Complaint Review: First Data Merchant Services

My company became a customer of First Data in April of 2012. Immediately, I had issues of being charged almost triple what I had agreed to during the sales process. They did eventually refund some of the fees but were still charging me more than double what I was quoted and almost double what I had been paying with my previous processor. Since it took so much time to get any refund, I decided to put that issue on the back burner until I had time to deal with it. Sales practices were deceptive, but I let that go.

Then in April of 2013, we had 3 separate transactions for $20,000 each from the same customer go through in a 10-14 day time span. Each time, First Data placed a hold on the funds and sent lump sums to our bank, making it difficult for us to tell at a glance whether they were depositing the appropriate amounts. The first transaction from April 9, 2013 was deposited to my account successfully within a reasonable period of time. I had numerous conversations with "Jonathan" in the security department during this time period. During this time, I found another merchant processor and stopped doing business with First Data because I felt extremely distrustful of them. Upon reviewing the transactions for the month of April, we noticed that one of the $20,000 transactions was never paid to us. They showed it in a $66,000 deposit that was sent to our account in late April, but upon downloading the individual transactions, we saw that only one $20,000 payment (there were supposed to be two) was posted along with a series of mostly small (under $100) transactions were included instead to make the deposit amounts look similar. This way, we would not question the amount. Since I believed this to be theft, I had our accountant take a closer look at our books where she found another transaction from February 9, 2013 in the amount of $9503 that was also never forwarded to our bank. We contacted First Data many many times about this and were told by Celine in customer service that the security department was holding the funds. I again contacted Jonathan who clearly avoided me for several weeks and finally tried to lie and tell me we had the money. I explained to him that it had never made it to our bank but he just kept repeating the same stupid company line so I got my attorney involved. My attorney attempted to contact First Data by phone multiple times and never received a call back until she drafted a letter and sent it to their general counsel. At that time, they again claimed we had been paid the money on the April amount and now they claimed that the February charge never even took place. We again provided them with proof that we never received any of the money and that the February charge did in fact go through (we sent them our customer's February credit card statement showing the charge, but to date they have yet to reimburse me one cent. Since we have sent the proof multiple times now that these amounts were never deposited to my bank and they have done nothing, I can only conclude that First Data is purposely withholding these funds so they can use them for their own purposes without paying me interest. This has been going on for way too long and they conveniently ignore requests from both myself and my attorneys.

Something needs to be done about this company. I would love to know what government agency regulates this type of business. In the meantime, DON"T do business with First Data