I sale cheap epassporte accounts!

Hi there Rand (and sorry for the thread-hijacking! ;))

I have a couple of questions for you aswell...

1. I have a epass. businessaccount. I can´t recieve money from somone with a personal account. I guess there is a reason for that! Question is : What reason?

2. After 2 months i still have not had one single client with a business account! Is it possible to "convert" my business account to a personal account without any bigger problems? If so, how long woulf it take and do i need to wait for a new Visa Electron card??

Thanks...
//Micke

Hey Rand who do I have to blow to get my limits increased? :winkwink:

I faxed you guys over copies of voided checks, my drivers license, my 4th grade report card and if I remember correctly a blood and stool sample :1orglaugh

They increased my withdrawal amount to 1K, but that's still not enough. I have to remember to log in almost every day and transfer funds, and pay the $2 fee every time I do. It would be alot easier if I could log in once a week, make a transfer, and be done with it.

Business account have higher parameters because they are funded via wire transfer. In other words, the funds are guaranteed. If eP allowed you to receive funds from personal accounts, possibly where the funds are derived from credit cards or ACH, your account would be considered somewhat more risky.

The solution to your dilema is that you can create a sub-account (personal account) under your business account and then you could receive P2P transactions to your personal account, thus retaining the integrity and benefits of your business account. The Virtual account (sub-account/personal account) will cost you five dollars per year.



It depends on how you use your account. A business account has additional privileges and drastically reduced load fees. If it were me, I would retain the business account and create a sub-account (as I suggested above) and then you have the best of both worlds.

An additional note - most if not all sponsor programs have business accounts. A business account can transfer funds to another business account (B2B) with no problem. It's normally affiliates that have personal accounts.

I would really need to refer you to [email protected] to inquire about getting a higher transfer limit. I'm not familiar with all the parameters they have in place to increase limits.

What I would say to you, however, is that I would use my ePassporte Virtual account and Electron card as much as possible to pay whomever or buy whatever in lieu of making so many transfers. It is a Visa after all and almost everyone accepts Visa. Why transfer the funds just to spend them from a different account?

Of course I realize that people also want to be able to move money from eP to their bank account. Perhaps a weekly parameter instead of a daily parameter would work for some accounts which have a history with us and a verified account. It is something I can discuss with eP risk management anyway.

Thanks rand, i didnt know the cvv2 number changed.. that was most likely the problem in all of the cases

Just wanted to bump this thread and say:
epassporte rules.

Thanks for all rand!

Thanks. :thumbsup

And thanks to everyone else who supported ePassporte (and me, for that matter) in this thread. It does help and is very much appreiciated.

A lot of you guys really rule. :pimp

No comment about my post that is fine. I was treated unfairly and never had and sort of resolution :thumbsup

I just re-read your post (#54) and I really don't understand what you're trying to explain. You didn't ask a question so I didn't comment.

It sounds like you wanted to be refunded for an up-sell on a membership site. That is a very un-usual request and strange that this upsell cost you $100. If this was an adult site processed by Epoch, then the CSR you spoke to is in a postion to protect both the site owner and try to accomodate your request. That could take some time to sort out.

I really can't comment more without looking at the facts and listening to your call to Customer Support.

Send me your eP username and I'll see what I can find out.

I called about uploading funds and said i made an error. I wanted to use my credit card instead of my bank account. Directly after I used my credit card. I called support and was told the charge to my bank account would be removed.

A few days later I called again to be sure. They said what the first person said was incorrect. I said well I was going on what the first person had said and they said well nothing we can do.

I was not happy that customer service did not know how to handle the situation. At least if i was told the first day that charge could not be taken back. My bank account would not have been overdrawn.

I attempted to talk to a supervisor and they like the other person put all the blame on me and not the customer service rep.

The $100 was my banks charges for the checks they had to cash with not enough funds.

My name is vanderweb at epassporte. I do use your service and love it. But being treated like i was in the wrong by customer service did not sit well.

Yes it was my error and I take the blame for it. But the customer service said it would be taken care of. Then later said I was crazy to think that they were going to fix the issue.

Oh Lord, stop beating on Rand - he doesn't make the rules, he just has to get kicked around because they exist. ;)

Visa's Know Your Customer requirements and the Patriot Act are the reason for the initial parameters and in many cases the continuing parameters. People are just not allowed to move decent sums of what is considered cash around any more without a
lot of due diligence on the part of the financial institution holding the cash.

Regarding settlements -- not all MCCs are settled the same way -- a hotel will have longer than a subscription based internet merchant and a grocery store will fall somewhere in the middle. The time that an auth can be redeemed without forcing it and paying a higher discount and/or transaction fee for the transaction is dependent upon each merchants agreement.

Given the fact that ePassporte is a stored value product, NOT a credit or a debit product, in the strictest definitions the card associations publish, ePassporte is not allowed to run negative balances or floor limit transactions for the client base, and aside from the fact that it's in their best interest not to do so, they still have rules and regulations to follow overall as well. That's before eP even begins to follow bank rules and regulations also. If ePass account holders could put their accounts into the negative easily or frequently, the bank would be running a tremendous risk as well, and there probably would not be an ePassporte.

For everyone in this thread who has a problem with ePassporte, there are a few dozen affiliates who really appreciate being paid via ePassporte -- these affiliates are mostly non-US, small to mid-size resellers who net more money much more quickly through ePassporte payments than they would without them.

I've said from the beginning and will say it again - US webmasters getting 5 digit payouts over the course of a month or less are NOT the ideal ePassporte client. They should be getting wires. And paying a wire fee for it. ePassporte is designed to make life easier, not help people hide their income when they choose to do so.

That's my rant, I've been in meetings all day today and only just noticed this thread.

Rand is completely right here.

This happened to me with Mastercard, I had to wait 30 days until the hold expired on an authorization once (money was never taken).

Thus, it has nothing to do with ePassporte themselves, it's a creditcard company issue.

Ah while I'm here, maybe KimmyKim or Rand can answer a question I had :)

Do you have any plans to allow non-business accounts to be allowed to transfer money to business account? You can do business->non-business but not vice versa.

Epassporte kicks ASS - I cant say nothing bad about them - every fucking day I can withdraw cash from the atm machine down the shop - you guys KICK ASS.

keep up the good work

Rand, I just want to say very well said!

Keep up the good work!

I can understand how frustrating it must be for some of you guys in the US but for us out here in the rest of the world ePassporte has been the best thing since sliced bread.

We got set up with an account not long after they opened and we have had great service. I've had to call customer service four or five times and the treatment I got was first rate. :thumbsup

But of course everyone's mileage will differ. :2 cents:

Rand is a stellar customer service professional of which any organization would be justly proud. And I myself have never had a serious difficulty or customer service problem, so I'm an Epassporte happy camper. Like a lot of services, it's useful for many things but not for everything.

However, I literally laughed aloud when I read this:
Rand, that's funny because you've just spent several hours out of your life (that you'll never get back) explaining in words of one syllable exactly why it is (and why it's beyond Epassporte's control) that when a VISA transaction goes bad with Epassporte, the funds will be tied up for 30 days (unless multiple hours are spent on the phone getting the merchant to send a paper fax or an engraved clay tablet or whatever). Whereas, spending it from any other account, a bad transaction snafu will be limited to 3 days or 5 days or 7 days.

That's a VERY good reason to spend the money from a different account, if it were practical to do so. And it's one you must be painfully aware of, which makes your rhetorical question seem ironic if not outright funny.

Me, my money flows are small enough that I just hit an ATM every day that I have a surplus balance on my card. I did discover one negative consequence of this practice last winter, though. After watching me hit the same ATM in a convenience store in a small depressed country town every day for a week, the rode-hard-and-put-away-wet woman behind the chicken counter started getting far friendlier than I (or my girlfriend) was comfortable with! :thumbsup

i love my epass card

Yes, but when a clients send me $3K or $5K and I can only get $600 of it per day I think that is pretty lame.
:2 cents:

100..........

i never buy anything online.I can everything in the real world, right here right now.I nver mess with this crap :disgust

The only complaints we have are that the wire fees are too expensive, we were quoted $30 by our rep over the phone and then when we went to transfer money it was $50... I would be willing to pay $30 but $50 is a bit much...

Makes it more difficult for us to access money when we like as I don't want to pay $200-300 per month just for epass to send me my own money. LOL!

DH

Not at all.

What is being disucssed here is not the norm, but the exception.

There are over half a million eP accounts. The issue of funds being tied up due to denied transactions or merchants who don't know how to close a transaction do indeed happen, but this is an exception. Not the rule.

I use my eP account ALL the time and have *never* had the issue of having funds tied up due to the reasons described in this thread. This does happen or I wouldn't be here talking about it. But, as I have already described, eP didn't invent the pre-auth/settle scenario. I am just explaining to those who've experienced this the cause of their situation. Most CH's will not experience this issue as most merchants know how to close an auth.

ePassporte is a pre-paid Visa account, not a credit card. Think of it as a checking account with the spending capability of Visa.

Yup I have never had a problem with mine in Australia :thumbsup

how do you buy your domains?

I explained earlier in this thread why eP doesn't allow this and the work-around.

See Post # 84.

Varius - Contact me directly if I can help you with this.

My ePassporte card was declined several times because the card is not issued in US. Of course, the funds were still tied up for 30 days.

Yeah... until the card associations come up with an MCC code for "the Internet" or at least catch up with the 21st century, this will happen on ocassion. Again, however, this is the exception, not the rule.

The merchant you were dealing with didn't scrub out ePassporte, they scubbed out foreigh BIN numbers, or regions.

That's what I get for not reading the thread in its entirety :upsidedow

Thanks, I don't actually need to do this, was just curious about it. :)

Of course. It's rare. But when it does happen, it hurts worse with Epassporte (a stored value product) than it does with a debit or credit product, because the person this happens to has to wait longer and or work harder to get things fixed. And that's why (to answer your question) someone might prefer to spend from another account, if it were easy-and-cheap.

And, of course, that difference between types of accounts is (as I learned in this thread from your explanations, and did not know before) the same reason that it's NOT easy-and-cheap for random poorly-verified account holders to dump big chunks of change from Epassporte into other accounts on short notice. You've explained that well. I'm not breaking your balls about it. It's just the way things are.

The only reason I spoke up here is that, rare or not, there is a reason for the preference some people have expressed here, and it struck me as funny for you to be inquiring what the reason would be after having explained it (and the reason it can't be readily satisfied) in great detail over many posts.

Credit, debit, and pre-paid products have different attributes. eP offers features your bank doesn't and visa-versa. Know the rules and know how to use the tools to your benefit.

One reason it makes sense to spend with your eP account and keep a balance there is that it alleviates the very problem you are addressing. If you are an eP account holder with large sums of money in your account and some of that money gets tied up due to a faulty merchant transaction, you wouldn't notice it anymore than you would with a credit card since your balance is such that you have plenty of cushion.

This might be true for people with small balances who are using nearly all of their open-to-buy (OTB) balance to make a purchase and the merchant incorrectly ties up thier funds. Yes, I'll go with that. -- It also happens on random Tuesdays when Mercury is in retrograde.

You are absolutely right. And eP wouldn't be very responsible if they allowed anonymous people to accept funds instantly from anywhere on the planet and pull out large sums of cash instantly, now would they? In a perfect world where everyone was honest eP wouldn't need a risk management department. But, not in this lifetime. -- Sorry, I don't see this changing.

And I'll never board an aircraft again because they've been known to crash before and it can be terribly inconvenient.

The vast majority of the time things work pretty much the way they are supposed to. Once in a while they don't. That small percentage of unexpected occurences will not deter me me and quite frankly I think most people would agree. But if it's enough for you to withdraw from an otherwise positive experience, so be it.

With all due respect, really, I'm just trying to keep things in perspective here.

Rand do you know how long it takes for the risk management people to get back with a status on the epass non-business application? I had problems with epveriry and so I was asked to send extra information, which I sent by email with ALL the required scanned documents on 07-04-2005. People from customer services kept giving me random responses like "you must send the cover letter back with the required docs" "we didn't get your email" or "your information was forwarded to the right department". So, after a bunch of useless responses I decided to contact Amparo on ICQ yesterday and re-send all the info again by fax this time. Now I'm just curious how long it takes to get approved or declined. So far contacting cs@epass was very frustrating and kind of scary to be told that the sensitive information sent (like scanned copy of creditcard) was "forwarded to the right department" and at the same time you "didn't get the email". How is it possible?

It should only be a 24 hour turn around as long as all requested documents were submitted, legible, and check out.

It sounds like there was some confusion between the two departments. I know where part of this problem lies.

I'll get with Amparo and get the details from her and will see if I can help move this along for you.

Thanks for replying Rand.

I've faxed the docs to Amparo yesterday and asked her if it was readable, so I believe everything went fine. I'll be waiting for the status on this.

Thank you.

Rand, what is the process for getting your load amount per day increased even if only temporary.
This 500.00 per day is driving me mad when I have to make a purchase of 2500.00
It will take me 6 full days just to load it.

You can make your requst to [email protected]. Tell them the load limit you would like to have and they will tell you if that is possible on your account.

I would also offer this suggestion. If you are they type of account holder that loads a lot of funds onto your account, perhpas you should consider a business account. There are no load fees on business accounts other than the cost of the wire. Something to consider.

Meta Ridley,

- Received the FAX from the merchant.
- Delivered it to eP Risk Mgmt.
- They have canceled the pending auth
- Your funds are now accessible.

I hope you'll continue to use ePassporte.

Rand, I'm not quite sure why you're parroting back my own points at me as if you were arguing with me. Did you confuse me with one of your critics? In a thread where an attribute of your product has generated numerous complaints, you expressed puzzlement about why anyone would want a different (unobtainable) attribute that would (suprise!) offer a way to avoid having to deal with the offending attribute. That puzzlement stuck me as funny (since you know all about the offending attribute and the people who keep having trouble with it), and I said so. But I also said, repeatedly, that I understand why things are the way they are, that they are outside of your control, and that your product is nonetheless a good one with which I've had no problems. I'm not one of your critics here.

So why the aggressive recitation of my own points, in the tone of contradiction? It's not like your usual calm professional style (which by the way I greatly admire).

Compare with my previous: Compare with my previous: This one offended me, because you're arguing, with apparent sarcasm, against a stupid straw man I never brought up. Instead, I said: Did I say I wanted it to change? Did I criticise Epassporte for the way things are? I did not, and I'm baffled about where that disingenuous sarcasm came from.

That's dishonest argumentation, Rand. I was explaining (since you pretended not to understand) why someone might want an easier way to get money from Epassporte. Remember? I spoke up when you asked "Why transfer the funds just to spend them from a different account?" I defy you to find anywhere in this thread where I've so much as hinted that these attributes of your product might lead me to stop using it. Remember? I said:

Oddly enough, so was I. I thought you were letting your marketing function get a smidge ahead of your customer service function, so I called (politely, even with a bit of honest and respectful ass-kissing) bullshit on your pretending not to understand why somebody would want a certain feature. And somehow you wound up treating me like one of your spite-filled hateful trash-talking money-laundering scamming detractors. I dunno where the hell that came from, but whatever. I'm gonna assume you were having a bad day, and try to forget this thread ever existed.

Feh.

OK. I really don't want to continue going back and forth on this, but since you felt like I was mis-understanding you, let's clear the air.

This thread was about pending auth's. You suggest the solution to that is for cardholders to move their money out of eP to thier personal bank account and spend it from there. And yes, I see your point. But it is not the best solution as it actully promotes the very problem being addressed here. ePassporte is a business too. Of course eP would prefer that you use thier product as opposed to moving money out and using some other product or account. Keeping larger balances in your eP account also helps alleviate the very problem disucssed here by providing a cusion "if and ever" you have a merchant tie up your funds by mishandling an authorization.

I don't mean to come off like I'm coming at you, at all. I understand very well your point. I addressed specific things you posted for the benefit of anyone reading so that there would hopefully be no confusion.