My friend and now business partner are involved in a very serious situation involving a Merchant Service Provider and the Finance / Leasing Company they are affiliated with.
I would like you to be somewhat familiar with the depth of which one or both of these companies have / are committing fraud, forgery, and a series of additional minor factors all leading into what is know a nightmare.
In short I was called upon by a salesperson from Merchant Lynx Card Services I was told about an incredible wireless terminal that could process credit cards anywhere without the need for a phone line.
Thinking it would be a good investment a verbal agreement was made for 48 payments of $119.00 and I owned the machine.
I would pay all applicable fees for card processing services.
I signed a contract for a Merchant Processing agreement detailing the terms for fee deductions from my account for transactions processed.
Needing a bank account to make the deal official I asked my good friend Christa if she would mind letting me use her account for a few days and I would open a business account and transfer everything.
She came to the house during her lunch break and gave the Salesperson a voided check and was asked to sign in a couple of places authorizing the use of her account for payments and debits. She was at the house less than 10 minutes and once she left so did the salesperson leaving me with a copy of the only contract I saw or signed that day.
Little did we know how quickly disaster was about to strike.
Within a few days the machine arrived. Immediately it began to display problems with poor reception. The first two were solved by stepping outside, the third by actually going out into the street. I contacted Merchant Lynx about this problem and was told I needed a download and things should work much easier. I was not contacted again with the update. This was on a Friday. Then I have to process a transaction in a spot that has no accessible outside and the street was much too far to take a customer just to swipe a card. Therefore, I thought I would just call in for a phone authorization. I was again met with disaster.
I needed a series of numbers called a bank number in addition to the merchant number I was given in order to get a phone authorization. I tried calling the tech support number for Merchant Lynx and was met with a recording stating I had reach 24 hour tech support and the office was CLOSED!
I should leave a message in the event of an emergency and someone would get back to me. I was unable to process that transaction until the following Monday when I was able to get this number. I then did a phone authorization and forced it into the terminal but I was never able to get a signal again from that point forward.
I began spending a lot of time trying to get a resolution to these problems that were costing me in fees whether I had any credits or not. I continued to accept a few more credit cards and would just call for an authorization and have the customer sign a pre-printed receipt at the time of the sale.
I had been told the terminal would be up and running by the next afternoon and in the meantime someone would be getting back to me with instructions on how to force and batch through a phone line. I would not hear back from them until one of my first angry letters made it on the desk of John Kucyk, President of Merchant Lynx. (attached is a copy of that letter).
He then steps in an makes a handful of guarantees to pacify me a few more days until things were progressively getting worse. They had already begun deducting fees for the lease and the amounts were not adding up to what they should have been. Therefore, I begin questioning these debits.
I find out I am paying $129.00 & 20 DOLLARS IN MISCELLANEOUS TAXES. Then I am told I am not purchasing the terminal I am renting it on a never - ending 3 year term commitment. Immediately I begin investigating my options.
After reading the contract thoroughly I discovered it did not state anywhere in the contract the terms to the leased terminal. I had numerous conversations with John Kucyk trying to find the underlying cause of the financing problems and more importantly I had a terminal that was now not even powering up so I could force or batch the many phone transactions I had accepted over the last few days.
They (merchant lynx) offered me nothing that could make this arrangement a happy one. They offered many promises and nothing ever came of any of them. They began to take another tone once they realized I was serious about them holding up their end of the contract.
They would not even assist me in collecting on the several cards I had yet to force or batch meaning they were useless pieces of paper. I have almost $800 in charges owed me for sales I am unable to get. Then to make things even worse I catch an odd amount of money being deposited into my account and I cannot figure out where it came from. I soon discovered it was from the card of the second transaction I had. They were debiting the card as if it were swiped through the terminal. This is an impossibility since the terminal had not been functioning when these transactions supposedly occurred. They did this two times and could offer me no explanation as to why it happened only that I must have swiped it or else it would not have posted. Why would I lieu about a broke terminal to secretly swipe a card for $50 when I had $800 in transactions yet to process.
I was getting nowhere with Merchant Lynx, in fact the sales person who sold me the terminal went as far as to call and threaten me on my voicemail. I contacted Northern Leasing hoping to get further with them. I was met with the same attitude. The vice-president of the company stated I was nothing but a cyber-junkie who had a personal vendetta against Phil the sales person who sold me the terminal.
They claimed they had a contract signed by Christa agreeing to the terms of a lease only at $129.00 per month plus miscellaneous taxes. Since their had been nothing other than the Merchant Lynx processing agreement signed I insisted they send me a copy of this contract. I was told one had been mailed out some time ago. Upon checking the address they had listed I realized they were sending it to the wrong location. They had us on Eglin AFB. I gave them the correct address and told them I would be in touch once I received the copy of the contract and after speaking with an attorney.
I did receive the contract. It is pathetically obvious it was forged. From top to bottom, neither Christa nor I have ever seen this contract before we received it in the mail. I have attached copies of various documents, the contract with Northern Leasing, the actual contract with Merchant Lynx, copies of Christas drivers license and social security card, and a sample of her actual handwriting. They also have us as leasing two machines. We have only one and do not even know what this other machine is or would be used for.
We sent both companies a certified letter demanding separation from the contract via certified mail. Northern Leasing signed and Merchant Lynx refused. We have ceased all contact from this point forward and are trying to find someone who will please help us. We have tried to close the bank account so they cannot continue debiting money from it but every night it seems there is another withdrawal. It appears as though they are trying to correct the triplicate transaction on Erika Woodss credit card. I have been in touch with her and she as of today has not been credited any money.
I know we must have some rights here. Surely these crooks cannot get away with forgery and blatant misrepresentation for a sale. We have exhausted all possible efforts to solve this problem and have failed. The police told us not to file forgery charges until we have an attorney. What do we do? Can you please help us?
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