We have a small furniture and accessory store. A guy from a company in San Diego called MSI Merchant Services aka CMP (Certified Merchant Processing Inc) came into our store to solicit changing our merchant services to their services. He said we would "save hundreds of dollars a month" because they were "wholesalers". He said we'd have 90 days to cancel if not satified with the services.
He failed to mention however, the 3 and 4 year lease agreements with MBF Leasing and United Bank Card (in the fine print). He also failed to mention the outrageous "extra" processing fees for what they call "mid-qualifying" cards (those that give clients mileage etc)- charging double the standard rate. Our processing fees went up 50% the first half month!
They claimed they would "buy out" our current lease with MBF for a pin-pad terminal if we signed up for a new terminal which did not need a pin-pad. We said fine... But you will cancel our first lease and we can cancel for any reason - right? Right! Needless to say, they did not buy out our old lease so now we have two leases!
When we tried to cancel (within our 90 days) they said we'd have to do it ourselves in writing. MBF stated that we could not cancel, that MSI is not their agent and have no right to change the "non-cancellable" terms of MBF's lease agreement. To cancel would cost us the balance on the lease of $2,350. We got the same run-around from United Bank Card stating that we have a 3 year non-cancellable contract with an early termination fee of $1,190.
We canceled anyway and stopped payments and are now being harassed hourly by MBF's collections department. We will file with the FTC immediately. Maybe we can get a class action suit against these scam artists. They're all in it together! Meanwhile, we have filed a small claims suit against the agent that signed us up for all this mess... CMP Merchant Services for the balance due on the lease and the early termination fee... Total $3,540.
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