Complaint Review: First Data

FirstData is holding my funds for absolutely no reason. I was trying to switch my company description to medical devices instead of electrical parts in order to accept medical cards as payments. This action put my account under review and they have been holding funds ever since 12/24/2015. They are holding funds on these dates: 12/24/15, 1/8/16, 1/9/16, 1,10/16, 1/15/16, 1/16/16 which amounts to over $5800 and they claim is only $5300.

 Speaking with two of their representatives on the phone, I was told that they would hold the money and once they feel comfortable releasing the funds then I would receive the full amount. Now I am being told that they will release the funds less cancellation and investigative fees. Not only that, I was originally told that the money would be held for 60 days, then they changed it to 90 days, and again changed it to 6 months or more if they want. (The two representatives that I spoke with are Ted Brand and Courtney Robinson.) They are very difficult to reach and when I am finally able to reach them they say there is nothing we can do and just repeat the same thing over and over again.

On top of everything they terminated our merchant account  - so even if we have further charge backs, there is no way to take care of it, they are not willing to supply receipts at least to let us handle these issues.

I have been doing everything by the book, but they don't care seeing that I'm just a small business. Some banks have disputed transactions on behalf of the customer which I was never notified about and eventually went on to penalize me. They claim that they are holding the funds in order to protect themselves if more transactions are disputed. Out of the seven transactions that were disputed, 5 of them were because of EMV chip cards not being processed on a chip accepting device, which was provided to me by this company.

The other two were because of branding which can always be fixed. Every business has disputes as this is a normal part of business, yet they claim otherwise. I am not the only person who has experienced this, as there is an abundant amount of businesses going through this same thing; and many of them do not get there money back and if they do it takes years. This company preys on small businesses and does everything in their power to hold  and ultimately if they can, keep those funds.