Over 3,000 newsagents use equipment from Bill Express to process credit card payments, telco recharge business and bill payment.
Up until about 2 months ago if you processed a Credit Card transaction on the Bill Express EFT Terminal and failed to press yes or no to verify the signature, the transaction would process through as an approved transaction. If you were tied up with that or another customer and didn’t answer yes or no then your transaction would still go through and the funds would hit your account.
Somebody in their wisdom decided it be best that if yes or no was not pressed in time the transaction should decline regardless of the document signed by the customer showing ACCEPTED.
We experienced this first hand several times in my shop. We approached Bill Express and they advised that the change was an ANZ policy. We approached the ANZ and they denied this. They went on to advise that it used to be the case years ago on old MultiPOS terminals.
ANZ Merchant Services advised us ten days ago that this was one of the most common reasons people (especially newsagents) called their support centre. ANZ changed their software on the new stand alone MultiPOS unit so that the transaction would go through. Given the conflicting information put to us by Bill Express and the ANZ we cannot be sure as who needs to do what, one or the other needs to change their software for processing on Bill Express terminals.
The idiot who made this decision has cost newsagents (including us) money. That there is spin from Bill Express and (possibly) the ANZ is disappointing.
To Bill Express we ask: Why make a fundamental change such as this and not clearly inform your customers? Bill Express should have advised clearly what steps we need to take to recover the funds in an approved transaction being converted to a declined transaction.
ANZ Merchant Services, to their credit, have provided us with a process for recovering money from transactions cancelled. This at least helps us claw back funds Bill Express told us were lost.
My frustration is that either Bill Express or ANZ or both have let newsagents down. That no one has owned up to this is most frustrating and demonstrates a lack of regard for the newsagent channel. Had I not alerted newsagents to this problem ten days ago they would not have known nor would they have had knowledge as to how to recover the money lost.