Sovereign Bank
www.sovereignbank.com
Boston, Massachusetts
I have to say I’ve never dealt with this bank before, but then I had the unfortunate experience of having to deal with them today.
A client of mine tried to purchase from me & he wrote the wrong address in the address field.
My fraud protection picked it up & declined it, but since it’s a decline because of fraud, the client’s bank places the funds on hold, which means the client’s money is tied up & he can’t do anything with his money (like repurchase) until Sovereign Bank places the money back into his bank account or onto his credit card.
Normally I help the client by either faxing a letter asking the bank to release the funds back to the client, or we do a 3way & I verbally get them to do that.
I have done this for many clients before & they all use different banks of course. I’d say 1 out of 3-5 clients make a mistake when filling out their billing address or there’s a glitch with the bank’s database. This then triggers the fraud protection software to protect me the merchant.
This is THE first time I’ve ever been told the bank has no way of releasing the money. We even spoke to a manager who clearly didn’t like me one bit because she wouldn’t let me speak & kept interrupting me. She said Sovereign’s banking system has no way to do that manually. She tried to make it seem like my company was the one that was holding onto this guy’s money & that I had to release the funds. No Lady, you AREN’T going to blame the merchant.
After I interrupted her & spoke my piece again, she FINALLY admitted they are working on getting their banking system changed.
After I got off the phone with my hopefully soon to be client, I’m thinking to myself… what the hell??? You are a million or billion dollar bank & you can’t hire someone to do the same thing every other bank in the US of A has on their banking system?
So as a potential customer of Sovereign Bank, I guess it’s your decision if you want your funds tied up so this bank can make money (interest) on your hard earned money. I’m just telling you what you will be up against if this happens to you when there’s a glitch during a payment.
