Complaint Review: 1st Data Corp - Internet

 We applied to Authorize.net for a merchant account to process credit cards online. They got us approval in 24 hrs based on credit to begin transactions. After a few days of processing, they paid us $3537.00 we were owed. YEAH  everything is great! So we up our output to $12,000.00 the next week, in the meantime they began debiting their fees out of our account.

The fees raised our concern because they we were not what we had been told when we were "approved".  They did not make our next deposit because our application was now under review at risk assesment office. We were to contact them for further explanation.

We left repeated messages for  " Ed" in  risk assesment with no return contact, our original agent "Anna" said everything was fine just s.o.p. just keep sendin deals.  We kept showing good faith by continuing to write business.  Finally Ed returned our calls and said they just needed to contact our first 5 customers to make sure they had authorized charges and had actually signed paperwork.

Sounded logical that a merchant company would look to protect themselves in such a manner. we provided all customer info requested on 7-17-13  Ed promised an answer on 7-19-13, he never called, we had to contact him on that Friday which was our employee's payday, except there was no deposit to pay them with.

 On Monday 7-22-13 Ed finaally called to say that they were not going to release $48,000.00 they owed us and that further if we wanted to keep our account open we needed to have a $360,000.00 reserve balance deposited with their company.

We have come to find out that Anna at "Authrize.net" is actually an employee of 1st data corp, that the rates we were quoted and fee's quoted were total fabrications intended to entice us to sign up with 1st Data

 This company has basically stolen our money using a sophisticated theft by deception scam.  They only use 1st names, everyone you talk to says they are in a different city, Anna says she works for Authorize . Net in CA.  Ed says he is 1st Data in NY  The company is based in Atlanta, They make it very difficult to verify info or contact correct dept.

We had to freeze our BOA account to stop them from debiting more money.  When we contacted other merchant processers to apply with them, and told them what had happened with 1st Data, they laughed, they said they had heared our story a hundred times before.

I see numerous other horror stories regarding this company on Rip Off Report and other places online, where are the authorities?  When you make a financial decision based on intentionally provided false information, it is theft, and theft by deception.

I know our money is gone ... do not make the same mistake, stay away from 1 Data, wherever they say they are