epassporte follies

[Dan Druff]

I've been going back and forth with epassporte about a very simple and stupid issue (processing of a raise limits form), and my now-extensive experience with them has taught me a lot about their company and how it works. I'll get to my actual issue later, as that's not the main point of this post.

epassporte appears to be very accessible. They have a 24-hour customer service number (877-EPASS90), where you can always reach a live rep to help you. At first glance, they appear to be responsive and on top of things, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

The structure of epassporte is as follows:

Corporate office
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Customer service managers
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Customer service supervisors
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Customer service representatives

Pretty standard org chart for a company like this, but the way they have things set up can be a huge problem for the customer. Basically, the corporate office has created a gigantic wall between themselves and the next level down (customer service managers). This is because nobody from the customer service manager level on down is an actual epassporte employee. Those jobs are simply farmed out to a telephone customer service house, who takes requests and forwards them via e-mail to the corporate office, who does the actual work. Thus, short of answering generic questions, sending pre-made forms, and acting as a third-party-medium in communicating with the corporate office, all customer service reps (supervisors and managers included) are completely powerless and useless.

Now, this wouldn't be quite so bad if there was a way to reach the corporate office, but there isn't. There is no way to contact the epassporte corporate office, nor can you e-mail them, nor will they ever agree to call you. Your only way of communicating with them is by doing so through the third-party reps.

Even worse, the epassporte reps (including supervisors and managers) only make contact with the corporate office once per day -- typically in the late-morning hours. That is, there is no constant back-and-forth communication between the corporate office and its reps. The reps e-mail the office throughout the day, and the office does not send back its responses until a designated time the next day, when they are received by the customer service rep office in bulk. Any responses to that will again take another day to answer. This is done in order to prevent a barrage of back-and-forth e-mail regarding a single account, but you can imagine how slow it makes any complicated process.

When is all of this a huge problem? It's the worst when anything out of the ordinary happens.

For my first few weeks on epassporte, everything ran smoothly. While their fees were annoying and the number of forms made me feel like I was at the DMV, they did manage to process everything within a reasonable amount of time, and I had no real complaints. I finally ran into trouble when attempting to raise my limits from $500 to $1500 (the most they'd let a new account be increased to.)

I was first told (incorrectly) that I'd have to submit a single form for this. I did, and it was quickly processed. My daily limit (for depositing and withdrawing from my bank) was now $1500, but my single-transaction limit remained at $500. That is, I'd have to make three $500 withdrawals per day to reach $1500, which is not only time-consuming, but costs me an extra $4 in fees each time. In addition, I can only buy in $500 at a time on poker sites, which is especially annoying when playing 100-200 and above.

I called and told them to raise my single-transaction limit to $1500 as well, and that the original rep I talked to said that the form would cover both things. Apparently I needed to fill out a different form for the single-transaction limit increase (sigh), so I immediately did so and sent it in. This was on July 14th. I was promised that, due to the initial rep's error, my case would be put on "highest priority" and would be done within 48 hours.

6 days passed, and I heard nothing. My single transaction limit remained at $500. Finally, I got an e-mail stating that I never sent in the form, which was BS, because I did, and because my e-mail is extremely reliable. I figured they lost it, so I e-mailed it to them again. This was now July 20th. I also called in, and was told that they would again put this on highest priority, and would defintely call me within 24 hours and let me know if they received it.

Nobody called, of course. I called back on the 22nd, and was told they had no information, and would contact the corporate office about it. I was promised a call back that day. No call. I called back the next day, and basically the same thing was said, and a call back was promised. No call.

I got tired of dealing with this BS for awhile, so I let it slide until the 28th. I called again and was told that they did indeed receive my form on the 25th (!!), and are processing it. I was told it would be processed within 24 to 48 hours.

On July 31st, I called and spoke to a manager. This manager promised to personally e-mail the guy in the corporate office who processes limit increases, and swore he would call me back that afternoon. No call.

On August 2nd, I called and spoke to a different manager. There was no record of the last manager having ever spoken to me, and they in fact denied a manager of that name even existed! This woman promised to call me. I asked how it could have taken so long to process a "highest priority" case like mine, especially given that they admitted receiving my very simple form way back on the 25th. She responded, "Just because it's highest priority doesn't mean it will be done any faster than everyone else's requests."

On August 3rd, she didn't call me, but instead e-mailed me. Apparently their phone system is now "unable to make outgoing calls" for unknown reasons. In order to convince me she was telling the truth, she sent me a copy of an e-mail she got from another manager, stating how nobody in the company could call out. None of the people on this e-mail list had epassporte.com addresses, but rather that of a customer service company. I was told that her e-mail about me was answered by the corporate office, and that they refused to further expedite my request until 10 business days (August 9th) from the 25th had passed.

Today is August 8th. I still do not have my limits raised.

If it was this hard to get a simple form processed, imagine what would happen if you got your account frozen for some BS reason, and wanted to appeal it? The complete inability to contact anyone with real power (and who actually works for the company) is VERY unnerving, and I'd advise against anyone leaving large sums of money on there at once.

I don't necessarily believe epassporte is dishonest. However, they have created an impenetrable wall between themselves and the customer (of whom they hold potentially large sums of money), which could prove to be a real headache (or worse) to many of us in the future. Basically, if anything out of the ordinary happens, prepare for a nightmarish experience trying to rectify it.

[kyleb]

[ QUOTE ]
If it was this hard to get a simple form processed, imagine what would happen if you got your account frozen for some BS reason, and wanted to appeal it?

[/ QUOTE ]

Imagine it? Hell, I lived it.

And yes, it was exactly as you described.

[Oliver Nipples]

kyle, did you get your it resolved and about how long did it take?