I have a brand new company & upon opening a man called me & explained that he would like to get his teeth whitened (one of our services) & that he also wanted to talk to me about setting up a credit/debit processing machine. He came by & sold me the service for $7.00/month the processing fees for each time a card is used. He never stated any additional information about contracts or additional fees.
I gave a verbal agreement over the phone & signed a form agreeing to have the $7.00 withdrawn from my account each month.
That was in August. It is now December & with a very slow start I have only used the machine 4-5 times.
Each month, however, Crescent Processing Svcs takes out $18.00 another $9.50 and a week ago they took out $98.00. I called them & asked about the fees. The woman explained that the $98.00 was a yearly service charge, the $9.50 is for gift cards & the $18.00 is the $7.00/mo charge $9.00 for a security fee.
I told her that I was unaware of these additional fees, that I didn't agree to them & that I needed the money back in my account. She said she would put the money back in & I waited a few days for the $ to be credited back to me. I had no such luck.
I called Crescent Processing a few days later & asked why they had not credited my account. The woman put me on hold for a while, came back & said that she had listened to the recorded phone call (ps: I was never informed I was being recorded in the first place) and that no such promises to return the money were ever made. I asked to listen to the recorded message myself & was denied.
Frustrated, I asked to speak to the manager. A man named Edward got on the phone & immediately his tone was hostile. He was so very rude to me & told me that the woman, Karissa, never promised to give me the money back. I asked him if I could listen to the recorded conversation & he said that it was against policy to let me listen to it. I asked him why they feel it is ok to just take money from uninformed small businesses. We are brand new, I explained. If they took from us when we are having such a shaky start to begin with, they would surely put us under. He told me that "this company (credit processing services) did not get as large as it has by doing favors."
I wasn't asking for a favor. I was asking to not be scammed.
I then told him that I would like to cancel. He replied "Sure. That'll be $450." He claims I signed a 4 year contract. If I signed anything, it was unknowingly. I don't believe I did & I know that as a new business, the chances of my being open in 4 years are not in my favor. I would not have knowingly committed to such an agreement. This is my first encounter with such an ugly side of business. This company should not be allowed to prey on new small businesses. If we have too many sharks out there like this, none of us will survive.
I filed a complaint with my bank & am nervous about the future encounters I may have with this company.
I will not pay the $450.00 to cancel. I believe in doing the right thing & giving these guys any more of my money is not the right thing to do.
I wrote this report to help warn anyone considering doing business with them.investigate. I didn't & I'm paying for it.
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