EVO Payments processed several credit card transactions but then refused to release the funds or process a return Melville New York
We recently processed a handful of large credit card transactions using EVO Payments between two different legal entities that share common ownership.
The size of the transactions were large so it was understandable that they would be flagged by the risk management department. What happened next was a demonstration of complete incompetence and disregard for the customer service. The transactions were charged to the customer company's credit cards and the billing company was charged the related transaction fees, however, the funds were never released to the billing entity and were held by EVO Payments.
When contacting the Risk Managment Department regarding the issue, I was told to process a return for funds to the customer entity's credit in order for their balance to be corrected. However, since the funds were in fact still being held by EVO payments and I did not have any funds to return.
In conversations with Deborah Towle, the risk analyst who was responsible for the hold on the original transactions, it was evident that this analyst had no understanding of business entities and did grasp the nature of related but separate legal entities. At one point in the conversation, I was accused of conducting illegal bank transactions akin to money laundering and when I asked her to provide the legal or banking laws that I was violating she could not. She then backed down off of that accusation and simply stated that it was the company's policy to not process credit card transactions between related separate legal entities. As a side note, we have been using the converge payment gateway for years to process and have never had any of these accusations. We only considered EVO Payments because our CRM software was compatible with them.
I could have lived with the incompetence of the risk management department but despite the fact, they are the ones who put the transactions on hold, they refused to reverse the transactions and placed all the responsibility on us to deal with the customer service team to process the returns. I do have to point out the customer service team were actually very helpful but even they did not understand the logic suggested by the Deborah Towley.
It has been 21 days still this process has started and I still have not received any refunds for the transaction fees nor have 5 of the 6 original transactions been reversed and they are still showing a debit on the customer credit card. At this point, we are considered other action such as reporting the bank transaction fees as fraudulent with our bank.