Innovative Merchant Solutions makes false claims

Horrible experience with this company.

They will drive you out of business. They practically stole from us.

Risk department decided a few weeks after approving our account that our business was a threat and decided to hold over $14,000 in sales for 270 days. Customer service, especially risk department is unfathomable. Good luck getting a return call from them.

We had no choice but to keep the account open and pay $39.95 in monthly fees. We could not close our bank account as well until they release the funds to avoid further problems, so we had to pay the monthly maintenance to keep it open.
Google "Innovative Merchant Solutions review" and you will find many complaints similar to ours.

Something has to be done about the business practices of this company. They make small businesses go backrupt.

Thank you for your input Peter. Fortunately I don't do a lot of credit card processing and I don't have any funds on hold. I have already disputed my last monthly charges from these crooks and my bank is working with me to resolve this as well. Closing my bank account is an option as the only thing I would have to do is order new checks and deposit slips. I like working in Quickbooks and processing credit card payments this way is convenient.  It's unfortunate that a reputable company like Intuit is associated with such a shady company.

I researched IMS through the BBB, unfortunately if was after I was having problems. They have an F grade for not responding to complaints. This probably explains why they haven't responded to the complaint I filed.

You are all correct, Innovative Merchant Solutions - which is an Intuit Company will drive small business bankrupt.

We have been working with them for 14 months now.  We had 2 chargebacks.  The first cb was on 12/11/09 and was reversed and basically, the cb is null and void.  But can you imagine, they are still holding to our money and won't be released back to us until 3/11/10.  Unbelievable - can you believe them holding on to funds for 90 days?

The 2nd chargeback just happened yesterday, and we will do our due diligence and provide the documentation they need and fight it.  We are very conservative company, we have all the fraud filters, we only ship to the billing address of the credit card, we request delivery signatures - everything to protect our company.

However, the outrageous thing is that IMS Risk Management then wrote us today and stated that they will be holding one of our batch settlements, which is 63% over the 2nd chargeback amount.  This woman was very rude, treated us like a criminal and said, "well, you have cb issues and they want a security deposit."  But they have also taken the money from our account for the 2nd CB.  Therefore, they have the CB amount in dispute and the 1 day's worth of batch settlement.  Of course they picked the largest amount from the week to hold to our money for no reason again.  I don't dispute them taking the CB amount, but another full days of batch settlement is ridiculous!

1 chargeback in 14 months and they claim that we have CB issues. 

The only thing we can say is don't just walk away from them - RUN!!!  If you have not signed up with them, DO NOT sign up with them.  The value of ease of reconciliation, integration, etc are all washed away by them holding on to our funds.  Also, it takes them 4 days to deposit the money to your account to begin with.

Hello Brian, I think i sent you my comments instead of posting it online.  Can you send back to me so that I can post it.

Thank you

Jeanne

This is really scary information. i have been asking all kinds of questions and getting no answers maybe you guys might know the answer to my question....I have 3 credit transactions that have been entered but have been setting there due to I have not closed out batch because I closed my account due to this stuff you guys are talking about. Do you know if my customers have been charged even though I have not closed out batch...I did a refund trying to back them out but they still remain in my close outs.

tami90  I wish I had an answer for you. I don't process many credit card payments and haven't had the charge back and credit problems others have mentioned. I only signed up with IMS because of the promises they made and the convenience of processing through QB. I believe that I finally got my refund and my service charge reduced because I refused to let it go and continued calling and emailing them. If you can't get an answer from IMS I would call the customers in question and ask if their accounts have been charged.....Good Luck!

Thank you for the reply unfortunately I don't have customer info...

I also had a painful and costly experience with Innovative Merchant Solutions.  I had no issues for a couple years, then had a chargeback of $14,000. Apparently the credit card was stolen.  The charges were reversed but IMS held an additional $7k of my funds. They gave me the runaround for months and never returned the money. I cancelled with them and recommend staying away from IMS.

IMS is like many of the processors who hire agents by commission and do not train those agents to provide any service to the merchant - large or small. The total object of these agents is to get the merchant to sign at the greatest amount of revenue for IMS and the agent -- not what is best for the merchant!

What all merchants should look for is interchange plus pricing with ALL fees revealed and understood before signing the agreement.  There are some good, honest agents out there who will give you all the facts and reasonable pricing. Unfortunately too many sign first then ask and end up paying too much in.

Tom - N4NW

HELP We have just been defrauded by Innovative Merchant solutions over 3000 in chargebacks, for PO's our customers signed for, received, and in writing have guaranteed to us and Merchant solutions they never requested chargebacks.  AND they never received the refunds from their visa's, which would have happened 'if' they had requested it.  So Merchant Solutions is steeling funds from us and our customers, has anyone had this happen? 

How did you resolve it? 

Has anyone called the the fraud police?  Does anyone have open case against them?