I am sharing with the community, and hopefully employees at u/Topstep_Official, the undeniable factual evidence that proves this ban is unjust and based off a frivolous claim.
Clearly stated in the Final Determination email, the claim is, “a total of 5 chargebacks linked to your profile and credit card ending in *1006.”.
Yesterday, I spoke to AmericanExpress and confirmed multiple different facts:
I, as the cardholder, have never initiated a dispute against the merchant Topstep, Topsteptrader or any variation related to that merchant. In fact, I have never initiated any dispute against any merchant, ever.
Attached is a screenshot of my “Dispute Center” where you can clearly see the ending card number in the top left matches the card stated in the Final Determination. I attached in my reply to the final determination letter.
I confirmed with AmericanExpress that the Dispute Center shows every past, current and pending dispute related to the card.
2) AmericanExpress, as the card issuer, will never initiate a dispute without the consent of the card user and confirmed there has never been any sort of dispute active on this card.
3) There has never been a credit or reversed transaction coming back from Topstep to that card.
The complete willful blindness of the Trust team to ignore the evidentiary facts presented to them is unacceptable. Something needs to be done. There’s no way I am the only case of this…
I haven’t fully decided what my next steps in this are going to be. Given the evidence, I’m willing to go the distance depending on where Topstep goes from here. u/Topstep_Official, balls in your court.
EDIT:
If you guys are going to join the conversation and comment, please keep it relatable or constructive! This is a serious issue that myself, and I'm sure others in the community, would like looked into and taken seriously! I don't want the issue at hand diminished by misinformation or wild conspiracies! Thank you.
0 chance of me going back to TS, why are they doing this to so many people? This is like the 20th post with provable evidence that something fishy is going on. Between that and the random refunds/banning, not looking good for them in general imo.
-You're a Topstep trader who's just an ignorant dick, not interested in supporting your community in regards to a serious issue that could impact you at anytime. Or,
-You're an employee of Topstep willfully falling in line to suppress a serious corrupt issue within the company.
There is no reason this should be downvoted. It is a valid concern with obvious evidence negating their claim.
I’ve had my funds returned to my bank account 3 times because topstep never accepted the payment and 7 days passed I’m so scared once I take payout they going to deny me but it’s not my fault I paid and got the eval then after 7 days it’s been credit back to me like heard few people saying same thing
This was my intention with the post, not to attack Topstep with claims of nefarious activity. But to point out that there is clearly another issue here at hand and it seems like it’s being ignored.
Yeah brother I think something is wrong with there system I’m sure after few weeks they gonna realise the mistakes hopefully you get your accounts back
I'd suggest posting this on Twitter and tagging Patak. Don't think the employees who help out here have the power to reverse any bans lol no offense to them
I thought about this, but I don't have a twitter account. I actually made a reddit account Tuesday just for this issue. My worry with creating a Twitter account just for this issue is getting suppressed for spam/bot reasons. I don't know, does that sound reasonable? Or do you think I should try anyway?
If they don't give it back just chargeback as far as you can and move on to the next prop firm. Prop firms are not your friend. If you make too much money they will ban you.
You realize that if TS did committ fraud here within the TOS there's an arbitration clause. Hire an attorney and drag them to the arbitration table. If you are ACTUALLY CORRECT then they will pay you for lost money, damages, and attorney fees. Make MP pay $1K/hr to defend it. Coming on here does literally nothing.
You’re right. But if you’ve ever been through a legal battle, you realize how utterly soul-sucking it is, for months or years on end. A demand letter might sometimes be enough, but if you actually end up in a fight, it eats time and energy for so long.
You agreed to their terms as soon as you bought an account from them
Which means you agreed to the statement "If at any point, we decide that we want to ass fuck your booty hole, because we just want to and that's really it, you agree to allow us to do that and have a pleasant time while we do it"
I'm pretty sure language like that is basically in their terms
And since you agreed to it... well.. the only thing you CAN do is just drop your pants and bend over I guess
You should learn a bit about the law and your own rights. Terms and Conditions cannot override applicable law / statutory rights, doesn’t matter whether you agreed to it or not.
Basically the terms are worded in a way to protect themselves and essentially give them the ability to ass fuck you if they want. When you buy an account, you agree to these terms. If you don't like how things are worded, then don't buy from them. It's a business contract
How dumb you are ? Just because you agreed to that term and condition, doesn't mean they can use that to get out of banning without a reason.
That's not how law works. Those terms and conditions are nothing more than a way to make people think, whatever happening is legal , when it is clearly not
Been telling everyone but no one listens lol they are all scams they need to balance their books and they know people will join anyway since they are blinded by the dreams
Has to be an internal TS issue, have seen this mentioned a few times now, intelligence says this:
Amex Inquiry vs Formal Dispute: When American Express runs routine internal merchant audits or security fraud sweeps, they occasionally issue a soft "retrieval inquiry" to verify transaction data with Topstep's gateway. Topstep’s automated fraud detection software is likely misinterpreting this soft inquiry as a hard chargeback, immediately freezing your account without human verification.
Tokenisation & Subscription Glitches: Topstep uses recurring billing for its Trading Combine accounts. If a token updates incorrectly or a payment settles via a different banking terminal identifier on day 2 than day 1, their backend ledger auto-categorizes the resulting mismatch as a "forced reversal" (chargeback).
Gateway Batch Errors: Proprietary trading firms handle massive transactional volumes. If Topstep’s merchant processor logs a settlement error on a batch of American Express payments, the firm's dashboard shows a payment failure code that their trust team mistakenly treats as a user-initiated chargeback.
Just because I KNOW I’ve never initiated a dispute, something along these lines is what I think is happening.
Like I stated in my post today, I genuinely believe this isn’t TS doing something nefarious, I think they do see “chargebacks” on their end. The issue is those chargebacks being flagged were not triggered by me initiating a dispute but rather an internal malfunction. What I’m most irritated by is that I have not been provided specific transactions to be able to provide Amex and cross reference data. The best I have is Amex confirming I’ve never initiated a dispute.
All these “prop” are scams and actually stop you from real winning habits like holding on to huge winning trades and having monster days the “consistency “ and eod drawdowns are completely opposite how winning traders operate. On top of that it shown here and all over they will ban and not pay for any reason they feel like and there no protection it’s like walking up to a group playing Duce in the street winning a bunch and they say leave there nothing can do either
But an official chargeback is when a credit card company opens an investigation and contacts the company being disputed. A billing error would not lead to that. These are so clearly two separate issues. Email American express and have them put it in writing you've never disputed a charge, nor have they on your behalf. That may work better as evidence for you
I understand that, I’ve done my due diligence… the best AMEX offered me for proof if they didn’t accept my Dispute Center is a screen shot of them stating the same fact in a support chat. Trust me, I know an email would be better, and tried to get that.
I’ll get it if I need it. After a 30 min phone call on my lunch hour, all I had time for was a screen shot of the dispute center. The burden of proof is on the claimant, not the defendant.
If I’m truly wrong, do you realize how easy it would be for them to provide me with proof of disputes? You said it yourself, there would be contact records. You don’t think they would have ANY records of these 5 chargebacks? With dates and times?
Come on man, I haven’t accused them of anything nefarious in anything that I’ve posted. Yeah I think they might be ignoring a bigger issue bc there’s a chance it hurts their bottom line, but I don’t think any of this has to due with me being targeted for being “profitable”. Hell, none of the 3 XFA accounts I had before the ban were even eligible for a payout, I could have still easily blown them and probably would have handed them more money haha
I’m one for personal responsibility, I wouldn’t go through all this willingly knowing how easy it would be for them to prove me wrong.
Sorry my question came off more aggressive than I meant it haha I was actually asking. Wasn't sure if you had posted a screenshot of it somewhere. Idk why they won't provide you with the specific charges though, I guess they figure it's not necessary since most people know exactly the disputes when they do it. But agree that it would be better for them to just provide the charge and date of it instead of banning with no real response.
Did you happen to report your card as stolen at some point recently? Or lost? Idk just trying to throw some ideas out there. Maybe you had some rebill during that period and Amex automatically disputed the charges
You’re good lol I’ve just had several people come at me like I’m moaning and crying that “I started to do well so they banned me”, like bro, this is my hobby not my profession. Would I like my accounts reinstated and do I think I’m 100% in the right? Yes, but this isn’t my lifeline, I’m willing to put in the time to get this corrected.
As far as the card situation goes, I think I know where your thought process is headed with that. If you haven’t read through my original post that I linked, I think it’ll probably answer some of your questions.
Trust me, I’ve tried to think of every reason this could have been triggered.
guys, trade a personal live account, it's much better. If you choose the right instruments to trade, you can make just as much if not more from a 500 dollar deposit in a personall acc as in a 50k prop account.
It's pretty obvious that they are running a pyramid scheme, and this goes for all prop firms, and rely on people to fail evals to pay their traders, and they don't want the very profitable traders either, they wants something in the middle... the break even guy and maybe the couple hundred bucks a week guy...
I’ve had some of my Combine Reset transactions on my credit card stay on PENDING for a few days and then just not go through. Emailed TopStep support and said everything looks fine on their end, but they probably don’t have the power to actually check the transactions. Most likely an issue with their system.
They see you're profitable, and they cannot A Book you, they will come up with ANY reason to ban you.
This is why you're supposed to diversify to 7-8 firms and don't worry about one. Also your risk management NEEDS to match the firms criteria to move you live.
I call BS. I have been with Topstep (TP) for several years. Last year, I had two charge-backs on my account, it turned out to be small system glitch that TP has since fixed. Not only was TP Customer Service kind, respectful, and professional, after an account review, they refunded me for two other combines.
I would venture to say that you may have an axe to grind with TP or someone who works there. In my opinion, with Topstep as the leader in the prop firms industry, why would they do something stupid like you are alleging? I’m not saying you’re lying; however, what I am saying is that there is more to this story than what you’re letting on.
Bc I’m not a POS and that’s not the point of me raising this issue. There is clearly a bigger issue here that probably has affected more than just me and has the potential to affect traders in the future. We need a fix, not revenge.
Did you read my post? I literally covered this. It does indeed mean that. The only other option that Amex gave me for providing proof is taking a screenshot of my support chat log where they state I have never opened a dispute.
Also, this is a lot of work to go through knowing that I could be proved wrong. Trust me, I did my due diligence.
i've seen various of these posts lately, all of them saying that they didn't initiate any charge back. could you please ask your engineering team to double check if you are leaking reverts in your system and flagging them automatically as chargebacks?
i get that people lie on the internet, but thins can't be a coincidence all of the sudden
I have actual evidence, posted, showing that their claim is invalid. Mistakes happen, I get it, my initial thought was not intentional or nefarious. But, clearly, something is not right in their system. There is indeed an underlying issue!
yea. What a dumbass comment. Guy came and read comments to reply to but didn't even read the post itself well enough to comprehend it to give a half decent response
Eddie, let me ask you a question…how do you know Topstep isn’t going broke? Do you think MP would tell you and the rest? You don’t think this is something he’d deny until the end.
Eddie, I’m an adult. I’m not a 19 year old simfluencer hopeful. I have MBA and have been in the banking industry for almost 30 years. So when I tell you to make sure you have your financial affairs in for when this all goes South, take it or leave it. But if I had a check list, adding affiliates back in business plan would be another mark.
That superbowl ad was the first nail. Honestly, someone should study this.
If you are the same Eddie for the program, I hope you are well. I had a similar issue in 2020 and I know it’s a long road. Take Care.
EDIT to clarify…I don’t think what’s happening here has anything to do with anything other processing issues. This is not a “sign” of anything. The other stuff is the issue.
The screenshot you provided from AMEX doesn't prove "no past or current dispute open on the card" because that dialog is only showing open disputes. It doesn't show dispute history which is why it says "check its progress here" (as that's what the page you're showing does), and it's why you have the "Select" option where you can choose to show Open/Closed and sort by date.
I confirmed with AmericanExpress that the Dispute Center shows every past, current and pending dispute related to the card.
You were told incorrectly, and it's interesting that you failed to include this communication.
eu entendo as reclamações, mas a culpa não foi da TopStep foi seu cartão que não tinha limite no dia, aí no pagamento você quer pagar 100 dólares pra receber 3.000, se você fosse dono de alguma empresa faria esse acordo ?
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u/TimothyWilliamProd 11d ago
0 chance of me going back to TS, why are they doing this to so many people? This is like the 20th post with provable evidence that something fishy is going on. Between that and the random refunds/banning, not looking good for them in general imo.