Money Tree Merchant Services Held my funds hostage!!! Norfolk, Virginia

Mrs. M, its very sorry that you have to bring this issue to this page, this isnt our style to handle things, this type of reports can destroy the intrigity of a person and his business  but because we have been working in Hampton Roads VA (Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Chesapeake, Suffolk, Portsmouth,Hampton & Newport) for over 12 years helping thousand of small business,this need to be clarifed.

When you guys reach out to us to establish the services on Wednesday February 20th 2013 at 4pm, you told me that you need it the services by Friday and at that moment we decided to process your aplication online because this way is faster and increase the possibility to get it done by that day like we did.

We both together fill out the online application but the section of personal and bank information was filled out only by you and you didnt give me a voided check. After this was complete and before it gets to our underwriting department to work the application and email was send to your email address for you to revise the application to make sure everything is correct and to accept the term and conditions and you reply back accepted. You started processing on Friday February 22nd and the money was going to your account with no problem.

On Tuesday March 5th 2013, I received a call at my cell phone from you telling me you havent seen your money from the weekend and I told you to contact our merchant support department who has access to that information directly because I was out of town for the rest of the week. The following day (3/06/13)around 4pm you call me again telling the same thing so I told you that I was going to find out and I was going to call you back. Well I find out that our funding department was getting a block when they were trying to get the monthly fee from February that generates and automatic reserve on the merchant account not a hostage.

One of our guys fromthe funding department calls you and explains you the situation and told that base of what happen you needed a letter from your bank confirming your bank account and also that is able for unlimited deposit and withdraws. From what you told me you were not happy with the situation and  you had some words with the funding guy but the following day (3/7/13) you were going to get the letter from the bank.

On Thursday afternoon (3/7/13) you again called me and told that the bank werent going to make the letter with that specification, so I told the funding department that but they insisted that they need the letter in order the remove the account from reserve and I informed you that.

So on Friday 3/08/13 around 12pm, you call me again with the bank on the line requesting me to deposit the money on to your bank and I let both know what I was told but directed you to contact again our funding department with the bank on the line so both can figure out if it was possible another way to handle this situation. Looks like that phone call with your bank rep on the line didnt go well either.

After that 3way calling on (3/8/13) our funding department make an outbound call to your bank client service center and both determent that a digit was missing from the online application and the bank was manually deposited the fund on to your account because the rest on the information match but when we try to get the fees electronically at the end of February we were not able putting your account in a reserve automatically. Once I explained you what happened, you faxed a copy of a voided check around 5pm and the account was updated.

But for some reason and I apologies for it, is that even though the account was updated late Friday afternoon was not remove from reserve status until Tuesday March 12th 2013, making your funds to be on your bank account 3 to 5 days later. Because this money is coming from a reserve account take this long to get into your account but regular batches that are not on hold goes to your account in regular basis.

Missing information can cause this type of problems and we should have remove that reserve last Friday instead of Tuesday and I assume part  of the responsibility for not been on top of this problem once I came back in town thinking that everything was take care already, also accept my apologies if some of the word I used make you feel like I was leaving you alone in the middle of the problem.

Best Regards
FD

Money Tree was establish in 1987, it was one of the first electronic merchant services processors
in the USA; I have been working with them since 1999 and starting working in the Hampton Roads area in 2001.