I had to post this after reading all the other reports. This one will blow you away. Please take the time to read all of this so this does not happen to you.
We opened our online business on June 1. We were anxious to be able to start taking credit cards and found Innovative Merchant Solutions online. I did not do any research, but spoke to a good salesman, first name Dan, (he's still there) and he convinced me they were the merchants for us. I signed up. I sent my application in which asked how much we thought we would do in volume each month. After careful consideration, my wife and I put $180,000 per mo. On the application. Dan called me back and said we would never get approved for that amount and to fax him a letter stating that we "Made a mistake" and meant to say $18,000 per mo. I told him we would do that in a day. He assured me everything would be fine, and they would adjust the account as our sales increased and it would not be a problem. We did as we were told as we wanted to get the doors open.
Big mistake, we did the volume we thought we would and started receiving calls from there so called "Risk Management Dept." (what a joke this is as they only thing they will risk is "your business") They said that we were way over what we were suppose to be doing in volume and they froze our accounts for review. I explained we did as we were told to do by there sales rep and that we knew our volume would be high, but your sales rep. Said everything would be fine. Not so.
All I knew is that none of our charges were making it to our bank account.
I can't tell you how much stress this put me under, I asked for a manager as they were holding $46,000 of our money and I could not make payroll or fulfill customer orders without that money and that they were going to put us under. (they didn't care, in fact they were quite rude and said we were probably a fraudulent company) They put me in touch with Abee Mohika (should have known we were in trouble as his extension is 66612), Risk Management Manager, this guy is heartless, he told me to fax invoices, references of satisfied customers, shipping logs, the list went on. It took me the better part of 2 days to put all this together for him. I faxed it over. They said they were satisfied and would release some of my money but were going to keep $25,000 as a security deposit for 270 days and thats that. They released $16,000 (which took them over a week to get to me after they said I'd have it in 2 days) my wife was in tears and we were watching all our hard work go down the drain thanks to this unscrupulous company and there so called risk management dept. These guys are real scum.
It's been almost 9 months now. I'm suppose to get the money back by the end of May. (I'm sure there going to come up with something else however) We will more than likely have to get a lawyer. We used up the rest of our home equity line to stay afloat. This company does not care about your 1.5 percent on the charges. They are after the bigger money in freezing small business peoples accounts and holding there money for as long as they can. You will not see any interest on that money but I bet they will.
Things got very slow by November and December was even worse. We had to close as we had no reserves left. We might have made it if this company did not
STEAL $25,000 from us. When signing up, that certainly is not part of the sales pitch. Watch out for these guys. They will shatter your dreams of being your own boss as they did for my wife and I. I'm open to a class action suit if anyone out there wants to jump on board. These extortionists need to be shut down.
Out of business thanks to IMS
Middleburg, Florida
U.S.A.
0 comments