Complaint Review: merchant account solutions

Ok, I am so embarrassed. I read several comments and even emailed the sales rep about the complaints I had seen. But yet somehow I still felt comfortable with the sales rep - what a great manipulator.  Felt so comfortable that I forwarded this reps contact information to a friend and they said "Bill, you are a good judge of character" and went on to say that he did not trust them. Well I am now one of the people that have been abused by this company. BBB (even though I am not sold on their ratings) has only 3 comments and they all are all “1 star” and similar to what I see on Yelp, ripoff report, etc. First of all, I could not even see what they were charging me for a month because the login displayed "no transactions". Then after repeated request for information, finally sent correct login (of course this was about 4 weeks after I started with them). Then I see all of the EXTRA fee's which was not plainly noted in the contract nor in the emails from the rep. The manager continue to stand on a vague and manipulative contract that I questioned and the sales rep emailed me "that will not apply" to your agreement for several items. Manager attempted to manipulate me or make me feel like I did not know anything about merchant accounts. He even said "Intuit Merchant Services was not a full merchant account and was for personal use only", which I said "WHAT?". Now the manager did say he would TRY to waive next month fee (since it takes them 30 days to cancel it) but said it most likely would not happen. Manager also stated "it was his decision if he charged a cancellation fee", but assured me that he would waive it.  I had an email from the sales rep that said he was waiving the contract period (good thing now as this would of cost us another $500.00). My fees ran about 10% of the charges because the rep setup our account as $10,000 per month average so the rate would be competitive to my current merchant account - which I did not say. We only run about $1,000 or so in credit card charges per month due to the cost of credit card processing. So part of my bill included a fee for not maintaining $10,000 in charges.

Then there is the "Regulatory Fee, Batch Header Fee, Fixed Network CP Fee, Datawire fee, Acqr Processor fee" and then you get down to paying the LOW 1.49% or 2.99% for business cards. So I called again to find out why I was receiving another bill with service fees since I returned the cancellation form with terminal about a month ago. And of course this month was double of what last month fees were (that was or first month) and we did about the same in credit card payments. I have yet to understand how this company can continue in business. They apparently have 18 employees from what I found. They have had two addresses:

Use to be at 101 Hodencamp Rd Ste 203, Thousand Oaks, CA 91360-5835

Website shows Integrated Card Services and address 5126 Clareton Drive STE 260 Agoura Hills, CA 91301

Not sure which one is accurate.

In closing, it seems this company gets you locked into a contract, setups up the account so they can draw more money from your account, manipulates the amount “you promise to charge” to get your rate into an affordable percentage, then attempt to make you feel like you are an idiot and should just pay the ridiculous fee’s just because.

So here I sit, screwed again by a vendor when I should have listen to other post. Regarding Merchant Account Solutions, stay far away.