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Originally Posted by tASSy
i've been biting my tongue on all the comments from everyone about "how ePassporte is supposed to work" when none of you have ever worked for them. how do you know? the biggest point i think that chris brought up that everyone should know is that ePassporte is not a bank. they aren't FDIC insured, so they can't just give you your money back if it's gone from their system.
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I don't think anyone is under the illusion that EPassporte is a bank. But when they operate in the same areas as a bank does, it is hardly surprising that people expect similar standards of service. An example arising from this thread, is why should a chargeback take so long to happen? Several people have asked in the past why an unused pre-authorization takes so long to clear.
EP's response to these and similar questions is always that those are their bank's rules. But that answer leaves a sour taste because we all work with banks which have dramatically shorter timescales. It's a little difficult to believe a bank could exist which offered common services so much slower than those of its competition. But if those are the rules of this particular bank, what on earth made EP choose to work with them?
The thing about EP not being able to return money once it is out of the system is only a partial response to stories like the one in this thread. Insured, regulated or not, why didn't EP provide the same information to its customers that my bank (as per my earlier post) was immediately willing to provide me? Even if that had not helped me recover my money quickly, my bank made themselves part of the solution and not part of the problem.
Third-world employees, I think is just a metaphor for the kind of script oriented support EP have in place and which people associate with outsourcing. If you have anything which cannot be resolved by a pre-written answer, you are in trouble. That's not in itself particularly unusual these days (although again it falls far short of the response people are used to getting from financial institutions, so EP shows up badly), but then you have the frustration of knowing that when a further response arrives 8+ hours later, it will be a template that is barely, if any more more helpful. There is very little other than the absolutely routine which you can accomplish without relying on whoever is helping out via the boards and even that support, as I discovered back in August, can be lacking.
It has been that way ever since EP started. To cap it all, every time CM decides to hit the boards, he seem unable to resist implying that everyone who complains has an ulterior motive. That really p*sses me off, because I only post polite, accurate descriptions of my own experiences. My only motive for doing so is to attempt to shame EP into dealing with some aspects of their service better, because I don't want to deal with the same crap every time something goes wrong, however infrequent that may be. Yes, I could stop using EP, but that would mean dropping a couple of sponsors or paying $60 in wire fees every time they pay me.
I'm sure there are some agendas in play, but I'm equally sure I'm not the only person who simply wants EP to handle problems in a more approachable, more efficient manner.