BonsaiReviews of hellobonsai.com

Apparently I'm paying Bonsai to hold my paychecks hostage. This has to be illegal. I received my first payment on the platform, and Bonsai won't let me access my own money. I get an error message - "Payouts for your account have been put on hold. Please reach out to our support team to resolve this issue and continue accepting online payments." I've been sending chat messages and emails to the support team for almost a week now, and haven't heard anything from them. Nothing about this ridiculous process was disclosed before I PAYED for Bonsai, and I cannot access my own money!

At this point, if I could give it 0 stars I would. I am having similar issues to the other 1-star reviews. When I first signed up, I was able to receive payments for my services and send proposals with no issues. Then, out of the blue, I received a vague email from Bonsai requiring credit approval, proof of work, and authentication. Why was this not all required from the beginning? I asked that they provide more detail on the request before I gave out my information. After further discussion, I have since provided all the information they requested. But they are still withholding my funds and I cannot send invoices. I have sent multiple emails to their customer support asking to this be resolved SO I CAN RESUME RUNNING MY BUSINESS but have not heard back. At first, that was an inconvenience, but now the lack of support is harming my business.

I have been experiencing a similar situation to the other 1-star reviews. I have not been able to access funds earned for over a month, and even though I've received email confirmation that my identity has been verified, I can no longer send out invoices. They even logged into my account (I received an email notifying me of a login attempt) without informing me. It is working on day 3 with zero communication from customer support. Re: There was no confusion over the security process; I followed the steps and received confirmation that it was successful, and all holds were lifted from my account. Even after this verification confirmation, I was not able to access funds or send invoices. It took nearly 3 days afterward to hear from anyone to get help, and even then, they still imposed a waiting period to access my funds, which I had to argue my way out of.

Customer service is BEYOND terrible and slow. I currently have 2 issues that are not getting resolved. I was charged twice for a professional plan. I have tried chatting with customer support and got no response so I filed a chargeback with my bank. I am also trying to transfer funds and everytime i go to verify my bank account it keeps taking me to a “page not found”. I have funds I can’t access or transfer to my bank account. Customer service has hardly replied to me. I get a response once every 2-3 days MAYBE and it’s extremely frustrating. I have also sent emails to customer service about the issues with ZERO response.

If I could give negative stars I would! Clearly they’re savvy enough to have paid for a bunch of 5 star reviews; because if you read the reviews written by people who were actual paying customers you’ll see the frustration and helplessness experienced when a random website holds your money hostage for weeks to months. They partner with stripe which is equally worthless. Their customer support works like this, there’s like 3 names they use for their customer support people, mine happened to be “Laure”. Laure’s job was to copy and paste whatever script she had been given and tell me they’re sorry for the delay but there’s nothing they can do that a $1,000 transaction wouldn’t be paid for a month!! Square transferred my first client payment in ONE Business Day! Bonsai has no phone number to call and neither does stripe. HUGE HUGE RED FLAG when looking at these types of companies. I actually spoke with a HUMAN BEING when I moved to square. She gave me her direct extension and email and followed up with me after my first transfer of funds. Run away from this scam of a company, also NEVER EVER use STRIPE! Small business owners need easy access to their funds. Holding money hostage for over a month could have caused me a great deal of financial harm had I not been more established. I would recommend square highly! Hopefully Bonsai will shut down soon as more of these reviews get out.

Worst customer support. Slow to respond and they keep your funds for 10 days for your first payout. I currently just used the invoice feature and I was locked out because they needed proof of the deliverables between me and my client. I don’t know if I’ll get my payout.

awful experience. Slow customer response, not helpful whatsoever. I have been trying for a month now to get my payouts accepted but nothing has worked. I read great reviews and was recommended this for freelancing but this site is awful.

Haven’t been able to download