Mersatech Mersatech, LLC Mersatech is a dishonest company that will rip you off. Buyer beware!!! Centennial, Colorado
When we signed on with Mersatech for credit card units for our vending machines in mid-2011, Mark Lamperes (supervised by Josh LaBonte) made lots of promises as to what we'd receive. Unfortunately they then failed to deliver on most of it, used dishonest and immoral tactics, misrepresented numerous parts of their service...it's just been a nightmare. I hope to be able to adequately cover everything that happened in the paragraphs below.
First, the install itself. Mark and Josh came out to install the units in a hotel where we have vending machines. Mark was dressed nice, but Josh looked like he was dressed to go to a concert...all in black, including shorts, tattoos showing, and I remember thinking, this guy's the supervisor? Well they then proceeded to bumble their way through the install, taking hours and spending much of the time on the phone with their tech support. The units were installed crooked in 4 of the 5 machines, it looked terrible. When I pointed this out to them, they said no problem, they would get it fixed. This was a promise that Mark repeated to me numerous times in the following months. To this day, the units are crooked and look amateurish. At the end of the install, Josh had me initial and sign a form...part of which was that I was happy with how the units had been installed, the rest of which hadn't been done yet or didn't apply to us. I was understandably uncomfortable with signing it, but Josh said something along the lines of, don't worry, it's just a formality, and we need it signed to move forward. So I reluctantly signed...only to have Josh use it against me months later in an e-mail where he said that the installation had gone fine and that I had signed the form saying so. What a slimeball!
The other huge issue was the fees. Mark told me the fees that we would be paying would be $50 a month per credit card unit, and 9 cents a transaction from the credit card companies. Plus a like 50 cent batch fee, and a $10/month statement fee. Sounded fair to me. I confirmed with him several times that there would be no additional fees. We now are being billed nearly $1000 a month (I'd be happy to provide the exact amounts) for the 11 units that we have, which is way way more than I was led to expect. Tons of fees that we were never told about! PAGES OF FEES!! The fees are over double the money we're bringing in from credit card transactions...only a fraction of which would be actual profit of course. So it's gone from being the profitable venture that Mersatech promised, to being a huge money pit...all from fees that we were mislead about or simply not told about.
The biggest fee issue, and this gets back to the dishonesty bit, is the telemetry, or the vending tracking part of the system. This was a deal-breaker to me, and I told Mark that...it had to be included or I wasn't interested. So they went and found InOne Technologies, and told me they would include telemetry units with all machines, for NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE. FREE. So I agreed. Mark later went back on that, after the equipment had been ordered and we were way into the process, and said that the telemetry units would actually be $25 a month, or a "discounted" rate of $24/month if we bought in bulk. I later found out from InOne that they charge $6/month for their service. InOne, by the way, was horrified to learn what Mersatech did to us, and not at all happy that their services were mis-represented to us.
As far as problems with the equipment, besides the units being installed improperly in some of my best customers' sites, the units quite frequently don't work. I've spent countless hours on the phone or e-mailing with tech support, trouble-shooting numerous problems. They often don't send data, and customers complain that the terminals don't work and they aren't able to consistently use their cards. Mark also promised me 24/7 tech support. Did we get it? Nope. They're open 8-5 M-F, east coast time.
When I tried (dozens of times, in writing and by phone) to work on these issues with Mark, I was blown off repeatedly, and sometimes just not answered. None of these issues have been resolved, and I still get massive bills every month...fees that I never knew we would be paying, for a service that is disastrously bad! For a small business like ours, it could ruin us...this literally could put us out of business. I filed a BBB complaint, but of course that only does so much...especially when their General Manager, Kris Royal, lies in writing and basically said that none of it happened. So now I'm on a mission to spread the word all over the internet about what Mersatech did to us, in the hopes it prevents some other small business owner from making the same mistake. If you sign a contract with Mersatech, it doesn't matter what happens after that, they will hold you to every minute of the contract, and deny any wrongdoing.
Final note...if anything similar happened to you with Mersatech, I would be interested in hearing about it. I am considering legal action against them, and they have plenty of other BBB complaints listed, so I'm assuming I'm not the first person this has happened to. Please contact me if you have a similar story, or post it on here. Thanks!
2 Updates & Rebuttals
Troy, colorado
Arvada,Colorado,
U.S.A.
Response to Mersatech's rebuttal
#3Author of original report
Mon, May 07, 2012
Wow. The response from Mersatech is so dishonest, and so distorts what has actually happened with them, that I'm stunned. This guy should be an attorney (maybe he is)...he repeatedly has directly avoided nearly every point I've made, both here and in my BBB complaint. He knows he can't refute them, so he doesn't even try...he just makes vague arguments and accusations that don't address anything, and simply try to shift all the blame to me.
I'm not going to argue with this joker, I will simply clarify a few points. #1-The implication that Mersatech has tried to help me, and I turned it down, is absolutely not factual. I want their help, and have been asking for it repeatedly for months, that's why we're to the complaint stage! Mark Lamperes, my contact/rep at Mersatech, did call me after I filed the BBB complaint. He offered to help, but left what he would be doing to help very vague. So I tried to pin him down and get specifics, and he said that for starters, he would call his contact with In One (whose service he promised to us free as a carrot to get us to sign up), to fix the billing problems with them, try to get our rates lowered, etc. This was a couple months ago I would say. I've never heard back from Mark, I'm sure he forgot about it the second he hung up the phone. It's another in a long line of things he's promised, and not followed through on. Also during this same conversation, I asked Mark, why is it that your boss is lying in the BBB complaint rebuttals, and saying that none of what I'm bringing up happened? You know it happened! Why is it that you've repeatedly admitted to me that you promised me free telemetry, among other things, but your boss won't admit that it happened? He of course couldn't say much to that, other than to say that his boss has a tendency to stick up for them. It's a joke. Mark knows what happened, he knows he massively butchered our account. He promised us a whole bunch of things that he never delivered on. A lot of that was probably because he was a new employee, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. But his boss needs to have the guts to stand up and say, you're right, Mark shouldn't have promised you this, this, and this. I'm sorry it happened, let me fix it.
I absolutely stand by everything I said, and would testify under oath, write a sworn statement, whatever it takes to prove it. If I had the money, I'd be taking Mersatech to court to accomplish just that. I'd love to see Mark and Josh and Kris Royal up on the stand...I'd love to see them testify under oath that what I'm claiming never happened. I am a very honest person, and we are a small, family-owned business, that was massively mislead and taken advantage of by Mersatech. It nearly took our small company down, and I have every right to be upset about it. If Mersatech were truly the compassionate, good company they claim to be, they'd be working with us as much as it takes to get our issues fixed. Don't let them fool you.
I would also offer to Ripoff Report or any other investigator many corporate references, to show that this experience is not at all typical for us. We're not out there having conflict with every company we deal with...I deal with Coke, Pepsi, and Vistar all the time, to name a few big ones, and we buy our vending machines from A&M Equipment. I could provide references at each of these companies, and many others. I'm on a first name basis with many people at those companies, and have reps at each who I get along with quite well. I have no doubt they would tell anyone who would listen that they've never had any problems with us. If a company deals with us honestly, and delivers on what they've promised, we get along great. I would NEVER falsely accuse a company of something simply to make us money, or get us out of a bad deal, and I'm extremely resentful of Mr. Royal's repeated assertion that that's the case. We had every intention of making our partnership with Mersatech a long one. They blew it, in a hundred different ways.
My final point, and this is a big one. Signing up with Mersatech was a nightmarishly bad decision on my part, you bet. But not because of buyer's remorse, as Mr. Royal alleges, and not because we're losing money. We are indeed losing money from the credit card units, lots of it. But we are in the process of moving units from machines where they don't get used much, to busier machines. We've also found another company (USA Technologies) who offers credit card services at a much much more reasonable cost, with much better customer service. At the end of our unfortunate contract with Mersatech, we'll be immediately taking out their units and shipping them back, and putting in USA Technologies' units. There's nothing wrong with our initial idea of putting credit cards in our busiest vending machines. It is going to succeed. But only once we get away from the nightmarishly unfair fees that Mersatech charges, which they did NOT tell us about before we signed up, and get away from the nighmarishly incompetent and dishonest staff and management there. We will survive this, but will absolutely struggle for the next several years because of our misfortune in signing on with the wrong company. The amount of effort they've put into rebuttals here and elsewhere is staggering. Why wouldn't they just put that effort into fixing the problem and helping us, if they were truly a good company? Mr. Royal has never once reached out to me, by e-mail or phone. It's disgusting. So I'm going to keep up my fight, filing complaints like this all over the internet. And I pledge to absolutely do the honest, right thing, and if Mersatech ever actually does help us and fix this situation, I will gladly return here and post a rebuttal with all they did to help. So if you don't see anything like that here, you can safely assume that they continued to rip us off for the remainder of our contracted period.
Thank you for your time. Although this process is really unpleasant, I appreciate that there are websites out there like this that allow small business owners like myself to have a voice in disputes like this.
MersaTech
Centennial,Colorado,
United States of America
MersaTech LLC is honest and will not rip you off.
#3UPDATE Employee
Tue, May 01, 2012
MersaTech LLC is a registered ISO of Wells Fargo. MersaTech has partnered up with the best credit card acquirers in order to provide low cost merchant accounts, superior customer service & technical support, and industry leading products. MersaTech is an A+ rated member of the Denver Boulder BBB. We have over 10,000 customers nation wide and hope for continued growth and success. According to the BBB, MersaTech LLC has had 22 complaints over the past 3 years plus the complaint filed from this business. A total of 23 complaints in 3 years from 10,000+ customers. That is saying that less than .0025% of MersaTech LLC's customers have filed a complaint using the BBB. In our industry that is very uncommon and typically our industry is not even members of the BBB. We feel we are a leader in customer service satisfaction for the merchant service industry.
To start, MersaTech LLC is a contractually based business. The contract is crucial to all parties involved (MersaTech LLC, Merchant/Customer, and any 3rd parties). The contract terms are negotiated between the sales representative and the business owner. Mersatech cannot fathom how any business or consumer would sign a contract without fully understanding 100% of the terms. Once a contract is in place, all parties involved need to adhere to the contract.
The report filed against MersaTech LLC is replete with non factual comments. The business owner was fully aware the vending machine units are not common and the sales rep was not experienced in installing custom mounted vending machine credit card processing units. The business owner was told that they should hire a company that can do the install but refused to avoid costs. Every penny that is billed to the business by MersaTech LLC is black and white. It is not possible to have a merchant account that only bills $.09 per transaction. MersaTech has attempted to lower the previously negotiated terms, as a measure that we do in fact care. However, the business owner has refused our help. MersaTech LLC has no power to lower terms of InOne, which is a 3rd party that provides the vending machine terminals, inventory tracking of the business's sales, and supports their product solely on their own. MersaTech disclosed that InOne is the only company that can complete support on the vending machine units. Mersatech is not paid revenue from InOne and never has been. We also attempted to work with the business and InOne to lower the monthly fees from InOne. Yet again, the business owner did not give us any chance to help. Mersatech is open Mon-Fri from 8:30 to 5 PM MST with after hours support desk which is open 24 hours, 365 days a year.
This complaint is solely based on the fact this business has not increased sales after investing into accepting credit cards. The business should have thought everything through better. They had never accepted credit cards before but invested into accepting cards as if they knew confidently it would be a benefit. It was the business's decision to install 11 units at once and not take it one step at a time. This business is very unique to accepting credit cards due to the specific business type and model and there are plenty of risks. During the sale and install there were no indications of issues. Nobody ever forced the business owner to sign anything and if there was anything that made the business feel uncomfortable they should not have moved forward. It was 12 months after the units were installed that any issues were brought up to MersaTech LLC. MersaTech LLC, or any other company cannot be held liable for a business that made a bad investment. This is very unfortunate, we hate to hear this type of issue, but MersaTech LLC did not do anything that is unethical. This complaint should not have any affect on MersaTechs reputation.