Insufficient Funds

i43storage

Does anyone out there charge a tenant for having insufficient funds after running their credit card?  I am getting pretty tired of all the batch failures from insufficient funds.  There are a multitude of ways to handle this, and I have ideas, but I'm curious what is out there that works best.  Thanks.

MamaDuke7

At my first facility, I tried for 3 days.  After that they got a $25 "Credit Card Reprocessing fee" and we turned off auto pay until we heard back from them.  We rarely had declined cards at that property!!!

Pat

We don't charge for CC that don't go thru. After 5 days of trying and emailing, calling and texting, I remove them from auto charge. Then I will try every 4-5 days and shoot another email. Then I will send a letter thru snail mail. Usually get a response by this time.

Orkocean

It's a few clicks, if you're on autopay we run you every single day. I just had 2 go thru today that always spend about 2 weeks as insufficient before they finally process. 

I remember a few years back we do an audit on a site and someone that was going to be sold in auction owed about $800, was setup for autopay but they never ran it after the first couple days of it not having funds. Told them to run it and low and behold it ran and fully paid her. Happened to be someone who never updated their contact info so bad # and address, wasn't paying attention that their bill wasn't coming out monthly on the card but they did notice a massive charge going thru and called the store the next day to question it then end up being happy because they didn't lose their stuff. Had we not caught the fact the manager was not running autopays like they should have been and we sold the ladies stuff I don't think it would of went to well for us in court.

ESS

We have ours set up to run automatically now. Even when we didn't, I'd still run them everyday. Yeah, it makes the notes section a bit of a mess with the declines, but I NEED MY MONEY! lol

teamcapitola

We let the card decline for 5 days, then the 5th day remove from/disable autobill.

After each decline we alternate emailing a "payment processing error" letter and calling. Once we remove them from autopay we send another letter explaining why autobill has been disabled.

Usually its just a replaced card that tenants forgot about, but we do have the tenants who flip out over late fees after declining...."BUT I WAS ON AUTOPAY!! I SHOULDNT HAVE TO PAY LATE FEE!" 

And then there is the one tenant who's card is declined EVERY month. Every month we disable autobilling, and on or around the 13th day past due they come in and pay, and demand to be put back on autobill.

teamcapitola

Orkocean said:

It's a few clicks, if you're on autopay we run you every single day. I just had 2 go thru today that always spend about 2 weeks as insufficient before they finally process. 

I remember a few years back we do an audit on a site and someone that was going to be sold in auction owed about $800, was setup for autopay but they never ran it after the first couple days of it not having funds. Told them to run it and low and behold it ran and fully paid her. Happened to be someone who never updated their contact info so bad # and address, wasn't paying attention that their bill wasn't coming out monthly on the card but they did notice a massive charge going thru and called the store the next day to question it then end up being happy because they didn't lose their stuff. Had we not caught the fact the manager was not running autopays like they should have been and we sold the ladies stuff I don't think it would of went to well for us in court.

Sad story ahead....

The only time I tried to charge a card after declining was with an older guy about 6 years ago... right around this time of year. His card kept declining, so it was eventually turned off... fast forward a few weeks, the account is about to go into Prelien so I did the same thing & tried the card again.. lo and behold it worked! and brought the account current.

Then I got a voice message from the guy the day after thanksgiving, in tears crying and screaming because by charging his card, we overdrew his account. He was then unable to buy food for Thanksgiving dinner, and to thank us for ruining his families holiday. We never saw or heard from him again.

Unfortunately he passed away a few months later due to health complications to alcohol/lifestyle, and his ex wife came to clean out the unit.

Turns out he was homeless and estranged from his family for years because of his addiction. He had reached out to his family to try to have a thanksgiving reconciliation. They agreed to have him come but he never showed. 

Not our fault, but still made a callous cynical guy like me choke up a bit.

i43storage

Okay, that was sad, @teamcapitola .  Thanks for the warning.

Thanks to everyone for your comments.  Right now I try every day and text, email, etc. all month long until money miraculously shows up in their account.  At the end of the month, I take it off autopay if there is still no money.  I just know it is costing me money for every transaction that fails.  Knowing many businesses charge a fee for a failed autopay, I wondered if anyone in the storage business did the same.

I think what really gets my goat is that people seem to have no accountability for their actions lately and are not the least bit embarrassed, ashamed, or sorry for their actions - and even have the audacity to get upset that I would think they were doing anything wrong.

ESS

i43storage said:

Okay, that was sad, @teamcapitola .  Thanks for the warning.

Thanks to everyone for your comments.  Right now I try every day and text, email, etc. all month long until money miraculously shows up in their account.  At the end of the month, I take it off autopay if there is still no money.  I just know it is costing me money for every transaction that fails.  Knowing many businesses charge a fee for a failed autopay, I wondered if anyone in the storage business did the same.

I think what really gets my goat is that people seem to have no accountability for their actions lately and are not the least bit embarrassed, ashamed, or sorry for their actions - and even have the audacity to get upset that I would think they were doing anything wrong.

The credit card companies charge a fee for failed transactions?

i43storage

ESS said:

The credit card companies charge a fee for failed transactions?

Yes.  They charge for every transaction - regardless if money is taken or not.

i43storage

MamaDuke7 said:

At my first facility, I tried for 3 days.  After that they got a $25 "Credit Card Reprocessing fee" and we turned off auto pay until we heard back from them.  We rarely had declined cards at that property!!!

Thank you.

ESS

i43storage said:

ESS said:

The credit card companies charge a fee for failed transactions?

Yes.  They charge for every transaction - regardless if money was taken or not.

I had no idea. My company has never told me this nor discouraged me from running them even without payment. I do have 1 tenant I am having to take off AP every month and she pays mid-month, online, and puts it back on auto pay. This is a monthly occurrence. I will still auto run the rest everyday tho, as they are usually all cleared by the 8th (we are FOM billing). Thank you for that info! It gives me something to work with now.

i43storage

ESS said:

I had no idea. My company has never told me this nor discouraged me from running them even without payment. I do have 1 tenant I am having to take off AP every month and she pays mid-month, online, and puts it back on auto pay. This is a monthly occurrence. I will still auto run the rest everyday tho. Thank you for that info! It gives me something to work with now.

Maybe you could suggest to "your company" a policy change on how often you try to run the cards and they could give you a little bonus for saving them money.  

ESS

i43storage said:

ESS said:

I had no idea. My company has never told me this nor discouraged me from running them even without payment. I do have 1 tenant I am having to take off AP every month and she pays mid-month, online, and puts it back on auto pay. This is a monthly occurrence. I will still auto run the rest everyday tho. Thank you for that info! It gives me something to work with now.

Maybe you could suggest to "your company" a policy change on how often you try to run the cards and they could give you a little bonus for saving them money.  

I like the way you think

teamcapitola

Now I have to go look through our C/C processing statements!  I do know it's ridiculous trying to understand all the differing fees...it's 8 PAGES of cryptic notations and codes!  I honestly couldn't tell you if they charge for a declined transaction. I do know there's different rates depending on if the card was physically swiped, entered manually, if billing address matches, and every possible combination!

Has anyone tried Sitelink's Merchant services as a C/C processor? We are thinking of switching if only to make accounting easier.

i43storage

@teamcapitola - I switched over to Sitelink's Merchant Services.  I have not had one single problem and they have excellent customer service when I have called inquiring about trying to read the "pages of cryptic notations"  :-)

teamcapitola

i43storage said:

@teamcapitola - I switched over to Sitelink's Merchant Services.  I have not had one single problem and they have excellent customer service when I have called inquiring about trying to read the "pages of cryptic notations"  :-)

That's an awesome endorsement!  I'll let you know if the higher ups decide to switch; I know they are certainly ready!

Sheryl_Scott

I wanted to thank I43storage for the vote of confidence for our in house SiteLink Payment Solution.

Also I want to try to address a few of the comments and questions in this thread. SiteLink over the last year did add the ability to automatically run your auto bills so you do not have to run these on a daily basis.

If any transaction declines, depending on the reason from the issuing bank i.e. Insufficient Funds, Lost/Stolen, Do not Honor, we recommend you contact the client for an alternative credit card and let them address the declining credit card with their issuing bank. These declining reasons should never be reattempted.

If you can not address the failure on the same day, we recommend you remove the transaction from the auto bill process to avoid further declines. As indicated in a prior post, every authorization attempt will most likely get an authorization transaction fee as this is being sent to the issuing bank for approval. If you do try to re-attempt, you should wait 24 hours per card brand rules. If you run prior to the 24 hours, the issuing bank is allowed to retrieve these funds. We have seen this with one issuing bank in particular.

When you do these Card Not Present attempts, we  strongly recommend you add Address Verification Services (AVS) to any reoccurring payment as this not only helps you combat fraud but can have an impact of reduced fees to your monthly billing. Our SiteLink Merchant Services has a feature that allows you to check to ensure AVS is correct during the move in process as this is a reoccurring transaction. This will help you reduce transactions from downgrading and receiving a higher fee. These downgrades can result in paying up to .5% more.

For SiteLink Merchant Services customers, you can always contact us with questions at merchantsupport@sitelink.com and we will always try to assist you and offer best practices. If your interested in learning more about our payment offering, you can call our Payment Account team at 919-703-2300 Option 1.

I am always glad to help as well and feel free to private message me.