightmare of customer service provided on anyone.
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