This company is an absolute joke. They scammed a good friend of mine out of $37,000. He was selling electronics online and this TMS company decides to shut his merchant account off without telling him. Of course they let him continue to charge cards but they withheld all of the funds. He noticed after about 2 days that he wasn't receiving his deposits and they told him that there were a few technical issues and the funds would all be deposited the following monday. 5 days later monday rolls around and no deposit. So he calls this company and some broad tells him that they have suspended his merchant account for being "high risk." No further discussion. No warnings. No letters in the mail. Funny part is that my buddy never received one chargeback in 12 months processing with this crap company and his sales were only growing at about 6% per year. Thankfully he's been in business for awhile so he has the capital to sustain the loss. I can't even imagine what would happen to a newer/smaller business. He is unchaining the lawyers on this crap company. So if you know anyone currently processing or thinking about processing with Total Merchant Service just take a look at their BBB report and their numerous ripoff reports. If someone from Total Merchant Services reads this thread you can kiss my ass for screwing over an honest, hardworking individual.
Never worked with such a company. And even if they suspend someones account, they have no right to keep the money that was receive on his account. It should be fully paid to the account holder and then the service should be blocked. Ripoff for sure !! Thanks for informing about this case.
Hi, while albeit a bit late on this, are you referring to these folks http://www.ripoffreport.com/Credit-...ervi/total-merchant-services-tms-to-c6me9.htm if so, shoot me a pm. I think I may still know someone there. I live about 8 minutes from there. I don't have too much direct experience with them as I use someone more global in scale and cheaper but I can tell you that they get a seriously bad rap locally in our resort town and certainly treat their employees like complete crap. I know a bunch of folks who have worked there. Nigel
Unfortunately they do have a legal right (Although not morally right) to hold his funds for 180 days. Can he do anything to receive his money faster? Most likely no. No lawyer is going to be able to get around their hold. Frontier airlines had 55 Million on hold which is what caused them to go into debt, They could not even get their funds with all of their power. The most likely reason TMS shut down his account was due to the products he was selling. You said he is selling electronics, So most likely he was not an authorized dealer. Regardless of how legal the product is, This will cause a risk analysis team to have a heart attack. The problem with TMS is they will approve anyone and everyone who has a bank account and lives in the US. They dont even factor in credit. So even though they get more accounts, Their losses are higher. Usually what happens is their risk department does random scrubs of their merchants, It seems your friend unfortunately was chosen and the risk department found it to be high risk. The best thing you can do before you put your money into a companies hands is do your due diligence. Every merchant service provider will have negative BBB reports, With even small MSP's having over 100,000 merchants, negative feedback is just going to happen. What you should do is look at the number of issues vs the size of the company and how long they have been in business.