As a result of a year long cooperation with Altcharge we've got numerous claims to this company altcharge.com The main are that Altcharge: 1) delayed wire transfers and performed orderless approach to financial questions; 2) cheated us numerous times by missing sales transactions and at the same time charging us for chargebacks and refunds issued on unaccounted transactions; 3) locked 63295.06 USD of regular payouts; 4) refused to payout Holdback amount which is 51008.13 USD when 180 days period is over. By the way, when trying to call them we instantly were told that the one we need is on lunch/sick/is not in office. Please, be careful when cooperating with Altcharge and check twice your payment statements, whether they really include all of your successful sales transactions. Unfortunately we made a single conclusion - Altcharge is not that solid as it seems to be and dishonestly cheats the partners by miscounting the processing commission properly and being unable to payout the Holdback funds! Please check the details below. Back in May 2009 (13th of May the first transaction successfully passed through) we started e-check processing (online pharmacy) with Altcharge (altcharge.com), which was kindly referred to us by agents of Global Merchant Solution (globalmerchantsolution.com). For couple of months everything was great and we worked smoothly with Altcharge, having no payout delays or any kind of accounting problems. We have increased the volume of processing in July and right after that our wire transfer was delayed for several business days for the first time. Luckily the wire transfer reached our bank account but with the wrong amount - Altcharge accountant irresponsibly sent us the amount of Altcharge processing commission instead of basic merchant commission (the accounting operator simply missed the line). The proper commission amount was sent with the next wire transfer in a week. Just in a week we found six transactions that were missed in the payment statement of Altcharge for the specific period. The six transactions were approved and successfully processed according to our data, but were not mentioned anywhere in Altcharge statements - the total amount of 1500 USD. Even worse - the original sales transactions were not included in Altcharge payment statement, but we were charged for the refunds and chargebacks that followed some of the sales out of this group of unrecorded transactions. We kindly informed Altcharge manager on this case. Altcharge admitted the mistake and promised to fix the bug as soon as possible. We were compensated for unaccounted transactions in full with the next wire. After that we kept checking each and every transaction and found additional 15 unaccounted transactions of such a kind. For several weeks Altcharge was trying to find the glitch, but still no success; meanwhile they switched automatic refunds for our account in ordered to find and fix the bug of unaccounted transactions. There's no use to say that it was a waste of time to process all the refunds manually. At the same time the unaccounted transactions were not compensated by Altcharge, although they promised to do it. Our wire transfer was delayed for 5 business days (the reason announced by Altcharge is switch of banks). Finally Altcharge resumed automatic refund processing and assured us that the bug was fixed. In a week we detected 20 more fresh unaccounted transactions! As previously we were promised to be fully compensated for lost transactions. After that, our regular wire payout was delayed for one more time and this time for the last time, as Altcharge sent us an excuse email, saying that bank account that was used for our merchant account was under freeze, funds were locked and could not be released. As a result we stopped processing with Altcharge (the last approved sales transaction was performed on September 6th, 2009). What was locked is: 2 weekly payouts and 2 extra wires that ought to be sent for unaccounted transactions - the total amount - 93514.34 USD. About a month we were negotiating with Altcharge, which was at the same time negotiating with FRB which locked the funds. Finally, Altcharge managed to pay us 32,445.98 USD as part of regular payouts and 11,721.40 USD more for missed transactions. We let them know that we will resume the traffic once we make sure our holdback amount is in safety and will be paid out in time. So, we patiently waited for 180 days (the hold period and moreover according to ACH policy - an ACH can be reversed up to 180 days from the settlement date) and asked Altcharge to payout our holdback amount which is 51008.13 USD. David Johnson (by the way he used to be an attorney before and is the one who represented Altcharge for the whole time of cooperation) harshly replied that we will not receive any holdback amount as we never resumed processing with Altcharge after our funds were locked and partly paid out. After that we let the Altcharge know that we will post a rip off report and discuss the whole situation in public. As a result David started the negotiation process with us regarding our holdback payout amounting only $16,467.55 according to his new payment statement. After nearly a month we did not succeed even a bit and were told that we will get a chance to receive the part of the holdback ($16,467.55) once we resume processing with Altcharge. There's no way to start processing again with Altcharge as they've got numerous glitches when recording the transactions, unreliable when talking about holdback and still owe us the funds. So, by this moment Altcharge owes us 114303.19 USD in general for the whole processing period (including holdback amount and locked regular weekly payouts); at the same time total gross amount processed with Altcharge is $637646.68, which means that about 26% of the gross volume is considered to be lost (considering Altcharge system fee being 8%). Such a rate of lost funds is absolutely unacceptable for goods delivery service. Please advise whether you had such an experience before and would appreciate your legal help on this matter.
So, to sum up - our claims remain the same. Altcharge did not manage to pay out our holdback amount which was mutually agreed in public here. They still hold our money, they still hold the status of scamers. If the debt is covered - we will notify the forum members about it. Still the topic is open. Once a month or two we will update you whether Altcharge has succeeded to pay the holdback amount. It's July now and we have not received any payment from Altcharge covering the reserve funds, though the 180 days period is over some long time ago.
RxNetwork, Have you seek legal counsel on the issue? Based on your side of the story, this is blatant theft. If you could substantiate your claims, I don't see what's holding you back from pursuing legal option. The amount is significant, and the company is based here in the States - where people have sued for much less reason. If you are an overseas merchant, perhaps you could seek assistance from your trade dept/ministry to assist in the matter. As an outsider looking in, I suspect there is more than meets the eye. However, theft is theft, whatever the medium and circumstances and if they are responsible, then don't simply treat this as a write-off.