Posted on 01/07/2008 4:01:02 PM PST by pabianice
REFUSES TO PROCESS TRANSACTIONS . . . Citi Merchant Services and First Data Corp. are refusing to process any credit card transactions between federally licensed firearms retailers, distributors and manufacturers -- a move which will severely limit available inventory of firearms and ammunition to military, law enforcement and law-abiding Americans.
The first company to be affected by this decision appears to be firearms distributor CDNN Sports Inc.
"We were contacted recently by First Data/Citi Merchant Services by a June Rivera-Mantilla stating that we were terminated and funds were being seized for selling firearms in a non-face-to-face transaction," said Charlie Crawford, president of CDNN Sports Inc. "Although perfectly legal, we were also informed that no transactions would be processed in the future, even for non-firearms. I find this very frightening."
To voice your concern to Citi Merchant Services and First Data Corp., please contact June Rivera-Mantilla at 631-683-7734 or her supervisor Robert Tenenbaum at 631-683-6570.
To change to an NSSF-affiliated credit card processing program, contact Payment Alliance International at 1-866-371-2273 (ext. 1131).
View all stories for this edition of Bullet Points Read the most recent edition of Bullet Points
Well, it looks like I’m going to have to refinance my mortgage with somebody else other than Citibank, which assumed my mortgage from ABN Amro recently.
Federal express refused to send in my target pistol to S&W for repair even though S$W had sent me the prepaid box to return it. I dropped it in a box and got it back by Fedex 6 weeks later. Some people treat guns like toxic waste.
And so it begins..........
At least the first, and probably the second. The third was just for fun. :)
Only if we let them.....
Our principal ‘weapon’ in this instance is economic. It’s up to us to use it.
Citi...don’t the Arabs have some piece of this bank ?
Yeah, Citi purchased mine from Amro a couple months ago as well. Sounds like Citibank is in trouble with the CDO’s and other mortgage backed securities they’re holding. They had to borrow $7.5bln from AbuDhabi about a month ago at 11% as they needed a capital injection bad. Banks don’t borrow at 11% unless they’ve got serious problems. Serves the clowns right.
Same here....
Hadn’t heard that but not much surprises me anymore.
Did someone convince their legal department that they’d be a party to a suit or even subject to criminal charges due to a sale gone bad?
One of Citi’s Directors is Robert Rubin, former Treasury Sec for bill clinton. Big goobermint boobs, the both of ‘em.
We will see how this plays out and how much truth to it. However if it is true it really gets my blood pressure up. I will be campaigning against Citibank.
The letter is entirely nonsense.
A Credit Card company is deciding that a merchant is in violation of the Gun control Act? What a bag of worms they have stepped into.
The merchants in the interstate sales always ship to a licensed firearms dealer that does the transfer to the purchaser. That is why the sale is NOT a violation.
Now, I wonder, if someone reported that Amazon shipped blenders to buyers who used them to process kittens - a sure law violation - would Amazon be cut off?
How can that be?
It is against the Q'ran to participate as borrower or lender at interest. Mohammad bin Allah bin Satan forbid it.
Sounds like a good business opportunity for someone.
I hope you were equally outraged by the shut down of online gambling. Because the government has enlisted the banks to shut down that industry too.
The CITI termination letter references the Gun Control Act.
Here is a link to a Wikipedia article on the Gun Control Act of 1968:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_Control_Act_of_1968
There are links at the bottom of the article to government and educational websites with the actual text of the law.
If the merchant is following the law (background check, FFL to FFL transfers, etc), its hard to say what put a bee in CITI’s bonnet. Perhaps fear of some liability if it turns out to be an illegal transaction (”unable ot monitor transactions”)?
Sounds like the CITI legal department in action. I guess the next step is to begin denying suspect transactions because they might just be kiddie porn or whatever. Then they will be passing judgement on which 501 (c)3 donations they will process: Planned Parenthood-okay; Right to Life-oh no.
That being said, something had to have triggered this review. FDC handles processing for several million clients; about the only way to trigger a review from FDC is to be nonresponse to a request for copy of receipt - failure to fax back a charge slip in a timely manner (usually within two business days for these guys.)
What part of the contract was violated? What discrimination was unlawful?
A major part of my job is merchant services for my members. We are wholly within our rights to terminate an account if we deem it unacceptable to our business image, or are uncomfortable with the business they are in. And we are wholly within our rights to turn down applications from business types that we just don't want to do business with.
"Keep in mind that a violation of the Gun Control Act occurs when a gun offered online is sold to an individual in another state; the act prohibits selling a handgun to a resident of another state. Shipping accross state lines is also banned, yet guns for sale reach people accross hte country. We at Cit Merchant Service are nable to monitor or track adherence to these Gun Control laws."
June Rivera-Mantilla
The woman's a ditz and they wrote this on their own. Notice gun control is capitalized. All transactions involving firearm sales, interstate or not, are done through FFLs licensed by the ATF, so the _itch and her cohorts are just being obstinate pinko flakes. There's nothing legitimate to this action whatsoever and no competent atty reviewed this letter, or the action itself.
No, see #24.
The leftists in congress don’t have to do anything. They have plenty of allies in business.
I think you nailed it...someone did an analysis of possible exposure to lawsuits and decide it was better to discontinue these transactions...
The date on the letter is 12/26/2007.
No. See #24. Pink twinks did this on their own. If any attys were involved, they never graduated the 5th grade.
Yeah, NSSF dated their release wrong. The notice is from the current 2008 Bullet Points at NSSF and as you point out the bank letter is dated 12/26/07.
I have the same situation. I left a message at June's number above, suggesting that I was eager to find out what I can do to prevent discrimination against firearms dealers.
I was disappointed that her voice mailbox wasn't full, but perhaps it can hold thousands of messages from unhappy pro-gunners.
Which bank was it several years ago which attempted to close the account of a gun dealer and got their head handed to them? I look forward to the same result here.
Don't hesitate to ping me if you hear anything else about this. I have to leave town for a couple of days but I don't want something like this to stand unchallenged.
“And so it begins..........”
It has been going on a long time, about 75 years. Now, though, we have an effective means of getting the word out, and tools to fight back with.
I did a fair amount of business with CDNN for about a decade, ending three years ago. They were always very professional, scrupulously followed the regulations, and were a pleasure to deal with.
Hard to believe not only because of the potential exposure to lawsuit but also because of internal politics in big corporations. Departments render judgments in their areas of expertise; the Operations Department is not the expert on the law and would be out of line to be making authoritative pronouncements on what is and is not a violation of the Gun Control Act without first receiving the go ahead from corporate counsel.
No, they are aggressively pushing an interpretation of their exposure to liability here. They cite no specific examples of a violation; they are simply assuming that all the transactions are prima facia illegal. Perhaps the line is driven by a political agenda, perhaps it is driven by a fear of imaginative interpretation of tort law by liability lawyers. It is probably a bit of both.
LOL! June Rivera-Mantilla and her cohorts think they are.
"and would be out of line to be making authoritative pronouncements on what is and is not a violation of the Gun Control Act without first receiving the go ahead from corporate counsel."
LOL! This happens quite often. The letter itself is written on Co letterhead and the legal comment therein is simplistic and flat out wrong. It came from little miss stupid, who is completely ignorant of the law in all aspects. Corporate Counsel couldn't possibly have OKed this letter, as per company policy, guidelines and procedure.
"They cite no specific examples of a violation; they are simply assuming that all the transactions are prima facia illegal.
The stated qualification of the tranactions is that they are in fact illegal, per the vacuous capitolized phrase, Gun Control. They also claimed they have a duty to overlook all these transactions for legality. THe implication is that they're exempt in all other cases, whose transactions they definitely can't oversee.
"Perhaps the line is driven by a political agenda, perhaps it is driven by a fear of imaginative interpretation of tort law by liability lawyers.
It's political and they got their tort law education from code pink. There were no lawyers involved in this.
When Citi refuses to correct the problem and issue an apology, and comes up with something substantial with regards to written rules dissociating the company from all firearms transactions specifically, sporting an officer's mark, then it can be taken seriously. Until that time, this is all the work of code pink flakes.
They are free to earn the wrath of gun owners either way. I will be watching to see what is going on here.
You mean you don't have contracts with your members? I guess I am assuming that there is some kind of contract between the services group and it's customers. You can't just terminate a contract for no reason unless the terms of the contract allow that. But who'd sign a contract like that?
You think they could get away with terminating the services to say Arab businesses because they might be funding terrorism?
Credit card owners, etc., who have a choice, should make it.
The problem is that you, as the purchaser, don't really know who the seller is using to process the card. But as the article points out, the sellers can switch service providers, and would be idiotic not to. In fact, gun sellers have no choice but to change. Well, those that sell by shipping to another dealer. Now I think all gun dealers should change, and those of us who are in the retail sales business should as well. That would be those who own or manage all sorts of retail stores and restaurants, as well as some service type operations (HVAC, appliance repair, etc). Might make quite a dent in their operation.)
And, current husband of one, Christine Amnpour
Actually it won't inconvenience the military or the sicherheitsdienst at all since they almost always use purchase orders. It WILL inconvenience law abiding citizens. (tighten the screw a little more)
Be Ever Vigilant!
We are wholly within our rights to terminate an account if we deem it unacceptable to our business image, or are uncomfortable with the business they are in. And we are wholly within our rights to turn down applications from business types that we just don't want to do business with.Yes, you are.
If you (the generic you) find it distasteful to do business with gun dealers, you're fully within your rights.
And we, the gun owners, are fully within our rights to judge you as full of prejudice, hatred, and bigotry, and to refuse to do business with you.
Yeah, those were the same type arguments used by white merchants in the South when they wanted to exclude black patrons. Look how THAT panned out for the merchants.
‘To voice your concern to Citi Merchant Services and First Data Corp., ....’
Dump them, their credit cards.
Ditto that. I just checked, and my Mastercard is a Citi one. I "will" follow up on this, and if not satisified, I "will" change to a different card merchant.
Not even close. There are many legal and business reasons that we exclude certain areas of business from those which we will deal with. Such as online pornography. We are not willing to take on the risk associated with it, along with the massively high charge back rate. So we won’t even accept an application from such a company for merchant services.
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