I have been working with Sandra and Kathy in your risk department as the company has been holding $7500 of our money starting from November. Being a small business, we need to ensure prompt depositing of all transactions to keep up with customer orders, overhead, and salaries. We began our endeavor for this issue on Tuesday January 15th.
Tuesday, we spoke with Sandra and Kathy. They both stated that the company was holding two transactions one in the amount of $2705.00 and another for $3289.17. Both of these transactions were completed on 11/12/07. They also stated that they were holding any credit/debit transactions beginning from 1/9/08. This did not make sense as we were receiving deposits regularly between 11/13/07 and 1/8/08. They stated the reason was that the company (Abanco) was not sure if the two large transactions were fraudulent / or if they were going to be returned. They needed sales receipts, proof of delivery, would call the customer to verify, and then everything would be fine. A hassle yes, but that is how it goes at times.
We promptly faxed over the items to 1-718-463-6070 attn: Sandra. They came through too dark. We faxed to the other number that is a public e-fax. Arrived, success! We were told by Kathy that she needed to do some research and she would be calling us Wednesday. Wednesday Kathy attempts to contact the customers, and by Thursday she had been able to complete the necessary conversations with the customers. Thursday, we were told all was OK, money would be released.
Friday Sandra gets an e-mail stating that our account is negative $3874.39. An amount that was debited from our business account erroneously on 1/11/08 by Abanco.in December, we had manually entered a transaction in to our credit card terminal for $4193.88. Abanco questioned the transaction and held the funds. We went through all of the hoops they asked us to go through, and on 1/7/08, we still had not received the funds in our account. We spoke with Kathy who stated that if we returned the money, to run through the terminal at the other location, that would be fine, we would just not be refunded the fees. We were ok with that. After discussing with Kathy, we decided to refund the $4193.88 to the customer and then ran the card through the terminal at the other building. The initial transaction of $4193.88 was never released to our account from Abanco. We returned the $4193.88 on 1/7/08. On 1/11/08, the $3874.39 was debited from our business checking account ($4193.88 minus a sale/credit for $319.49)
We immediately called Abanco Monday morning, we spoke with Sandra and she said we needed to send over the bank statement showing the debit. I copied and pasted, then sent an e-mail. The e-mail is attached.By 11:46 AM, the money was re-deposited in to our account. We thought all was great!
Now we are dealing with Abanco holding roughly $8000 of our money. We tried 1/18/08 to work through this, but Sandra needs to research this. What is there to research? Does she not recall all of our conversations this week? And why would she give us her supervisor name of Pam Moore, and there is no one that answers the phone that knows who a Pam Moore is. When you call Abanco's main number, Pam Moore is not in the directory.
I understand that it is Friday close to 6 pm when we were speaking with her. Going out was probably more important, or doing whatever it is that you do when your shift is over. It is unfortunate that Abanco has employed employees. Not people who care and will do whatever it takes to get the job complete and satisfy the customer. When you start holding people's money, you start walking down and bad road. When you have people helping customers who could not care less, it sends you down that path even faster.
Sandra had the audacity today to tell us that because our account with Abanco was negative, she could not give me figures as to what they were holding. Does she not remember going over them with us at the beginning of the week? Does Abanco not have a customer database where you can place all of your notes in? If not, then shame on Abanco. If you do, and she is not utilizing the system, you need a new risk managment department.
We have 3 small children. We rely on our money being deposited in a timely manner to feed and house those children. We also do not have time to spend re-hashing the same issue with the same two people for 3-4 hours a day. That is time we could be spending selling new customers. Running more credit cards through our machine so you can make money. However, now is what we have to do. Halt all transactions through that machine. We will process them through the other machine, and pay them the money, and happily. We have over $600 in overdraft fees because of the batch outs from the 9th on not being deposited in to our account. We knew we made the money, so we purchsed the customers items, believing the moeny would be there as it always was. No one called ot say Abanco would now start holding our batch outs.
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