When we signed on with Mersatech for credit card units for our vending machines in mid, Mark Lamperes (supervised by Josh LaBonte) made lots of promises as to what we'd receive. Unfortunately they then failed to deliver on most of it, used dishonest and immoral tactics, misrepresented numerous parts of their service... It's just been a nightmare. I hope to be able to adequately cover everything that happened in the paragraphs below.
First, the install itself. Mark and Josh came out to install the units in a hotel where we have vending machines. Mark was dressed nice, but Josh looked like he was dressed to go to a concert... All in black, including shorts, tattoos showing, and I remember thinking, this guy's the supervisor? Well they then proceeded to bumble their way through the install, taking hours and spending much of the time on the phone with their tech support. The units were installed crooked in 4 of the 5 machines, it looked terrible. When I pointed this out to them, they said no problem, they would get it fixed. This was a promise that Mark repeated to me numerous times in the following months. To this day, the units are crooked and look amateurish. At the end of the install, Josh had me initial and sign a form... Part of which was that I was happy with how the units had been installed, the rest of which hadn't been done yet or didn't apply to us. I was understandably uncomfortable with signing it, but Josh said something along the lines of, don't worry, it's just a formality, and we need it signed to move forward. So I reluctantly signed... Only to have Josh use it against me months later in an e-mail where he said that the installation had gone fine and that I had signed the form saying so. What a slimeball!
The other huge issue was the fees. Mark told me the fees that we would be paying would be $50 a month per credit card unit, and 9 cents a transaction from the credit card companies. Plus a like 50 cent batch fee, and a $10/month statement fee. Sounded fair to me. I confirmed with him several times that there would be no additional fees. We now are being billed nearly $1000 a month (I'd be happy to provide the exact amounts) for the 11 units that we have, which is way way more than I was led to expect. Tons of fees that we were never told about! Pages of fees! The fees are over double the money we're bringing in from credit card transactions... Only a fraction of which would be actual profit of course. So it's gone from being the profitable venture that Mersatech promised, to being a huge money pit... All from fees that we were mislead about or simply not told about.
The biggest fee issue, and this gets back to the dishonesty bit, is the telemetry, or the vending tracking part of the system. This was a deal-breaker to me, and I told Mark that... It had to be included or I wasn't interested. So they went and found InOne Technologies, and told me they would include telemetry units with all machines, for NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE. Free. So I agreed. Mark later went back on that, after the equipment had been ordered and we were way into the process, and said that the telemetry units would actually be $25 a month, or a "discounted" rate of $24/month if we bought in bulk. I later found out from InOne that they charge $6/month for their service.inOne, by the way, was horrified to learn what Mersatech did to us, and not at all happy that their services were mis-represented to us.
As far as problems with the equipment, besides the units being installed improperly in some of my best customers' sites, the units quite frequently don't work. I've spent countless hours on the phone or e-mailing with tech support, trouble-shooting numerous problems. They often don't send data, and customers complain that the terminals don't work and they aren't able to consistently use their cards. Mark also promised me 24/7 tech support. Did we get it? Nope. They're open 8-5 M-F, east coast time.
When I tried (dozens of times, in writing and by phone) to work on these issues with Mark, I was blown off repeatedly, and sometimes just not answered. None of these issues have been resolved, and I still get massive bills every month... Fees that I never knew we would be paying, for a service that is disastrously bad! For a small business like ours, it could ruin us... This literally could put us out of business. I filed a BBB complaint, but of course that only does so much... Especially when their General Manager, Kris Royal, lies in writing and basically said that none of it happened. So now I'm on a mission to spread the word all over the internet about what Mersatech did to us, in the hopes it prevents some other small business owner from making the same mistake. If you sign a contract with Mersatech, it doesn't matter what happens after that, they will hold you to every minute of the contract, and deny any wrongdoing.
Final note... If anything similar happened to you with Mersatech, I would be interested in hearing about it. I am considering legal action against them, and they have plenty of other BBB complaints listed, so I'm assuming I'm not the first person this has happened to. Please contact me if you have a similar story, or post it on here. Thanks!
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