We were changed to iPayment, Inc as our merchant processor by a "Cash Advance" Company. We had been using our own Bank's Merchant Processor and never had issues in over 6 years.
Problems started immeduately with iPayment. Could not "program" our credit card machine, took over 3 business days to get it right. Failed to transfer all accounts over; American Express cards "not supported".
Our business is the marketing and selling of Martial arts products and services (Taekwondo Classes & Gear). We frequently sell memberships totaling $695 to $7695 for individuals & families. A ticket of $2400 is common enough.
Monday March 31 processed a ticket for $2800. It did not deposit until Friday! The delay cost money in bank fees and delayed payments to our vendors & service providors.
The following Monday April 7 we processed a ticket for $2400 and by late wednesday night we received a phone call from "Daniel" at iPayment to call back - after their close time. Thursday AM we call and are informed by Daniel that the $2400 ticket was "flagged". It exceeded a limit they had imposed and we had to "reverse charges".
We were afraid that would extract $ from our account and we were told it WOULD NOT TAKE $ from our account, but simply release the charge from our client's card. We did as we were instructed and faxed a "raised limit" form to prevent them from flagging future normal transactions.
The following Monday AM (4/11) when we checked our accounts online everything looked OK. We Continued to conduct business and "desposited" over $2000 into our account through the caredit card machine.
That Thursday we checked to see if all funds had cleared so as to write payroll and rent checks and found the account over $1800 OVERDRAWN! By end of business Monday the 11th iPayment had taken $2405.95 from the account! Monies they never transacted or deposited!
We called DANIEL at iPayment, Inc. And were informed that that was a mistake... All further phone calls met with voicemail for over 2 days but $ was not returned and iPayment would not take responsibility for the overdrafts caused or for lost contracts and services.
We went to our bank to see if we/they could reverse the damages and have met with failure, because we had contracted them as a merchant providor we had given them authorization to take funds from the account!
Over ten days later iPayment returned a portion of the monies minus 40% fees! They refused to take calls or return calls or $ to undo their damage.
We have had to freeze the account, try to open new accounts and begin all over again with debts and no cash. We have gone to our lawyer and had a demand letter sent, no response. We have forwarded this report and all documents to the State Attorney General and await a response.
We don't expect to hear anything positive... We found other reports on this site and elsewhere about iPayment, Inc and we are very discouraged. We hope we do not lose our business, it was suffering financially already due to changes in the market and losses of trained employees...
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