I work for a small transportation company in West Michigan and am currently fighting Crescent Processing to cancel two accounts that were created in our name without our authorization. Crescent wants $350 per account to cancel them despite the fraudulent nature of their existence. I have spent several hours on the phone with various people, ranging from CSR's (Customer Service Representatives) to "Supervisors" and have not succeeded in anything other than an enormous loss of time, patience, and money.
When we originally signed on with Crescent we ordered three wireless credit card terminals. We were told by our sales representative that we would receive the terminals, along with car chargers (a lie, and something that we were depending on for the functionality of the units). He informed us that due to the high cost of the units he liked to have them shipped to separate locations to prevent theft; something that made sense at the time. He provided us with ONE copy of the "Merchant Processing Terms & Conditions" and informed us that we would receive our terminals in 3-5 business days. Shortly thereafter we received the terminals, one at our office, and the other two at our homes. We opened one and were disappointed to find that it did NOT in fact come with a car charger and was not in very good condition. We called customer service to inquire about the car chargers and were informed that Crescent neither had, nor supplied car chargers, and that if we needed them we were going to have to find a third party to purchase them from.
Crescent's CSR then walked us through activating the unit we opened and ran test transactions with us to ensure it was working. I've been processing credit cards for over four years and am fairly familiar with various terminals and their operation. The "WAY Systems" terminals supplied by Crescent are by far the most cumbersome and fragile equipment I've ever used. The unit we tested separated from it's back portion (which houses the battery and a separate keypad for PIN DEBIT use (why they need a separate key pad for that is beyond my comprehension) after about an hour of handling.
We opened the second unit to discover that, despite having a "QC APPROVAL" sticker on the box, the terminal was held together with tape. We didn't even bother opening the third box, and called Crescent to complain about the poor quality of the terminals we received. They said that they would arrange with Fed-Ex to have them shipped back and that they could send replacements. We declined their offer for replacement units and said that we would rather just cancel our account as we did not want to deal with the hassle of indefinite hardware exchanges. It was at this point that we were informed that we did not have ONE (1) account with Crescent; we in fact had THREE (3) accounts, one for each terminal, and that each account is subject to a $350.00 "De-Conversion" fee.
Crescent informed us that they would cancel the account that we hadn't activated and would waive the "De-Conversion" fee as a courtesy to us. Forgive me for being ungracious, but if an account isn't activated I don't see how waiving a fee for closing it is any kind of favor. It's as if I walked into a store, picked out an item, brought it to the cashier, and then, before paying for it, decided I didn't want it, and as a courtesy the cashier didn't charge me the 15% restocking fee... Even though I never actually bought the product to begin with.
As I mentioned above, we have spent HOURS on the phone with Crescent... I have explained several times how we were not told that we were opening three accounts, and how we were made promises by the sales rep that were not kept. I have threatened to sue the sales rep if Crescent assesses the De-Conversion fees for the accounts we didn't agree to open and have revoked their authorization to make electronic Debits from our bank account. I have been told that by revoking their authorization to make Debits, should they need to make any debits, they will report our company to the credit card associations (Visa, MC, Discover, AMEX, etc.) and we will lose any other merchant accounts we have. They assure me that all of this is covered in the associations contracts (which they didn't disclose to us when we opened our account, though I have read the 35 page agreement we have with our other processor and do not recall any mention of such a provision) I told them that if they wanted to collect any other fees from our company they would need to send paper bills, their response was that there are NO card processors who would do paper billing and that this was not possible.
I was told by one "Supervisor" that she was going to bring our account to the Vice President of the company for review to see if she could do anything for us, something I never heard more about. Another "Supervisor" later told me that it was impossible to appeal these situations to any higher level in the company, and that even if I could was the answer wouldn't change.
We have paid Crescent $517.72 in the past three months (a lot of money for our small business) for services we do not use and accounts we did not open. Crescent claims that they "invest $1,300.00" in every new account they open (something I have a hard time believing), and that that is the reason they collect the $350.00 "De-Conversion" fee. It would also explain why our sales rep opened two extra accounts, as I've been told the sales reps are paid a commission for each account they open... I informed the "Supervisor" I was talking to that if they wanted to recoup their losses on our accounts, they ought to recover the commission they paid their sales rep, as it was he who opened the other accounts.
I have never been more frustrated or angry with another business in my life. I would STRONGLY recommend against doing business with this company. I've read similar stories of their deceptive practices and unethical behavior on this and other sites and only wish I knew before we signed on with them.
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