Complaint Review: First Data Merchant Services

We all fell prey to the same deceptive tactics of first data merchant services. After reading the many posts here we could not have typed it any better. It started with Jose, First we had a hard time understanding him. My credit score is bad so I explained to Jose I was turned down for merchant services from my bank. Jose stated If they turned you down we probably will too. I can run your application and see if we can approve you He sent a DHL packet to me and said I had to sign so he can run my application.

Then we received an e-mail stating we were approved followed by a third party rep named Tony. Tony said he had to visit our business to verify we were legit and until he did this we could not activate our merchant account. Since we are a start-up we said that's fine we were not ready to start yet. Tony replied okay I will put your account on hold call me when you are ready I then received a call from my bank stating a $314.00 charge hit my account and it is overdrawn. I asked who charged the account and to our surprise it was first data.

We thought that was odd since we were informed our account was not active yet. When we called Jose back he said we would have to call customer service. We then asked for his boss and we were now talking with Robert Gomez. We told him the story and how mislead we were he agreed that there was a communication problem, but his hands are tied. This is when we found out about the $500.00 cancellation fee and the monthly fees that Jose never mentioned.

Or the three year contract he forgot to mention. We asked for Robert's boss he said his name was Winston Wilson and gave us the number 770-303-1569 and this went to a lady named Tracy's voice mail. Does anyone out there feel we have grounds for a class action suite. If so please e-mail me at (((redacted))). Please put first data in the subject line so I don't dismiss it as spam.

Dan
Carnegie, Pennsylvania
U.S.A.