EPassporte problems
 

This issue is being dealt with by EP and hopefully the outcome will be satisfactory. It's posted here as a heads up for other users and because I am interested whether anyone else has had a similar problem.

I wanted to reverse a charge for goods paid for in October and still not delivered (enough for this thread that the Swiss company concerned asked I get my refund in this way). The first time I called EP the customer service person said he couldn't see any record of the transaction. That was odd since the receipt from the company included the last 4 digits of our (virtual) card. Even more strange (since our EP account was opened last summer) he insisted our account hadn't been opened until November 2004, after the transaction I wanted to reverse had taken place.

He wouldn't budge from that position, so we ended that conversation and I went to do some more checking.

A second and longer conversation had another customer service person still saying the account wasn't opened until November, although he admitted this information didn't match the expiry dates of our virtual and electron cards (July 2006). He also agreed something was wrong because the incoming funds which opened the account (as a gift card) were recorded as received in December, several weeks after the recorded date for the opening of the account and later than other transactions which did show on his screen.

He spent several minutes but still couldn't turn up the transaction I wanted to reverse. Nor could he see the incoming amount of several hundred dollars from a sponsor (which I remember receiving and can see the exact details of from within the sponsor's stats area) that funded this transaction and several other payments soon after: including the $35 fee for issuing an electron card.

I suppose it is possible everything is actually okay and I have just been unlucky enough to get two different customer service people who don't know how to use their terminals. No money is missing as such, although I'm already 3 phone calls and 2 emails into trying for a recharge that should have taken just a few minutes. But if transactions can disappear like this, it's taking a lot on trust to hope that the consequence (assuming this is eventually ironed out) will always be limited to some unnecessary aggravation.

Jayeff,

Could you please send your ePassporte username to [email protected]?

They should be able to unwind this for you.

Sorry... I took the evening off. Email now sent.

This is going to drive me f*cking nuts...

So it didn't seem like the point of my original post was to slam EP, I left out the first 24 hours of attempting to get this refund. I started by calling early on Thursday morning and talking to somone who really seemed barely awake. It took several minutes to explain the concept of getting a refund for non-delivered goods and when we were finally okay with that, he didn't know how to do it.

So I emailed [email protected] getting an answer from someone call "Gus" a few hours later that I should telephone. I replied that I had already tried that and explained what had happened. The story in my original post began next morning, because there was no further response from "Gus".

I still haven't heard from Gus again. Nor has there been any feedback as a result of the job# that was opened 36 hours ago about all the missing transactions.

The only additional response I have had since yesterday was an email late this afternoon from [email protected] (possibly a response to the mail I sent at Rand's request here?). It was from an unnamed person and made no reference to the problem that EP appear not to have a record of the transaction I want to reverse. There was a form attached which I had to complete, sign, and return.

Unfortunately it was a form specifically for disputing transactions the cardholder claims he/she did not make: "Neither I, nor any person authorized to use my Virtual Card made the charge(s) listed above". All the statements on the form are in a similar vein and there is no way it can be used to reclaim a legitimately made payment for goods that were not delivered.