Integrated Card Service

Deceitful business practices, taking money from my bank account

11th of Oct, 2012 by rmonk

I decided to apply for ICS service following a comparison of information I obtained by consulting with 3 or 4 other credit card companies.

The very nice ICS salesman offered the best plan, without hidden charges, etc., so I opened an ICS account based on the information provided by that salesman.

I filled out an on line application which provided names, addresses, tax ID numbers, and of course, the banking information ICS required.

I did not see a contract, nor was I provided a copy of a contract, and I saw no contract on line, nor did I read or hear mention of a contract.

We began using their service and all was fine. Fees were reasonable just as the nice salesman had stated and the service was good.

So, being satisfied with this first ICS account, I soon decided to open a second ICS account allowing us to receive credit card payments for a second smaller business that we run. Again, all went well, just as the salesman promised.

As time went on, we began using the second account less and less and before long we received an overdraft notice from the second bank account connected to the second ICS account.

To my surprise, I discovered that ICS had extracted fees from that second bank account even though we weren’t using the second ICS credit card machine.

I expected a normal maintenance fee for the ICS account, but ICS also extracted an ‘FCC’ fee of about $129 which we are required to pay; a fee the nice salesman had never mentioned.

ICS had completely depleted the second bank account by extracting unexpected and unannounced fees for the second ICS machine and the added 'FCC' fee.

I called ICS and they refused to refund the amounts they had withdrawn from our second bank account, so we cancelled our second ICS credit card account.

ICS then helped themselves to a $350 early closing penalty from the second bank account. I don't know by what right they assessed this penalty. The nice salesman had never mentioned a $350 early closing penalty, and, of course, there was never a contract for me to read.

I placed a ‘stop payment’ order with our bank for both ICS connected accounts and also closed the original ICS account.

Having no further authorization to access our accounts, ICS modified the Automated Clearing House (ACH) number they and been using to take money from our bank accounts and were able to bypass the ‘stop payment‘ order.

ICS extracted an additional $350 penalty for closing the second ICS credit card account.

At this point, ICS has already helped themselves to over $700 from our bank accounts.

My bank says that it is legal for ICS to modify ACH numbers to subvert ‘Stop Payment’ orders, and that the bank has only 24 hours to contest the extraction, otherwise, the act cannot be contested by the bank and it then becomes a civil or legal matter between ICS and ICS's client.

The moral of the story is: If you deal with ICS, you may regret it as much as we do, and in order to prevent ICS from helping themselves to the contents of your bank accounts should you decide to stop using their service, I suggest that you first empty and close your bank accounts before you close your ICS accounts.

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