We switched to Ipayment systems in March and have been sorely disappointed ever since. We had been with our prior (more expensive) processor for about 3 years and had no issues with their service but in the bad economy wanted to save a little money. Bad choice, the service from Ipayment is terrible.
Our issue with Ipayment started with a chargeback, one of our offices took a stolen card as payment for some goods in a rare over the phone transaction. Ipayment approved the transaction, but then held it up in their "Risk Department" for further analysis. Of course they didn't notify us about this we luckily caught it by reviewing batch transfers into the bank account, we ultimately ended up calling Ipayment and speaking with "Jennifer" in the risk department who is handling the transaction. Were forced into providing three months of bank statements and agreeing to sign an additional contract - processing limit change request. That is just the 1st example of Ipayments inability to communicate with its customers and coerce customers into additional legal obligations to cover its bottom-line rather than provide service to its customers.
Normally, other than the communications issue and the whole I would consider this a great thing as we were still holding onto the goods purchased, however their Risk Department did not do its job. To verify the transaction they simply called the number that we were given by the thief, talked to person themselves and then approved the transaction. Normally I would expect that they would contact the originating bank and get the correct customer phone number from the credit card company for the transaction.in spite of the fact the risk department said they called the card holder, based on the inability to get a hold of the risk department on the phone; I really suspect that Ipayment's risk department simply sat on the transaction for a couple of days.
After we got the call back from Ipayment's risk department with the release of funds we shipped the goods to the thief only to get a phone call from the real cardholder a week or so later telling us the card number was stolen.
Now the whole chargeback adventure begins. Ipayment does not provide any timely communication at all on this - you simply get a one page notification in the mail a week after anything happens. The typical way that you find out that a chargeback has occurred is from your bank sending you overdraft notices on your checking account. We were lucky that our bank called saying there had been a problem, but this still was a huge impact on our business.
On the advice of Ipayment and (The Redwoods Company aka, cheesy credit card processing sales people) we did the automatic dispute and Ipayment held the funds rather than moving them back to our bank account.
Unfortunately, Ipayment and the cheesy processing broker failed to let me know that if the chargeback dispute was denied by the bank, that the money would not be simply given back out of the funds that Ipayment was holding but again be debited from MY checking account. Now, I have to cover the transaction again (were up to about 15K here) in my checking account and another flurry of overdraft fees and calls from the bank.
So now, I am having to prove to Ipayment that the transaction cleared before they release the funds they are holding back to me. After repeated calls all day to their Risk Department and finally asking to speak to a supervisor did I finally get the person handling my merchant account "Jennifer" who snapped at me "I have been on the phone all day" - well lady I have people in my office all day wondering why their paychecks bounced! She ultimately said they needed a letter from my bank stating the transaction had cleared, which we got and faxed to Ipayment. After seeing nothing for another 2 business days hit my back account from Ipayment I then call the Risk department again all day only to find out that they need to call and verify this with my bank as well. To facilitate I pass along a phone number and a name - however my assigned risk rep - "Jennifer" is out on vacation.
So as it stands right now, I am out over 16K to Ipayment systems. If you are thinking about them as a processor please go look at someone else and verify what company is actually processing the transactions prior to signing up with anything.
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