I'll admit I tried to run a transaction that was 75% higher than my normal monthly amounts and didn't call them ahead of time (Didn't know I was supposed to). This problem would have been easily alleviated if I had had a customer service rep to turn to, but alas I was on my own with their red tape and many different departments, and hostile employees. The problem took a month to resolve, I lost a good customer and I ended up cancelling my service with them, and finding much better rates--they were charging me 3.57% for corporate cards--my new service is giving me less than 1.9%
The following are FACTS related to my experience with them:
1) They play sneakery with contract terms. They have a merchant agreement that makes reference to a website document that is loaded with secondary terms. This website document is completely in their control and you have no way to lock in a frozen copy showing terms at the time you sign up with them as you NEVER specifically SIGN a copy of the website document.
2) included in the sneaky secondary terms not called out in the main document that you sign is a termination fee that they claim they can charge you no matter how long you have been using their services when you decide to end services with them even if you go out of business.
3) They agreed to waive the termination fee when trying to keep my business away from a competitor and they breached this agreement when I terminated services.
4) They created duplicate accounts for me resulting in double bills and it took several months and several rounds of my contacting them to get this rectified and they offered nothing for my time an energy spent on this issue that was 100% their fault only.
5) They like to charge you fees that are NOT disclosed in your monthly statement, you only find them as deductions on your bank statment. I found an annual fee this way. I had no knowledge an annual fee even existed. They waived this when they agreed to waive termination fees.
Due to the above, I advise the following:
a) check the standard contract laws in your state to see if terms such as the ones IMS likes to hide in its website addendum can be null and void due to their being deal breakers(meaning had IMS specifically covered the term with you, you would have NOT signed up for them).
b) never accept any verbal confirmations from IMS. Get it in writing as they seem to have a habit of breaching verbal agreements per my own experience with them and per the complaints I viewed on the BBB website.
I have been a small business owner for over 13 years and have tried several different services. The lure for me was the convenience of having payments processed from within Quickbooks at the click of a mouse. BEWARE, it comes at a very steep price. Not only are the rates high, the funding time is super-slow and if you need help, forget it. No one there really cares how your business is affected by their mistakes or their "procedures".
If you have any intention of "growing your business", be careful of the limit you can process monthly, which they don't tell you up front. Knowing this before hand, I had asked and was told "There really is no limit as to what you can process". Now it's a whole different story.
We basically were processing more each month and that became a problem. Our account went into review in their "Risk management". I didn't have a problem with that...I've been there before.
What I did have a problem with is the lack of interest in resolving my account issue. Mind you, they basically "hold" your account and you may not receive any deposits from your credit card batches until they say so. For a small business in this economy, this is potentially a slow and agonizing death. Well, 8 days later, 15 unreturned phone calls and countless aspirin, still no one at IMS wants to get this resolved. On day 9, I got a hold of the supervisor,explained how things were handled and basically got a "I'll call you back". Did he call back you ask? No, but one of the repsdid to explain they were going to hold onto my last batch of $9800.00 as a "security deposit" indefinitely. I was shocked...there was absolutely no reason they could give me but to say "read the contract". I asked what would happen if I cancel my account and they said they would not release that batch for 9 months according to their "policies". Needless to say, that hurts a small business like mine and I'm not sure how to make up for that kind of money.
When it comes down to it, this was the absolute most expensive and most frustrating experience I've had with a merchant processor since the day I first opened my doors. I hope this helps future business owners to make a informed choice as to who they decide to use for their merchant service. As for me,I'm movin' on.
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