My experience with epassport (Yes its rubbish)
 

Well i never got a chance to tell everyone about my wonderful experiences with Epassport - so i thought i would do so now.

Lets see where to start...

I contacted them around 15 times via phone ( at overseas rates of course) The answers i got varied between:

We are closed (i rang 5 minutes later they were open, then closed again, randomly)

Next time they answered like this,, uhhh hello? Then i asked them a very basic question about thier service, which they mumbled some rubbish and transfered me to someone else, which never answered anyhow.

Then the next few times i rang them, i basicly got someone who didnt have any product knowledge at all. Thats who you want running your call centre, someone who doesnt actualy have any product knowledge at all, and answers like they are at home in thier pijamas!

I believe in total i tried to contact them around 10-20 times over a 1 month period. The best i got was some american teenager who knew one or two things about the service, although not anything i was asking about, of course.

I then sent them 3 or 4 emails, all i wanted to find out was about thier system, if it accepted any type of credit card. I got one reply once, i cant remember off the top of my head, i think it was one of your standard copy and paste replies with nothing relevant.

Then being the bad tempered person i am, i decided to send them another email of a slightly less beligerent nature, asking why in the hell i was being treated like this. I then got an email from the manager explaining how they would not do business with me becuase of my nasty letter.

Visa is a great company, although it looks as tho they have outsourced this part of thier business to a company with less focus on customer support. Not only did the staff not have a clue AT ALL what they were talking about, the manager did not help either. In fact he basicly told me to fuck off.

Now i am the first to admit i should not have gotten angry, but the first rule in customer service when you have an angry customer is to calm them down. In fact i have worked in sales and call centres for nearly 9 years now, if someone was managing my company like this, well i would be outraged, and i would hope VISA would be, thier company is being represented terribly.

I make a point of telling every web master i work with about this companies very poor service. They have a GREAT productive, i would have loved to use it, but well if they treat customers like this..

What happens if your 10k affiliate payment gets lost? Good luck getting that back. Fuck it, i wouldnt trust these guys with payment for a postage stamp.

Im sure 99% of the people here will only have good things to say, but well it only takes one person to get fucked around like this to see what they are capapable off. I would hope VISA might look at changing thier outsourcing policies, shame for such a reputable company to be taken down by a few lazy emplyee's.

So here is my advice to everyone, i would aviod this company like the plauge, they might be paying on time for now, but when it DOES fuck up, well dont expect any help.

I would also be interested to know of anyone else who has had similar problems...

I have not had good luck getting a Business Epassporte account nor getting straight answers from them to the point where I gave up and got a personal account while waiting for them to get their act together. I am betting we'll be communicating with alien civilizations before I get the answers that they appear to want to avoid answering.

However, Visa != Epassporte. Epassporte is a vendor that offers a product that allows you to load the card with your Visa or Mastercard (or bank account). They are a Visa/Mastercard merchant -- not actually Visa or Mastercard.

Forgive me if I'm hopelessly misinformed - but what does Visa have to do with Episspot? (apart from the fact that they accept Visa...)

My only complaint is that their business phone centre is only open 9-5 usa time PST and fucked if i'm waking up at 5am aussie time just to ask them how to open an account.

-N

For now I consider Epassporte a necessary evil. I have had to use them to pay for submit accounts on some Tgp and they are a quicker way to receive payments from sponsors, I don't like to rely on snail mail for much of anything. But one of my beef's with them and maybe I'm misunderstanding this but they seem to imply that the "virtual visa" is accepted online anywhere visa is accepted.....not true! I have tried to use my virtual visa in several places as well as for certain recurring payments and have had problems. Long story short, like I said a necessary evil. Right now I need them but am looking for some other options. That's my .02 on it anyway. |waves|

The only problem I've had with them is constant daily withdrawals, which is much more agreeable than the opposite :)

The very first thing I do before joining a sponsor is to check if they pay with epassporte or not.
They might not be perfect but they made my life much easier |rock|

I am sorry to hear you've had a bad experience with ePassporte.
If you have any questions about ePassporte or problems feel free to contact me and I'll get an answer back to you as soon as possible.

epassporte has always problems..whether site maintenance or when you check your account all you got is 0 balance.

Similar to our experience....:(

There really need to make the process more open, easier, and put some more INFO online. Getting the info you need is like getting blood out of a stone.

DD

I'm glad I have my ePassporte card, it's saved me a lot in cheque fees.

But I will say that their customer support could be better, as could the info on their website.

My experience with them is here: http://greenguysboard.com/board/showthread.php?t=19307

Seems kind of ironic that the apprarent reprsentative of epassporte that responded in this thread named himself after a master criminal. When I'm dealing with a rep for a large and supposedly reputable company, I expect them to use a real name. If they feel the need to hide behind a nick, they probably shouldn't be working for a company like that and in this case it makes less sense since epassporte isn't in the porn biz.

{insert rolling eyes smiley here} If you'd bothered to look you'd have noticed that he joined this board under that name 2½ years ago. I suppose he could register a new nick to use for ePass biz, but what's the big deal? It's just a nickname, no need get your panties in a bunch!

To add to what Toby said, did you check his sig?
looks like a real name to me.

The reason I use my nick is that people on most boards knows me by this nick.
I officially joined ePassporte today as a support rep on the adult webmaster boards. I've been a adult webmaster for almost 6 years and on the boards for 4½ years, so it was natural for me to keep my nick .
My real name is Michael Olsen and its also in my contact email in my sig.

If you every have a problem with ePassporte and prefer to deal with someone else let me know and I'll set up the contact.

Fari enough and I will admit I missed the name in your sig. I thought I was familiar with all of their reps, but as you explained you just started.

I'm going to go change my panties now because they're really bothering me the way they're all bunched up.

hey, good to see a name i know working with epassporte! shaliza is nice, but doesn't use icq and often doesn't seem to have the answers i need so i end up having to email chris with every question.

my experiences with epassporte are a lot of small weirdnesses but no real problems. i love our account, i really love our virtual visa :)

i know that it's a lot harder for non u.s. citizens but the easiest thing to do is have someone send you a gift card. if all you need is to get paid by sponsors, i believe that would get you all set up. we've sent several gift cards to people we work with in the phillipines (and someone in illinois) and that worked fine for them.

I was surprised to find that 'Usual Suspects' was non-fiction. :)

Hi Michael |waves| Nice to have a contact with Epass. who is in the Adult webmaster business. |thumb

It's just his nickname. And keyzer just got hired. Give him a break. He probably had no idea that he was going to be working for epass when he registered that screen name. People have nicknames because that's what they are---nicknames. Nothing real about them unless it is your actual name.

I cant tell you all how important it is to stick on them to get a business account, if you are going to use the service. Heres why. What they do not tell you is if you have a personnal account with them and ANYONE you have sent or received funds from decides to fraud, you are screwed!!. Your account is closed and will not be reopened at all. Any person who touched the fraud account in any small form will have their accounts closed. The business part of epassporte protects against this. I had it happen, I have been working with them for 2 months now to get a business account opened and everything short of sucking their dick has gotten me no place. I dont know how else to get this company to understand I had no control over the shithead who did the fraud and after sending them all my documents and 1/2 a pint of blood they still deny me from having a business account. Just totally sucks. If you are trying for one, keep calling and calling and calling.

So has anyone be contacted by Epassporte?

They know about this thread....
Their rep has posted in it....

..but has anyones problems been addressed?

Classic Epassporte... keep their head in the sand and cross their fingers :(

EP WAKE UP - people are trying to do business with you!

My contact with them was 99% me 1% them. I did have a really nice security rep contact me about the issue and they really did go out of their way to help me. They allowed me, my wife and her father all to get the remaining funds from out accounts. Only bad part about that was they gave us 30 minutes to do so. Her dad lives in Romania and they are 7 hours ahead. So he need to wake up at 1am and run to one of the only 24 hour mac machines in town just to get out $50. But $50 in RO is alot of money.
As far as the business account, the last time I spoke with the phone rep she was going to have their head of account creation call me in order to try and work something out. Never got the call, and honestly I just gave up after that.

Dave
ePassporte is currently working to improve our customer support. If you are experiencing difficulties we ask that you contact our Sales and Marketing Department. The phone number is 1.416.703.7200. Please dial extension zero and the first available Sales Representative will answer your call. You may also contact us by email at marketing@ePassporte.com. Our office hours are from 10 AM to 7 PM Eastern Standard Time. You may also leave a message in the general mailbox with your ePassporte username, your phone number and the issue you would like us to look into.

I posted earlier in this thread that people were welcome to contact me directly and I would do my best to answer their questions or get them in touch with the right people.
I have had people contacting me every day but I don't know if any of the people here have contacted me.

If you have any questions or problems feel free to contact me.

Well if you can do anything about my problem that would be great. I'm a legit businessman who just got screwed, like you guys and some poor guy. If I would have known about the protection that came along with a business account I would have disregarded the advice I was given by one of your sales reps about not really needing one unless I was moving a shitload of money. I don't know what else I would need to send your company to prove I'm not in business to rip people off but if dinner in my house would work, your more then welcome to stop by.