September - Smooth talking Nick came into my store to offer the services. I had been looking for a way to get away from ChasePaymentech (I thought they were overchraging). Nick and I went over my statement and he indicated he could save me hundreds a month even though I wasn't paying Chase "hundreds" every month. I was a small business processor - mostly cash and store credit - but hundreds sounded good. Signed all the documents he requested the next day, met him outside his car in my office parking lot. Should have been wary then but the promise of "hundreds" a month was compelling.
After getting charged the $299 for the new Vx510, I got my first statement. I hadn't even processed anything on the machine -waiting for the new month to start fresh to see the "hundreds" in savings. My first statement had a processing fee for thier "test" penny statement fee of $5. THe first month without any useage cost m $5.32. All for a penny! Now I'm pissed and confused, call Nick's supervisor, told him the story and he said "next time Nick is in town. I'll have him bring you $5 to make up for it." Nine months later Nick has never shown his face back in my location.
October... The new statement comes out and all looks good but. Who in the hell can read these thing... Numbers, confusing jargon, daily interchange rates, miscellaneous fees.
I call the 1- 800# to get someexplanation of why there are miscellaneous fees and why they are not spelled out on the statements. They walk me through it I'm good to go.
This month I also get a LEASE payment drawn from my bank acount for the Vx510. $39.99/month... I call and inquire and they say it was for the Vx510 and it is for 4 years! FOUR years ($2000) for an appliance I could buy on Ebay for around $175. And what was wrong with my original terminal... Can you Kickback??? I did resolve to get this stopped and they did pay me back for the 3 months of lease payments and "property taxes" they took from my account. Took 4 weeks but I got it back.
November - December - more miscellaneous fees. I call again... Get the same BS answer and now they say we'll get those refunded and some are "legitimate" fees. None of the fees are spelled out in my contract. I have read it several times and no indication of miscellaneous fees.
January and i have a $30 PCI non-compliance fee on my statement... What the hell is PCI non-compliance. Again I call the CS center and get... You must be compliant. No warning no "hey this is a fee for me being an idiot" just you gotta be complinat... Never had this issue with Chase Paymentech.
Became compliant end of January... Another non-compliance in February cuz "thier system didn't recognize it, we'll get that refunded" Not sure I've ever seen it but hey i pay for customer service.
Feb. March April&same BS stories from their customer service department. They cannot tell me why my Vx510 batches 60x per month to the tune of. 20 each (another scam). The only way to fix it was to unplug it at night and manually batch.
Closed my store in May... Still no May or June statement... I still have to be compliant for the next 3 years or get charged $30/ month for non-compliance... Cannot close the merchant account unless I want to give these thieves another $250-$350.
After all is said and done... The worst business decision I EVER MADE!!!
I would recommend staying away from this company... Merchant Services Direct spokane Washington...
Not a good fit and horrible customer relationship... Once we got ya its all about the $.
0 comments