epassporte fine print (now its drama,something to look for)
 

I was reviewing my credit card statement and noticed a $10 cash advance fee.

I use epassport to wire money to my developers, using my credit card to load epassport, been doing this for a few years.

epassporte takes out their fee and i transfer the money and all is good.

I call up my credit card company, and ask them what is this cash advance fee, i haven't used my CC to get cash out.

They said that the epassporte charge was a cash advance. I was like, what?

So i called epassporte. The operator told me that they use an off-shore bank, and run the charges as if it were a cash advance.

I asked her where it says this on the site, since i don't recall this happening before.

She pointed to the page where you add funds (put in your CC card), and it says (in bold):

"* Please Note : Your bank may assess a cash advance fee."

I probably saw that when i loaded the card, but didn't think anything of it.

So now seeing that this has occurred last month when i loaded up my epassporte account, i saw another Cash Advance Fee.

So the fine point here, is that they are using an off-shore bank that is costing me in the end, more money to transfer money, then if I used another form of payment (like western union, paypal,etc).

So as a cash advance fee, this charge is now being hit with a high interest rate as a cash advance, which means even more that I am being billed.

And so checking back with my credit card company, he informed me that since this was a cash advance fee, that any payments i apply to my card (and i do have a balance), goes towards the other purchases first. So in other words, i can't get rid of this "cash advance" high interest fees unless i pay off my credit card.

Even if i deduct the cost of this cash advance fee to my developers, it appears I am being hit with finance charges by my CC because they consider this to be a cash advance. (using my debt card is not the answer to this situation).

Just wanted to know if others are seeing this same thing as well. As we know from automatic rebills for paysite subscriptions, people don;t always check their statements and things fly by.. i admit to being just as guilty of doing that for not catching this earlier.

This may have other implications for the epassport visa card, and so on.

iBill's gKard had similar issues. Do other competitors to epassporte have same issues (ie myVirtual Card, etc?) of coding their transaction as a cash advance?

Fight the things that make you go hmmmm...

Seems to happen most offten when you use a mastercard instead of a visa.
However I will say the best way to get around this and save yourself a few bucks each time is to load your epassporte account with your paypal debit card.

That's pretty rough, they charge 5% to load epass, credit card charges another 3%, 8% total is a lot for this kind of a deal, when paypal transactions run only at 3%..

Mine was a VISA... and i didn't want to use my bank debit card, for security issues....

using a debit card would probably not have the cash advance fees, since its your money anyways..

Fight the fees!

don't forget the 25% high interest rate for cash advance by the credit card company.. that's the real kicker to all of this... and you have to pay off the card to wipe out that cash advance, since they kept referring me over and over to their policy terms that stated that somewhere on page 14 section 5 subparagraph a line 45... that cash advances have this structure.. i kept telling the creditr card company, i am not disputing their cash advance policy, i am disputing that the loading of epassport be their offshore bank was considered a cash advance...


Fight the screwed feeling!

epass is good for slush funds.

Congrats on your first ever drama thread.

Moral to the story: fund epass with savings, not cc

It sounds like epassporte is not the one charging you. Why are you picking on them?

you use your bank debit card for internet-based transactions????

CC cards have that $50 max liability coverage on theft, whereas debit.. wider open.. some banks i think have addressed the liability issue to allow their cardholders to use their debit card the same protection as their CC card.. but i wouldn't trust my debit card out there...

so many hacks of credit card data be stolen or bought from CC clearinghouses.. it really is scare stuff.


Fight the virgin drama!

bank debit cards are still visa backed and i have successfully disputed charges and charged back with mine. Plus I dont' keep much money in my checking account that its linked to.

true, EP is not making money on these fees, my CC company is..

the issue here, is that EP didn't code their transactions as a cash advance in the past.. now it is. and that one liner about "your bank may assess a cash advance fee"... just doesn't convey to me what is really going on.

If i had known that this was going to be coded as a cash advance charge, i would never have done it... banks charge ridiculous fees for cash advances.

If other people do like i do, load up their epassporte account with a CC, this is major news that probably 99.9% didn't realize what was going on until you looked at the credit card statement and made phone calls to figure out what was going on.


Fight the 411!

Thats what I was thinking - isnt this a problem with your Visa CC provider rather than EPass?

right, that would be the same as using payal debit card, or a pre-paid credit card... which would be safer to use in any kind of transaction than your personal bank card.

i realize that even card swiped credit cards at stores that flow through clearinghouses could be just as stolen and exposed as cards accepted through internet gateways.

the consumer exposure to fraud is just the same... which is why i do limit what i charge with my debit card.. and use the CC for most purchases.


Fight the card shuffle!

I load mine with a Visa debit card and have not had any additional fees.

- PornAddict

lesson learned.. but what about a surfer who signs up for a paysite subscription and pays with a Credit card?? This issue is not just EP specific.. other similar payment systems (like ibill's gKard) are in the same boat..

Another thing that has been going on with credit cards, is that if you purchase something from overseas website, the credit card company charges you 1-3% for a money exchange/conversion fee...

credit card companies sent out a letter to cardholders informing people about this, but i am sure very few actually read it.

I ran into this when i purchased some software from European company and saw the additional CC charge.

Other interesting schemes, is when you use a pre-pay affinity card, they have fine print, where they deduct like $1 per month as a service fee, and other per transaction charges that drain the amount put in faster.



Fight the plastic!

why not just use paypal to pay them then?

Or load epass from a bank account and not pay the credit card fees.

Fight the hindsight!

Did I say that? I said fund your epass with your bank account, not your credit card.

Fight the putting words in my mouth :)

Buy American!

Fight the deficit!

from epassport website concerning loading from bank account:

"Please note transfers will take 7 business days to appear in your ePassporte account."

so not really an option unless you plan a week+ in advance (note, weekends don't count as business days)


Fight the week!

Oh, trust me, I know. It sucks big time, and yesm I do have to pre-plan my epass payouts ahead of time.

Fight the Delay!

i ended up reading just the "fight the..." - that was quite funny :upsidedow

Why is this a surprise? Epassporte takes on all sorts of high-risk transactions, and high risk = high fees. Online gambling, nearly all visa/mastercard wont even touch it, adult transactions, paypal wont touch those, some visa/mastercard issuers wont.

Here is what you do: Open a second checking account and get a debit/checkcard on that acct. When you need to fund ePass, call your bank or go online or whatever and move money from your main acct to the ePass acct, and then fund with your debit card. This insulates you and keeps you from having any problems with fraud, etc.

I asked the credit card company if i could do a chargeback, since i didn't know it was a cash advance transaction, and he said no, because it was a cash advance, and we kept going round and round with me saying i didn't do a cash advance.

Seems to me, that if a paysite was using epassporte, and the transaction is coded as a cash advance, then the surfer couldn't do a chargeback.

hmmmmmm.....

But then the surfer who sees the cash advance fee, and the cash advance high interest fees would probably blame the paysite and direct their pissed off emotions towards the paysite.

Found some examples where epassporte used for adult sites:
http://www.maxbdsm.com/subscribe.html
http://www.lavenderlounge.com/join.html

etc..


Fight the pros and cons!

You must not be getting it... epassporte doesn't make the Cash Advance Fee or the high interest rates.. the credit card company that you use gets that... who knows if the offshore bank that they use also gets seomthing back from the credit card company....

The issue is that the transactions are coded as a cash advance when a credit card is used... a cash advance that YOUR credit card company will hit you with high fees.

You must not use epassporte to make payment arrangements with a CC, otherwise you would know what is going on.

I use passporte because it works for overseas people, so if I wish to continue to use epassporte, i'll get a pre-paid debit card and load up the cash on that card to avoid the cash advance fees.



Fight the paying of pals!

ummmm.. when you use epassporte, you are using a VISA or MC credit card...

so on transactions that VISA/MC won't approve of, then you are suggesting that's why you use epassporte to make the transaction?



Fight the oh my!

when i refer to "you".. i don't mean you personally... referencing someone who runs one of those high risk, illegal transactions sites that you were talking about that VISA/MC doesn't allow.


Fight the it's not U, its me!

You are only partially correct. Epassporte saves visa transaction fees by coding it as a cash advance. Where normally they would be charged a processing fee, they are not now and instead you are.

Normally the merchant pays the fee, the merchant in this case is epassporte and its coming through as a cash advance so they dont have to pay a fee, you do.

Maybe my wording is incorrect. Let me rephrase it, nearly all issuers of cards other then Epassporte block online gaming transactions, and some block adult/high risk coded transactions.

Fight back the giggles!




p.s. Very interesting post.

i appreciate your answers... but given your very clear explanation, the question lingers.... isn't this just plain out wrong?????

epassporte charges a loading fee and I essentially pay for their CC fee through the cash advance billing..........

I dug up my cc statements... i had 2 epassporte transactions back in october 2005. i have orderd my nov and dec statements now.

then in feb 2006, i resume with monthly transactions.

there was no cash advance fee on the oct 2005 transactions, so somewhere between middle of november 2005 and feb 2006 is when the epassporte transactions changed to this cash advance model.

Fight the slim shady!

I did a Visa cc load (aussie cc) Feb 06 and there was no Cash Advance Fee associated with it.

I can't comment past Feb 06, if this has been implimented by epass or not as I hav'nt loaded since then.

And I do agree with you it's a bit wickdy wack to be put through as a CA when your paying a load fee already. But I'm just a client it's not my business to tell them how to steer their ship. :)

-N

interesting, that might narrow it down to the 2nd week of february when the change occurred given what my feb statement is showing me with the cash advance fees. (the cash advance fees show up about 4-5 days after the cash advance transaction)

the cash advance transaction could have only applied to US CC accounts, since they may have had other methods of charging your credit card .


Fight the nancy drew!

makes perfect sense... they take out a loading fee (5% so their rates seem good)....and normally part of that loading fee is the CC processing fee,, but since that cost is past onto the consumer, it's like double dipping.

and, as a cash advance, there are no chargebacks


Fight the wickdy wack!