Complaint Review: BANK CARD USA - Westlake Village California

Bank Card USA called my place of business with a prerecorded message about three months ago. The message explained how they could beat the rate of my current credit card processor. I pressed one to speak to an account representative and spoke to an Andrew Thomas. Andrew was helpful and we decided to do business with them. We got approved for $20,000 in monthly volume with an average ticket of about $700. Andrew helped set us up with Authorize.net and it became evident that this would be a good business relationship.

I was terribly wrong.

On a number of occasions Bank Card USA has held funds for review as we were considered a risk. I have no problem with Bank Card USA holding our money while they do an investigation, I understand that people can chargeback credit card purchases and Bank Card USA could be on the hook for thousands of dollars. My complaint is that there is zero communication as to what is happening. On two occasions no deposits hit our account for over a week, when we call in to figure out what is going on we are told that money is being held in Risk Management. When we are put through to Risk Management we are told there are suspicious transactions that happened over a week ago and we need to fax over supporting documentation. It is frustrating to have to deal with a company that is not putting their customer first.

Once supporting documentation is faxed over we wait until the investigation is over, which can take a day or two. We are faced with no deposits in our account for almost two weeks while we wait on someone to investigate purchases. This Risk Management ordeal could be much more easier on the merchant if a simple email is sent out to us so we can get documentation over as soon as possible, and not wait two weeks to get paid on sales. This companies customer service is by far the worse I have ever dealt with. The Queen of the Risk Management castle goes by Geannie Moss. She NEVER answers the phone, NEVER returns calls, and NEVER returns emails. Everytime you ask a questions as to when we can start receiving money we are transferred over to Queen Moss and it goes to Voicemail everytime!

On another occasion we charged a clients card $10,000 for some products. Everything went through okay and we shipped the products out. We noticed deposits were coming in, but $10,000 never hit the account. I called their so called Customer Service Department and was told that Bank Card USA refused the $10,000. I begged with Risk Management to please hold the funds for however long they liked to and after however long they needed to be safe from chargebacks we would accept the money then...  they were not willing to budge. Thank GOD, this was a current client of ours and we were very easily able to have him pay the $10,000 through a PayPal Invoice.

Visit  ://www.santabarbara.bbb.org/BusinessReport.aspx?CompanyID=4000725 and read the countless complaints on this company. Many are about holding funds (which I think is fair for BCUSA to do) but the most is the lack of customer service not to mention we are charged a monthly fee to have customer service, LOL! The only person worth keeping at that company is Sharon Tan. She returns calls and is very studious to get problems resolved. The only time I ever got to speak to Queen Moss is when Ms Tan buzzed over to her office and told her to pick up the d**n phone. I have also left many messages for the President of Bank Card USA, Shawn Skelton, and never received a single phone call back.

It starts from the top down Shawn S, and YOU sir are not being a good example to your staff.

Bottom line. Bank Card USA is a very poorly ran company with ZERO customer service. Save yourself the heartache of dealing with vanishing money and trying to find were it went. We are now processing most transactions through PayPal and could not be happier.