Complaint Review: Retriever Merchant Solutions - Louisville Kentucky

My wife and I have run our own jewelry design business for 40 years and for the last 15 we've used the Retriever Merchant System to process our credit card sales.

On June 1, 2014 Retriever's billing company, TSYS in Omaha, attempted to withdraw $21,991.51 from my bank account as fees for 14 transactions totaling $20,310.53 for the month of May. The error was that the number of transactions listed on the statement being charged authorization fees for totaled 67,793 resulting in $21,164.20 in erroneous charges. We in fact had made 14 transactions in May which should have cost us about $7.00. Our total bill to Retriever for May should have been about $834 instead of $21,991.51.

 My wife and I made multiple phone calls to Retriever trying to rectify the statement so we could pay the correct amount. Even though our bank, Bank America, refused the TSYS draft for NSF, the amount of $21,991.51 was withheld from our bank account resulting in multiple overdrafts each time TSYS submitted the draft to our bank, which occurred 3 times from June 2 to June 10. Retriever Systems customer rep supervisor, David Mauger, told us that their research department stated that it might take until June 9th or 10th to fix the billing error.

 On Friday June 6th, Bank America advised that we file a fraud report for unauthorized withdrawals for them to reinstate our account. We had to postpone multiple payments to suppliers, insurance companies and others, as our business was effectively dead in the water during that period. We felt that after about 15 years as a client of Retriever Systems, we had to close our account so that we could restart our business and take credit card sales with a company that would be more responsive to us and rectify its own billing errors.

 My wife and I spent entire work days for over a week on the phone with Retriever, including multiple conversations with Customer Service Supervisor David Mauger to fix the situation. I personally spoke with at least a dozen representatives from Retriever.  Every customer rep we talked to admitted that it was a huge billing error and would be rectified.

My understanding following a conversation with customer rep. Jerjuana, June 17, 2014, was that Kara Hooker, a Retriever maintenance specialist, was personally working on the problem. We were assigned a new confirmation number. I expressed the fear that since we'd stopped payment of the erroneous bill of $21,991.51 and were unable to get a correct billing statement for May that we would be put in collection. Jerjuana advised us to call back a few days later to see if a correction to our bill had been made.

  Today alone, 6/30/2014, I have attempted to contact Retriever's customer service twice. I was disconnected before I got a service rep the first time. The second time I spoke with a rep whose name sounded like Sherrell. After 30 minutes of recounting our problem, she didn't see what she could do about what she characterized as a disputed payment, she said she'd have to put me on hold again and simply hung up.

 At this point I feel like I'm cut off from access to Retriever customer service which hasn't been effective in addressing what initially appeared to be a simple, although enormous, billing error. It seems that Retriever is treating this as a disputed bill and that I've refused to make payment for the month of May, which is not the case at all.

   We have now received a demand for payment of $21,991.51 from TSYS collections agent Rolinda Hollie, threatening severe damage to our credit if we do not pay the disputed amount in 10 days. I am very desirous of paying the correct amount for the May billing cycle and reasonable closing costs for the month of June, although we did not use Retriever Services since May.