Sales person Lysa came to my store offering to save us about 1/3 off of our merchant's services. He told us we must lease a machine from them that was worth about $900 for $4,800 and that this would get us into a program that would give us a discount rate of 1%. The only exception to the 1% discount rate would be manually entered credit card numbers.
In 32 years of being in business I've never been scammed quite so easily. The contract appears to show a 1% discount rate with a "non-qualifying" rate of 2.99%. We're into a contract with the leasing company for 48 payments at $99 per month plus tax on a $900 (at most) machine and a contract with payment systems which according to them have a $1,760 cancellation fee.
The 1% charge was taken out daily from our checking account and the lease payment was taken out from our account but then came the surprise of a merchant statement which when adding the 1% in came to 4.98% for MasterCard charges and 3.26% for Visa charges. Nearly double what we had been paying with our previous service provider who was also providing us with a merchant machine for $7.50 per month.
When I tried to call their customer service, you get ran around in circles and basically they say you signed a contract you owe them the money. When I tell them that their sales staff were misinformed or deliberately lying through their teeth, they say you should have read the contract. The contract at most is vague. I've consulted with the Police Department believing this is a total con job, but since I indeed signed a contract was told it is a civil matter. I've contacted my attorney who says since our total loss is under $7,500 that I should use Small Claims Court.
Having failed to check this company out online prior to going into contract with them, I now find myself in the position of needing to take civil action. My preference would be to gather together with other businesses to file a Class Action lawsuit because after checking this website everyone has the same story of being completely and entirely ripped off.
I'm not allowed to put my phone number in here, but my user name is my company name and we're in Rancho Cordova, California. Get a hold of us because as one person it's too small a battle. Obviously there has been 100's of businesses taken advantage of by this company. Let's get together and take them out.
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