Problems with ProPay?

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Permalink Reply by Elizabeth Kline on July 30, 2010 at 1:39pm

Hi Kerri - I haven't had any problems with ProPay at all - however, I just started using them recently. I have liked their service so far, and, of course, their prices...can you let me know what happened? I'd be very interested, as I want to be alert for future problems. I wish you luck though, if you change providers! Thanks. Elizabeth K

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Permalink Reply by Kerri Norman on July 30, 2010 at 2:46pm

Hi Elizabeth,
Sure! I too had had no problems till now and their prices are v. good.
Last Friday I got an email from PP saying that a customer had refused a charge because he didn't recognize the name on his statement. A chargeback. They gave me guidelines for defending this and said I had 21 days to do so.
I replied on the Monday after having called my customer. It turns out that unless you have a toll free #, your email will appear on card statements - something which is confusing to customers. I did not realize this, so it was useful to find this out for future dealings. Why they can't use my business name I don't know. He was fine with this and said that he'd immediately call his bank and have the charge reinstated. This process of course, takes 2-7 business days - for money transfer etc. I emailed PP with this information.
In the meantime, in that same email PP told me that my account was now negative and I was required to transfer money into it. I immediately began their process of verifying a checking account (which BTW I had tried 2 times previously without it working - even called their customer service and eventually gave up) - this usually takes several days for them to deposit money, have it show in my account etc. and then go back to PP & verify. It happened in one day (luckily) and I transferred the money on Tues. but still it'll take 2-7 days for the transfer to complete. Standard transfer times with any bank.
Yesterday I got another email from their collections! dept. stating that my account was in arrears and they were debiting my checking account as per policy... Mind you - this is a total of only 6 days since the original notification of the chargeback, not 21 days. Two of which were the weekend! Of course, there will be a little clause somewhere that allows them to do this.
I emailed and called (haven't yet been able to talk to anyone on the phone as no person answers) telling them that I had already done this and if they had bothered to ask me or check my PP account they would have seen this, so now I have 2 debits coming out of my checking account. And oh yea - they charged me $15 for the original chargeback and I asked if I was going to be charged for this unnecessary debit also? No reply as yet.
I called my customer again and he had indeed reinstated the charge but PP did not allow even one day for this to run it's course through the banking system. They take 2-4 days to process cards but don't allow that for disputes.
My complaint is that they made no attempt at any point to ask me what was happening, did not notify me prior to the collections action, did not allow sufficient time for ANYTHING to occur, sent the email on a Friday - when 2 days would elapse without my being able to do anything through the banking system, and not responding or even apparently reading the emails I had sent.
Truly, I don't know what else I could have done to resolve this issue. I acted as quickly as possible, notified them at every step and yet was still penalized. AND the customer has reinstated the charge and has written verification of this from his bank.
So, all in all it's very frustrating and extremely poor customer service. If I could find another company at similar rates I would move immediately.
Hope this gives you some useful information Elizabeth :-).
Regards,
Kerri

Elizabeth Kline said:

Hi Kerri - I haven't had any problems with ProPay at all - however, I just started using them recently. I have liked their service so far, and, of course, their prices...can you let me know what happened? I'd be very interested, as I want to be alert for future problems. I wish you luck though, if you change providers! Thanks. Elizabeth K

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Permalink Reply by Lindsay Pless on July 30, 2010 at 6:17pm

Kerri, I feel your pain as the very same thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago with ProPay.....first time I've ever had problems with them.
You are right.... you can't talk to a real person and email replies take upwards of several days from them.
They also charged me $15 in fees and when I balked about that they said it's the price of them having to do business to clarify the entire situation. So I'm out $15.40 (40cents taken out when they reimbursed me some of the money they took out of my checking account and I transferred it back into my checking account after they gave me 'some' of the money back)......I am furious with them and have asked in vain about changing my email address to my company name and still have not gotten a satisfactory reply from them.

If I stay with PP I will now be sure to inform every cc customer that my email addy is not the same as my company name and make sure they know how to check the charges against their cc's so PP cannot make any more money from me than I absolutely have to pay for their services.

Linds

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Permalink Reply by Megan Martin on July 30, 2010 at 7:25pm

OK - I have had one chargeback and the issue was resolved by faxing the signed receipt - however I had the funds still in the propay account which may be why it was a bigger issue for you. I literally just got off the phone with a customer service representative, and I wasn't on hold before they actually picked up.

Try:
Phone: 866-573-0951
Customer Service Representatives are available between the hours of 6:30 AM and 7 PM (Mountain Time) Monday through Friday

Also - you may want to look into using http://pocketpay.me if you stick with Propay after all. It's a phone browser based processing system that works with any mobile phone browser
(they demo on a really old basic phone to show how it works) The thing I like about it is that they email a receipt to your customer which specifically says "This charge will appear as (insert your email here) on your credit card statement." It's something like $9 a year and $0.10 per transaction in addition to the Propay fees. You also get immediate verification that the card has been processed successfully.

Sorry you are having issues.

Megan

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Permalink Reply by Kerri Norman on July 31, 2010 at 12:34pm

Thank you Megan,
I will definitely look into this and thanks also for the phone number. I have talked to them by phone on other matters in the past but the phone number given to me this last time was for collections - who don't answer :-). Maybe I should call the number you gave me asking for collections and explaining that no-one ever picks up the phone?
I too have had a previous charge dispute last year that was resolved without trouble. I'm not sure why there has been so much aggressive intervention this time as I've never had any account difficulties in the past.
Ah well.
Thanks again - useful info!

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Permalink Reply by Lindsay Pless on July 31, 2010 at 12:39pm

Why pay for another company's fees if we're already using ProPay? I think what I'm going to do from now on is also make sure I get my customer's email addys (provided they have them and are willing to give the information to me), then I can send an email after the sale reiterating what's on their receipt etc. and it won't cost me more money :-)

Thanks for the info though!!

Linds

Megan Martin said:

OK - I have had one chargeback and the issue was resolved by faxing the signed receipt - however I had the funds still in the propay account which may be why it was a bigger issue for you. I literally just got off the phone with a customer service representative, and I wasn't on hold before they actually picked up.

Try:
Phone: 866-573-0951
Customer Service Representatives are available between the hours of 6:30 AM and 7 PM (Mountain Time) Monday through Friday

Also - you may want to look into using http://pocketpay.me if you stick with Propay after all. It's a phone browser based processing system that works with any mobile phone browser
(they demo on a really old basic phone to show how it works) The thing I like about it is that they email a receipt to your customer which specifically says "This charge will appear as (insert your email here) on your credit card statement." It's something like $9 a year and $0.10 per transaction in addition to the Propay fees. You also get immediate verification that the card has been processed successfully.

Sorry you are having issues.

Megan

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Permalink Reply by Kerri Norman on August 2, 2010 at 1:26pm

UPDATE on this posting:
Just to let you all know, ProPay called me today, clarifying their processes etc. The lady I spoke to (Marla) said that she'll look at their standard email send out and try to make some points more obvious so that confusion does not arise as I'm apparently not the only person they've had this issue with. Also, to not send notices out on a Friday.
Anyhow, she was very helpful and I'm happy with the communication.

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