Complaint Review: Pivotal Payments

We are a small not for profit organization run by volunteers that teaches the olympic sport of Fencing to kids. We teach all types of children to fence we even have developmentally challenged children in our club who have done amazingly well with the sport.

Our club had finally acquired a space of it`s own. A space on the sceond floor of a building that had not been occupied in some time. The building is about 40 years old and really starting to show it`s age. The roof leaks like crazy, some of the plumbing is questionable and the space was in severe disrepair. But we finally had a space we could afford. So in order to do some renovations we needed to do some fundraising.

We felt that to maximize our fundraising dollars it would be good for us to have a POS terminal. My husband gave me the information from Pivotal, as they were soliciting his business, and suggested I call since they seemed to be in our price range. BIG MISTAKE!

I should have taken my cues when the darn thing was being delivered. I had asked that they notify me when the terminal was to be delivered as no one is at the club during the day. If they gave me a general time frame, I would make myself available to accept the delivery. The only notification I got was a phone call from Pivotal saying I have notification that your package had been delivered so lets set up your terminal. I tried to explain that I had not received a package and therefore could not set up the terminal. The delivery company had left a note on the door of the club saying we had a package to be picked up. You see the club is not in a great neighbourhood. So someone saw the notice grabbed it, called the number and tried to pick up the package. It took about two days to get this fixed and I was even called a liar in the process.

There were many more challenges in the set up process. Too many to mention. The biggest one was someone had entered my fax number as my phone number. I filled out many of thier ``change`` forms to try and correct the problem but to no avail. During the set up process I was instructed to use my own credit card with a tranaction of 1 penny to complete the set up process. My credit card company saw the transaction and immediately cancelled my credit card because they thought it was a fraudulent transaction.

Finally the day of the fundraiser had arrived. We went to use our terminal and it would not accept credit cards. We lost out on a significant amount of fundraising dollars. I called the next business day to see what the problem was. Imagine my surprise when no one could figure out what the issue was. It took 5 days for someone to tell me that because we did not have a credit card transaction within 30 days our account was terminated. I had explained to my sales person that we would only do POS transactions every so often but not every day. Sometimes there might be 3 months between POS transactions. I was told that it would not be a problem.

I asked the customer service person if I could speak to a manager. They said that none were available at moment and one would have to call me back. I have made more than 10 requests to speak to a customer service manager and to date none have ever called me back.

They claim I am very hard to get a hold of. They screwed up by entering my fax number as my phone number. They have other ways of contacting me. I find it strange that whenever they want to sell me something (gift card package, upgrade to the terminal, e commerce etc.) they never have a problem contacting me.

Today I got a phone message from Pivotal saying they now had a solution to my problem and that I was to call in for the fix. They did not leave a name or what department they were from, merely a phone number and I was supposed to guess the rest. It is now more than 8 weeks since my original phone call about the issue.

With all of thier refusals to speak with me (un returned phone calls, ignored e-mails etc.) I was frustrated and sent the machine back weeks ago. The bank was also instructed to stop payment on the account. Now they suddenly phone, cocincidence I think not.

When I did phone in today, I first had to guess which department called me and because they didn`t leave a name I had no choice but to speak to the person who answered. I gave them my info, they of course could not find our file. Typical. It took about fifteen minutes to locate my information. Then they inform me that I will have to speak with the cancellation department as I have sent the terminal back. They transfer me to the cancellation department and we are back at square one again. They can`t find our file. I give them several different phone numbers, and ways of tracking me still no file. He then says to me that I will just have to wait until someone calls me. If it is important they will call back soon. He then hung up on me. Nice, really professional.

So my saga and frustration continue. I have no recourse. No one from the company will speak with me, so I guess I am just supposed to wait until they call me. At least they are not getting any more money from our club.