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Review 1/2/2010
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When the representative for Merchant Services reviewed out present CC Merchant account he assured us he could improve the rates we were receiving and save our company money. I advised the rep that we had an account with another merchant but the rep assured me he would present my contract to his boss, James Minor Supervisor of Customer Service, who would review it and he would let me know if there would be any problems in transferring over. I was assured by the rep several days later that his "boss" had reviewed my present contract and all we had to do was inform the present merchant account in writing that we were transferring to another service provider, and all would be transferred over smoothly. We sent said letter in Oct 2009 when our account was put into place with Merchant Services in Irvine CA and have since discovered in Dec 09 that the information I was given was false, we cannot transfer over for another year plus according to our agreement with the first merchant CC service provider. We were deceived by Merchant Services in Irvine.
When our pinpad was set up on the 1st of October 09, it was not set up by Merchant Service's customer service dept to close the batch nightly automatically. We were moving to another office in the following 30 days and in the turmoil of activity, no one noticed there were no nightly closing printouts from the machine. We moved on the 30 of Oct 09 and again when Customer Service was called to set up the credit card machine in the new office, they did not set up an automatic daily batch closing. On Nov 30th 09 we were not able to run a patient's credit card, and so my employee called customer service at Merchant Services again and when they walked her through the corrections it was discovered that the nightly batch closing was not set up and so it was then that customer service set up nightly batch closing for the first time.
Immediately when our machine was set up to batch nightly, it printed at least 6 feet of paper slip with every charge from October 1st through Nov 30th 09 that had been transacted by our office. I received these payments for VISA MC AMEX DISCOVER 2 days later on Dec 2nd, however $2300 of Debit Card Transactions were not deposited into my account. My office staff made many calls to Merchant's customer service from Dec 2 through Dec 9th and we ultimately received a fax printout of only the 4 credit cards charges, and none of the debit card charges. In order to obtain the debit card printout I had to call Merchant Services on Dec 9th and spoke with James Minor, Supervisor of Customer Services, who assured me he would send me the printout of the entire batch closed on Nov 30th including the charges from the debit cards, which he did, in a PDF. My assistant and I reconciled every charge with every slip we had from the October 2nd through November 30th transactions. By this point we were also receiving calls from patients stating that they had been charged twice, and have lost several patients due to this alledged activity by Merchant Services. I informed Mr Minor that we had received all our money via their deposits to our business bank account except the Debit Card charges. I have emailed or called or both daily since the 10th and have never located James Minor though I have repeatedly stated in my messages and emails to him that we have not received the deposit for the $2300 due us AS PER THE PRINTOUT OF NOVEMBER 30TH CHARGES THAT I HAD RECEIVED FROM HIM DIRECTLY. I have demanded that my $2300 in Debit Card transactions be deposited into my account but Mr Minor has not responded to my requests, yet he knows from the printout he sent me that his deposit to our account was short $2300.
I have contacted my accountant, my business attorney and my banking adviser and we will have be taking legal action this week against this fraudulent company in order to obtain remuneration for the $200 application fee as they deceived me about the ease of cancelling my previous merchant CC company and transferring over to their company, and for the $2300 in Debit Cards processed by my office stolen from me, with interest, reimbursement for the time it has cost my staff and I reconciling all the charges for these 60 days of accounts and taking calls from furious patients, for the loss of profits due to irate patients and neglecting end of year activities that needed to take place (we are presently behind in our work). I will also be reporting merchant services to the government arm that regulates Credit Card Services and rectifies and castigates willful fraud, deception and theft.
I caution anyone who contemplates to do business with this corporation and strongly suggest that they involve an attorney from the start if they should decide to proceed such an endeavor.
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Business's response - by Merchant Serviceson 2/26/2010
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The merchant contacted us regarding missing funds for a specific period of time. We researched the account and discovered the merchant failed to settle their terminal for the time period in question. We worked with the merchant and our processing bank to have the missing transactions deposited into their account. The merchant verified funds were received. The merchant then claimed to be missing approximately $2,300 worth of PIN-Debit transactions (information we were not made aware of at the onset). We called and Emailed the merchant requesting a conference call to discuss their accounting of the funds and to review the deposits that were made for the missing transactions. The merchant failed to respond to our multiple requests. Still concerned, we conducted additional investigation and discovered additional funds - which were deposited into the merchant's account. Additional calls and Emails were sent, requesting the merchant to confirm receipt of the funds and to let us know if there was still any differences in their accounting vs. what we deposited. The merchant has failed to respond to our requests to verify the deposits. The root cause of the issue is the merchant failed to properly settle their terminal on a nightly basis and verify funds were received at their bank on a daily basis. The merchant has still yet to confirm everything has been accounted for, even after our multiple attempts at contacting the merchant.
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