epassporte, I need something cleared
 

It seems that the thread started by motos has been abandoned by epassporte staff. Therefore I feel that another thread is needed to address an issue related to the one discussed in that thread.

Before anyone jumps on me screaming "Russian", "Cheater", "Fraudster" or anything else, that might cause them to make an ass out of themselves, I will clarify that I've never had any problems with epassporte and I'm currently a satisfied user of their payment system. However, staying that will depend greatly on the answer to my questions below.

All that being said, here it comes:

If my account were to receive funds that are of fraudulent origin, what would happen to my account and the funds in it that were accrued honestly? I cannot verify nor prevent that anyone send me funds that are fraudulent at origin, so I need to be sure that the state of my account is NOT affected, were this to happen.

So, if you freeze my account, do I get to keep my honestly earned money? And if I do, how long does it take for me to be able to access my funds again? Looking forward to your answers, thanks.

I would like to know this too.

Thank you in advance!

bump to help you get an answer

unsuspend me epassporte!

bump

had a similar question...

And BUMP! Wake up and answer this, please.

I dont have ePassporte account, but was thinking about creating one to receive $$ from sponsors. Also Im Russian. That previous thread wasnt the perfect example of loyalty of ePasspote staff to their clients, to say the least...
So I also would like to see this simple question cleared and will keep bumping this thread.

I'd love an answer too.

Bump!
Same question here.

same bump

bump

bump

DamageX, your question is very well put, regardless of where you are from ;-}}

If your account was suspended pending an investigation, for any reason, and funds that were in your account were legitimate, then they would be returned to you once the investigation was done. There is not a specific number of days, I've had people come to me with issues that were cleared up within hours, and then others that due to the scope and nature of the problems, took quite a bit longer.

Should YOU turn out to be the fraudster, HYPOTHETICALLY SPEAKING -- I am not calling you a fraud, just using you as an example, then any legitimate funds that were in your account would be returned to the point of origin where there was no fraud. This means that it could be a simple reverse to the person who sent you the money or it could go all the way back to the original load of the money in question, with a credit to the cardholder or wire account holder.

Funds do not just appear and disappear, they are calculated back through the trail of how they went through the system and at the point where everything is legitimate they belong to the person that held them at that time.

If you have other questions, let me know. :)

nice question

but are you considered a fraudster if you have received illigetimate funds? (let's say someone that used a stolen credit card to send you money)

Nope, we don't assume that anyone is a fraudster until there's an investigation completed. While I won't divulge any of the fraud methodology, I will say that the programming is where the fraud flags originate and then we move them to the human side of things for clarification and a decision on the activity.

Personally I wish we never caught anyone committing fraud.

But to do that we'd have to have account holders who never attempted it in the first place. Every one of them... :(

So basically, if it somehow appears that I've committed fraud, all the funds in my account would be returned to the ones who sent them, thus I'd lose everything, regardless of being thought to be honest or fraudulent? If yes, then I guess the next question is obvious: How well protected am I against epassporte staff mistakenly closing my account, for what they'd think is fraud I committed? I know this shouldn't be the case, but both you, Rand and Chris mentioned mistakes. I'd hate the hassle of having to go through the judicial system in order to be able to recover funds rightfully owned by me, just because of an overly-zealous risk management employee.

You're attempting to oversimplify this, or perhaps just put words in my mouth, since you have asked me the same question about five different times now between the two threads. I'm going to try and answer it for you again, and if you've still got questions, by all means post them or email me if this is something specific to your account. Include your account name in the email if you go that route.

No one person in risk management would ever just up and close an account and start sending money back up the ladder. The investigation process is something that starts with program flags and then moves to humans for review.

If a situation arises like the one that has come up this time, there are many people involved in the decision making process and there is hard evidence involved before any action besides the suspension is taken, thus Chris' comment regarding legal action.

Fraud is not something we take lightly, nor is it something we suspect each account holder of doing, unless certain flags in the process are raised and we then begin to investigate.

Rand has stated previously that client communication may sometimes be less than stellar in the case of suspended accounts, but as any program owner or processor will tell you, when you have a potential or confirmed case of fraud, the last thing as a company you want to do is to inform the cheaters just how you caught them, since they will then attempt to adjust their cheating to circumvent your fraud control methods.

There are people that have thousands of dollars in their accounts regularly and have no worries about their money. There are also, I'm sure, those that clean out their accounts regularly and put their money somewhere else. This is an individual choice and one I have no opinion on.

At this point, I think I've answered your question about as clearly as possible, but I'll reiterate my point one last time -- if we have tangible proof that an account holder is committing fraud, we will take action to stop the fraud from occurring and money does not sit in our system unclaimed.

Overly-simplified or not, I am not looking to be patronized, I am looking for answers. And while you do everything to emphasize that you do your best not to make mistakes (which I never had any doubt about in the first place), you still didn't answer my question. You brought in the issue of me HYPOTHETICALLY being the fraudster, let's HYPOTHETICALLY continue on that thread and you answer me what happens to the honest funds in my account, if you say I've been caught cheating. It's simple, really, if a mistake of me being suspected for fraud happens, then I want to know how much I need to sue for, so I can determine whether it's worth the hassle or not. If it's $50 I might consider it's not worth it, if it's my entire account, then I'd really go apeshit. So please, pretty please, HYPOTHETICALLY, what happens?

One more thing, the reason I'm posting this publically is because it deserves an answer that other epassporte users may benefit from. Not exactly interesting in stirring shit, I really have better things to do.

i think epassporte users deserve an answer to the question about how users are supposed to protect themselves from a fraud user or sponsor sending them money.. and thus losing all funds accumulated until that point..

As a merchant account holder if my merchant told me someone came into my store and used a stolen credit card and so my merchant was going to reverse the charges PLUS seize all funds in my merchant account and disable the account so no further sales could takes place with no explanation i would go apeshit.

Generally in a case like this the charge is reversed and the police are notified, my merchant abilities are not disrupted and business goes on as usual.

If a high occurance of fraud was to take place the merchant might suspend an account , but they certainly cant seize the funds the merchant account has in it. If following a police investigation the merchant account themselves were found to be involved in the stolen credit cards then the money would be seized and charges filed..

How does an EPASSPORTE user verify if the money he spends / recieves was at one point involved in a crime ??

Like EXAMPLE..

If i sell a domain to someone , how do i verify if his account is fraud or not and what steps can i take to insure if he had fraud money that all my money wont be seized with no way of me recuperating my loss ... ?

Where does the money go then. ?

JOEBLOW A has 100 legit dollars in his account

SCAMMER B buys a domain from JOEBLOW using stolen funds.

epassporte catches scammerb notices he has sent some of his stolen funds ($10 ) to JOEBLOW A

Epassporte suspends scammerb and joeblowa .

Epassporte sends back the $10 to the victim and what happens to the $100 in joeblowa's account

btw you had about 5 or 6 of your CUSTOMERS who asked this question already. ( such as the suspension of all affiliates of damcash )

I still don't think I've seen it answered as to exactly HOW LONG an investigation might take. I think it has been mentioned that it would be less than 180 days, but how much less? 90 days? That's insane. 60 days? Still WAY too long to be without money that I earned legitimately. 30 days? That's still utterly ridiculous. 2 weeks is even pushing it. If you've only had about 200 total cases of fraud as was mentioned in the other thread, surely it can't take more than 3-5 business days to clear someting like this up unless you're severely understaffed.

What if I'm counting on the money in my ePassporte account to pay my rent and bills or my hosting payment? Can you give us an absolute worst case scenario as to how long one might expect to wait to see the money back?

Thanks.

Sigh.

I believe I stated above I've seen situations clear up in a matter of hours before. That's not days. I personally haven't seen anything go beyond 2 weeks, but that is a personal observation, not a company wide one. I only deal with situations that are brought to my attention.

There is no hard and fast rule on how long it takes to clear up; you should also understand that nothing happens without tangible evidence in the case of fraud. Would it take 180 days? Not unless there were something else going on that I can't possibly even hypothetically come up with.

I'm not sitting here splitting hairs the rest of the afternoon either. The answers have been posted in multiple threads. Frankly I've got two people icq'ing me with account specific questions and one more emailing me, though I guess I should state that none of them have anything to do with fraud.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but there's no guarantee that JoeBlowA was even suspended to start with, since there's nothing about his account that guarantees it in your example.

Now if ScammerB started JoeBlow's account for him, it might be a different story, since in your example there's nothing about just how JoeBlowA got his account or what he has done with the funds in it besides selling a domain.

I have less worry now kimmy than before, thanks.

Side bitch - Please get those html codes out of your sig on the left, drives me nutty.

2 weeks disruption because of a fraud user that isnt in your control to verify buys something from you ???

For most people that would mean shutting down..

Show me how to make a line break that will work and I'll be more than happy to take it out ;)

I'm getting ready to change it up again this week, so it would be nice to have it neater --

Sure just press enter after the line.

I dont see anything about a bubble im asking a simple question respond like an adult.


Quit side stepping the question. Making it into a 3 page thread.

Your assuming all the money is fraud, think about it in a non-greedy manipulating way.

Joeblow is a domain seller he got the money in his account from selling domains what are you not paying attention.. scammerb had nothing to do with his account , other than buying a domain off him..

Your right there is no reason why his account should be suspended , but from rand's response and yours you have and do.

Did you suspend damcash affiliates whom did nothing other than promote them ?? Did you seize money or suspend accounts ( associated with damcash )with money other than money obtained thru fraud ?

Sigh? What was that for??

I have not posted in any of these threads before now. You have absolutely NO reason to be feeling impatient with me.

I asked a question and you had NOT answered it before. You gave a vague facade of an answer. You said you've SEEN matters clear up in hours before, yet we have clearly people posting in these threads that say they have been having problems for a bit longer than a "few hours." And I've seen numerous threads from people who have waited several days to get even an e-mail response as to WHY they are having problems with their accounts, let alone actually get a resolution. So YES, it CAN be DAYS, and apparently has been before. And waiting for potentially 2 weeks to get back money I made legitimately when I have bills to pay because a fraudster I hardly even know sent me $10 sounds utterly ridiculous. If you have enough staff in risk management, clearing up 200 cases of fraud hardly seems like a massive time hog.

You have to be the single most unprofessional employee of any company I have ever had the displeasure to speak with. You've been nothing but rude, arrogant and snippy to everyone who has posted in any of these threads. I will never do business with a company that I am aware that you work for under any circumstance. Frankly, I can't see how you've even held a job as long as you have. I know that if I ever treated a customer as rudely as you do EVEN ONCE, I would have been fired so fast I wouldn't have even seen it coming, yet you somehow do it on a regular basis. I can't being to imagine what your bosses are thinking by allowing you to reflect upon them in this manner.

This whole situation was the basis of my decision whether or not to do business with ePassporte and due to the unprofessional attitude you have displayed, you can believe that I won't be moving any substantial amount of money through your system at any time in the near future. I'm sure you don't care about my one little account, and I'm sure you'll waste no time in telling me so. But if your boss was any kind of intelligent business person I would think he'd put your attitude in check before you cost them some serious business.

Or are you only rude to people you think have no money?

This has got to be one of the most to-the-point, yet polite, comments on KimmyKim's attitude towards current and potential customers of the company she represents. I will also be looking to relocate my funds to a safer account, as will I advise all my clients to do the same. Thanks for the support KimmyKim. :winkwink:

This thread (Like all the other recent epassporte threads) is getting nothing but side-stepping and dancing replies from Kimmy. Ther is not one clear, consise answer to anyones legit and simple questions, thus leading one to believe that epassporte is not a trustworthy company to be dealing with in any capacity.:2 cents: :2 cents:

ROFL, that's exactly what the sigh was for. I'd answered your question almost verbatim above, yet rather than reading it or quoting particular points from my post back, you chose to slam me and ask the same question again.

I don't really care whether you've got any money or not, btw.

It's unfortunate that this sort of nonsense goes on here, but so be it.

I've said it before, I'll say it once again. ePassporte is not for everyone. Nor is Bank of America. Nor is Paypal. Nor is whole milk. The percentage of people that are truly unhappy with ePassporte who use it honestly is less than .5% I'd be happy to wager.

With that being said, please continue to slam me, however if you are going to do so, please come up with something original and witty, it makes the time go by so much faster.

Perhaps you, and a few other people on this board, don't recall my formerly sterling personality when handling things like this. Perhaps we can ask a few old timers for their input.

First of all, I am not "slamming" you. I am simply stating the truth. You are being rude and arrogant to the very people who provide the business revenue that pays your salary. And I certainly have no desire to "come up with something original and witty." I'm a business person, not a comedian. If you want someone to entertain you, do it on your own time. I'm here to conduct business, not to make your time go by faster.

As for your "formerly sterling personality", perhaps a few select people see you in a different light, but having witnessed your behavior over the past several years (although admittedly having no PERSONAL contact with you), I certainly see you exactly as you've been acting throughout this entire situation... unprofessional and incredibly rude. I don't know just how far back I'd have to go to see a glimmer of your "sterling personality", but having witnessed your behavior when you were working with CCBill, I can see that the sterling part of your personality was already tarnished a number of years ago. Perhaps a dose of silver polish in the form of some customer service classes is in order, however that's your employer's business to deal with, not mine. It IS, however, my choice who to do business with.

In addition, I don't care HOW many times you're asked the same question in one day. Even if it is by the same person. And I don't care if you have to tell the same person the same thing 500 times. Your job is to help customers and potential customers in a polite and professional manner. That's your job and what you're paid to do, is it not? If this is not in your job description, then perhaps you should stay out of it and keep your mouth shut, as you've certainly done NOTHING to help the situation. In fact, you've directly lost ePassporte some business already.

A little professional courtesy goes a LONG way. And calling people names and insinuating they are stupid, no matter what they ask, or how many times, is the absolute antithesis of what a good customer service rep should convey when dealing with customers, especially in a public forum!

:(

Very well said..
these few threads made many of us go -> :uhoh

While MissWetPanties has been commendably polite to you, I am getting more and more annoyed by your arrogance, so let me put this in a way you might understand:

Perhaps YOU don't fucking get it. We're YOUR customers and don't give a flying fuck about your FORMERLY sterling personality. However, we do give a fuck when being patronized NOW, after having asked perfectly legit questions.

Ok, then I'll be perfectly clear, and this will be my last post on the subject.

If anyone has specific questions about their own accounts, by all means email myself or anyone else you'd like. Other than that, I'm off to find a designer to do some work for me. I used to have some interest in a few design companies that seemed to be up and coming, but apparently at least one of them has disappeared from the web, so I'll be looking for a new one. :)