I run a small home mail order business. My old terminal for processing credit cards is due for an upgrade to pc compatible. Right after the New Year while I was out of town attending to my sick brother, a consultant from WMP waltzed into my place where my niece was running the business. She befriended my niece and offered interchange rates that looked wonderful as the business has been struggling. She kept tell her "no contracts, month to month" so if we find we are not saving we can cancel anytime with no further fees. She offered terminals to purchase/lease for $35.00 per month, said that we wouldn't even see the deduction, that it would come out of the "merchant savings" what ever that is.
The fact that the terminals were coming from a leasing company called Ladco separate from Wholesale Merchant Processing was never mentioned. The leases were slipped into the WMP application papers and never talked about further. The sales consultant spent so much time visiting with my niece about non business chit chat that time ran out and things got rushed. She did the same run of information with me over the phone and had my niece sign my name to all of it and got my verbal ok over the phone. No information about the "non-cancelable lease" with Ladco was mentioned. This was conveniently buffed over.
Within a couple of weeks the terminals were sent. The one for our office in KY was not received or so we thought because of a major ice and snow storm. Lines were down so we could not communicate for several weeks. The office had to be closed down and we no longer needed the terminal that we didn't know where it was anyway. When we did finally get it we sent it back to WMP and they were already taking, not $35.00 per terminal but $43.00 per terminal out of our account. We never gave Ladco permission to do this.
First we called the sales rep who said to call WMP. We did and they referred us to Ladco. We got a run around for about a month. We sent the terminal back to WMP who then called and said they were sending it back to us and they have nothing to do with Ladco. We faxed letters to each company several times asking to quit taking money out of our account for this terminal we never used. They tried to accuse us of hooking it up and using it in KY (not true); Ladco would not cancel the unused terminal lease for anything. We found that Carlos at WMP had sent the paperwork through and signed that both terminals had been hooked up and were being used without even checking with us. Bottom line is Ladco, with the help of WMP's sneaky sales tactics is making over $2500.00 on 48 month leases on terminals that you can buy outright for less than $400.00. What a racket.
We have sent back to them both terminals with a Cease and Desist order. We shall see if they wish to pursue and face a lawsuit.
Beware of these Merchant Processing companies offering such low rates!
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