I have been a small business merchant for several years. And was using paypal for quite some time. I was enticed by First Data and their low fees and switched all of my payment services to them. Right off the start we had problems with them. They froze my account and over $6,600 in payments from Credit Card holders. Reason: One of their people entered my Phone number in wrong. Then everything went well except for some much higher fees being withdrawn. More then I was quoted. I lost a few thousand because of this mistake. A year went by with no problems.
Then last month. My account was frozen again. I had 4 charge backs. Totaling $350.00 Although overall yearly sales of over $120,000 with them. They froze my account and diverted over $3,000 into a holding account from recent sales.
I had just recently paid a large sum of money to acquire a truckload of products for all my current orders. Leaving a small buffer for shipping. And a period of 14 days had passed and I was not getting any new deposits into my checking account. But of course they were still withdrawing money to pay for new charges and their service fees for taking the payments that I was not getting.
On a Wednesday I called them. Got a run around for half an hour before getting in touch with someone from the security department. After talking with him he said he should have this resolved that day and asked me to fax some bank info to him.
I did just that within 30 Min of getting off the phone with them. Called him back to talk to him. And no answer so I left a message and waited. No return call so I assumed they had put everything back to normal. Friday comes along and I still did not hear from him. SO I called back multiple times and left 2 messages.
Sunday comes along. Still nothing. I am to the point of being in trouble. They have withdrawn most of my slush funds for their fees and fedex has taken the rest.
So that next Monday I call the department he works for and of course they are closed and he was not in the office so I call back Tuesday and they transfer me to him because I am ranting and he has to accept the call. The excuse is that that afternoon I talked to him they got sent home early. And took the whole weekend off including Monday. So for 5 days they have not done a dang thing. While my account dwindles to zero and I have to shut down all my sales because I have no way to ship anything. He said they will release the funds on Wednesday and to fax them a couple invoices. I have still not heard from them and still not had my money released into my account. It has been over 3 weeks since I have been paid for a sale. My company is completely stalled and more then likely if something does not happen soon I will go under.
I accepted delivery last week for over $65,000 in products. I cant ship them. I have 45 Orders that need to be shipped and no means of shipping them untill they release the funds so I can ship my orders.
Anyone using First Data needs to close their accounts and go more local. Im dropping them fast and I may pursue legal action against them if someone thinks I have a case. They have cost me several thousand already and me and my wife have put our personal money into canceled orders. We are on the verge of temporary ruin until I can reorganize everything and start again.
This company works at their own schedules with no concern for the small business. They have delayed this issue for weeks. And they never contacted me to tell me I even had an issue that could interrupt my service. No mail and no calls.
If they never release my funds as promised My company will go bankrupt and I will file for chapter 11. I will start again and they can get stuck with all the chargebacks after I call every single buyer and tell them to file a charge back.
Before this problem our company was raking in profits and the company future was looking very bright. Shows how the actions of a single Billion dollar Cooperation can destroy a small business.
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