I just switched from Card Services International with linkpoint as a processor - has anyone else had any trouble with them?

They had over $8,000 of my funds on hold for about 45 days.. Their 'loss prevention' department is awful..

If you're considering a merchant account with them, I'd recommend going just about anywhere else..

But the good part - they accept ANYBODY :) Just like PayPal...

Originally posted by forona
I just switched from Card Services International with linkpoint as a processor - has anyone else had any trouble with them?

They had over $8,000 of my funds on hold for about 45 days.. Their 'loss prevention' department is awful..

If you're considering a merchant account with them, I'd recommend going just about anywhere else..

Steven - This isnt accurate.

Merchant Service Providers all have a certain level of what they will and wont accept. I know this looks funny, commenting against a company (I dont some of the things they have done, as Ive said tons of times) and then defending them now, but theres rules and guidelines on what is acceptable.

Now forona, did you have $8000 in your agreement? Was it on the original paperwork that you were approved to process this amount of money within a certain amount of time (Normally Monthly) It would be listed as your "Monthly Volume."

If you exceeded your monthly volume or average ticket by a substancial amount, this is why they have held the funds.

I would check this before I go against CSI in the forum. Any aquirer reserves the right to hold your funds if you exceed their acceptable amount. Anywhere from 30 Days to 6 Months is the normal time frame.



_________________________________________
John Holbrok
Advanced Computers & Internet Technologies
Owner & Editor of 'The ISP Source E-Directory'
JH is a Direct ICP Acquirer for 1st National Bank of Nevada

LOWEST MERCHANT ACCOUNTS & PAYMENT GATEWAYS!
E-mail john@corp.acitech.net for more information!

John,

I have few customers from Belize and Costa Rica with US Bank accounts accepted by CSI and working with them for while ;)

Steve

Originally posted by aci-john
Steven - This isnt accurate.

Merchant Service Providers all have a certain level of what they will and wont accept. I know this looks funny, commenting against a company (I dont some of the things they have done, as Ive said tons of times) and then defending them now, but theres rules and guidelines on what is acceptable.

Now forona, did you have $8000 in your agreement? Was it on the original paperwork that you were approved to process this amount of money within a certain amount of time (Normally Monthly) It would be listed as your "Monthly Volume."

If you exceeded your monthly volume or average ticket by a substancial amount, this is why they have held the funds.

I would check this before I go against CSI in the forum. Any aquirer reserves the right to hold your funds if you exceed their acceptable amount. Anywhere from 30 Days to 6 Months is the normal time frame.



_________________________________________
John Holbrok
Advanced Computers & Internet Technologies
Owner & Editor of 'The ISP Source E-Directory'
JH is a Direct ICP Acquirer for 1st National Bank of Nevada

LOWEST MERCHANT ACCOUNTS & PAYMENT GATEWAYS!
E-mail john@corp.acitech.net for more information!

The Key Thing being - they have US bank accounts. Thats one of the main requirement for any U.S. acquirer. Then again - CSI wouldnt be CSI; Cardservice "International"

You compared CSI to Paypal, which cant be done because paypal doesnt screen ANY of the information for accepting the payment. Only to verify the person SENDING. Hence, "third party processing"

Risk management is a complex topic.

There are often two very different perspectives - one is that of the legitimate merchant that grows their business and then gets a batch suspended for review or funds held... and on the flip side, you have risk managers and risk teams that see an entirely different side of the equation.

Believe me, there is no joy in seeing the daily chargeback and NSF reports. It is not uncommon for some larger ISO's to lose millions of dollars annually to unpaid debits & chargebacks.

There is an ever growing amount of sophisticated fraud in the Internet industry these days - both from merchants & customers of merchants. This can often really make a risk manager look carefully at situations before making a decision to release funds.

That being said, there are certainly some processors that may have overly light underwriting followed up by extremely tight risk management... and others may have very tough underwriting but very liberal risk management. I think that the ideal solution is in the middle.

At the end of the day, the key in risk is to allow good merchants to grow and catch any high risks of fraud activity very early on to minimize loss.

Forona, did CSI tell you why those $8,000 of funds were on hold?

Was it due to overlimit transactions or was it to be released pending validation?

If nothing else, they should certainly explain in detail why they are holding it and what they are waiting on.

That being said, there are certainly some processors that may have overly light underwriting followed up by extremely tight risk management... and others may have very tough underwriting but very liberal risk management. I think that the ideal solution is in the middle.

That's a key point. Anytime a processor is auto-approving (or approving with a very cursory underwriting review) with a low volume cap ($5K - $10K/month) be prepared for them to have a very strong reaction to any red flags (chargebacks, exceeding average ticket or monthly volume, etc.), especially early in the life of the account.

If your business carries higher than normal risk or you expect to have quick increases in volume early in the life of the account, these considerations are even more critical.

Forona,

Cardservice is a very reputable company. They must have had good reason for placing your funds on hold. I think you need to explain the situation fully before you bash them in the forum.

Did your monthly volume exceed the amount you listed on your application? Were the ticket amounts much higher? Did your chargeback ratio increase all of a sudden? Did you add a new product or service without notifying them which would lead to any of the above occuring?

-MM

To answer the questions, I was doing well over that $8K per month with them and for over a year, and although I've had some chargebacks, they were small amounts.

The main issue was that one of my customers' banks called to verify a charge through CSI - it was 100% legit, but they called to verify because it was a pretty high amount for this guy to charge on his CC, which is totally reasonable - well at this point CSI decided to hold up all the funds that were processed in that week's time and so on..

I would have stopped using them well before I did, allowing it to get up to that $8K figure, but this was during the linkpoint upgrade - so I was assuming it had to do with issues between the systems.. When I called linkpoint AND CSI I was told it was just because of the upgrade - I kept calling to find out when the $ would xfer and for 2 weeks CSI told me it was a linkpoint gateway problem.. I was never notified otherwise...

Finally reasonable that worked at CSI actually took a minute to look at my account and told me what the real deal was, which was that they had a hold because of a customer's bank confirming a charge..

For the following weeks, it took me HOURS to get through when I called, they were extremely rude, sometimes even hanging up on me, though I was always polite despite the situation, and never gave me even a slightly clear path as to how to resolve the issue.. This is what frustrates me the most, having my time eaten up and being treated so bad.

I signed up with them a long time back before I knew they were the kind of people that would take pretty much anyone - I just signed up w/ them because someone told me they were good and there were no setup fees..

Anyway, I have a real professional processor now and they treat my company extremely well.. Heck, I even have lower fees and a rep that calls me periodically to make sure things are going well and to see if there's anything they can do for me..

I have a CSI merchant acount through someone on this forum with authorize.net and so far they have been 100%

I process like 6-7k a month and always timely and fast payments

Same here - I process quite a bit through CSI. If I have a problem, I contact my agent who helps me. It sounds like your agent cannot help you for some reason. He should put you in contact with the correct people. That is what my agent did when I processed a transaction that was higher than my average and I forgot to call them.

CSI/Linkpoint has horrible support. They are consistently hard to get a hold of, and have unexplicable "maintenance windows" during the middle of the day.

Recently, they took their development/staging servers down during their "upgrade", and failed to inform us (a customer of nearly 6+ years). We spent over 2 hours on hold to find out yes it was down, and would be back up the following.. WEEK? Our development was frozen solid until they decided to bring their staging back online.

This is just the most recent example, there have been plenty prior to it. I would not recommend this processor to any one else.

I used to work with First Data's Linkpoint/ YourPay API system as an Account Executive. Their gateway was recently moved and when that took place, merchants were having serious issues processing transactions.
I moved all my internet merchants (especially my large associations) to a company called PowerPay. They were able to approve my internet deals in record time (no more than 24 hours) and get the accounts set-up and live w/ Authorize.net, which has been extremely reliable.
My merchants are very happy with the transition to PowerPay and Authorize.net. Not to mention it's made my life much easier being able to deal with the credit and deployment department directly regarding my accounts.
If anyone's interested in contacting them for either a merchant account or as an agent, I highly recommend giving them a call. Their number is: 877-877-3737, ask for Jim Plunkett.