I'm one of the principals of a company that uses iPayment for merchant services. We do a lot of online business. A few months back they withheld $1,500 from us stating that our account would be reviewed in a couple of months to determine if they could put the funds back. Two months has come and gone and this has not happened and no one seems to know how we can get our funds back into the account. Now we discovered on Friday January 28, 2011 that the company stopped making deposits to our bank account several days prior without contacting us. As of this writing, the company has now withheld over $8,000 from our account. We were not able to make our payroll nor were we able to stock up on products before the Chinese New Year (CNY) begins. The CNY lasts a couple weeks and during this time many of their factories close and you cannot receive express shipments from the country. Because we are unable to purchase enough product out of China we now stand to lose well over $15,000 in revenues for the month and risk going out of business. Furthermore, we have several investors who are looking at our company and wanted to see the revenues over the next few months, so we also stand to lose their potential investments which could have been over $100,000.
On Monday January 3, 2011 my partner and I spoke with a Mark in their risk management department and he stated the reason the deposits were being withheld is because we've experienced a spike in our sales and he noted a couple chargebacks recently. He said they needed 10 random invoices and 3 months worth of bank statements before they monies could be released. I asked Mark why wouldn't they call to inform us of this and he said it appears they did call and left a message. Once I began probing about what number they called he then recanted his story and said they may or may not have called. I told him how disturbing this was and he was very nonchalant and basically told us that if we wanted to get paid they we need to send the requested information and that by contract they could simply cancel us all together. I told him that I have already reported them to the BBB and the FTC and I would be reporting the to the Attorney General's office next. He said "yes whatever you need to do".
