     Chris Lee (Chrislee) | Saturday, December 09, 2000 - 08:02 pm 
I'm not really sure how many of you will have experience with my particular problem, but I'm really looking for any help at all.
I owned my own business for several years, and accepted credit cards through Nova (the biggest credit card processor in the US, owned by First Union). A customer from another country placed an order, so I called Nova personally and was told that the address the customer had given me matched the address on file, so there was no problem with my accepting the card.
This customer placed orders with my company at least twice a month for about 6 months, totaling about $15,000 in gross sales (the margin is pretty low in my field, though, so I profited about $1,500 total). Then, we get our first chargeback, stating that the first charge, and of course all subsequent charges, was fraudulent.
Come to find out, each order placed was with a stolen credit card. But I was shocked to find out that Nova has absolutely no security against this, they simply take the money from me (with a $60 handling fee) until I can prove that the cardholder placed and received the order.
So within 6 weeks, I receive chargebacks totaling over $15,000, plus an extra $720 lost in "handling fees." Mine was a small business, and considering that I have already paid $13,500 for the merchandise lost, this is a loss to me of $29,250, in 6 months time! Obviously, I don't have that kind of money, so I had no choice but to go out of business (and business was starting to do well, too).
Now, before closing my doors, I cleared up all of my debts, and my credit report is OK (not great, but OK). But it appears that Nova has reported the fact that I owe money for these "chargebacks" to a company called MATCH, which apparently is kind of like Equifax. But although my actual credit report doesn't look bad, I can't even get approved for a checking account now, much less a car loan or anything like that.
My problem now is that I can't find any information at all regarding MATCH. From what I have been told from other merchants, though, this is like a guild between banks that simply agree that, as long as I own one bank money, none of the others will ever give me a loan or let me even open a checking/savings account!
Now, this sounds totally illegal to me, but I have no idea what to do or who to speak to. I've called about 20 attorneys, but none of them have a clue how to help (but they certainly won't hesitate to charge me $150 to talk about it).
Does anybody have an idea how I can get my life straighted out, or know of an attorney that can help? I'm a young guy, and I find it incredible that a single thief can ruin my life so badly, especially when Nova said that the charges were OK!
Thanks, all, I'll be looking forward to any replies.
Chris |
