Complaint Review: Monex

MONEXGROUP IS AN ABSOLUTE NIGHTMARE!

So I own a small business outside of Toronto and in March 2016 was looking
to migrate my credit card processing to a new provider primarily because
GoPayment, my current processor at the time, had announced that they were
closing their Virtual Terminal service as of the end of March. Monex was
one of the companies that came up in my search for new processors.

My first contact with a Monex/ MonexGroup sales representative was with a
fellow by the name of Mr. Emad Tadros on Thursday, Jan 28th, 2016. He
seemed very nice and because he knew a mutual lawyer friend of mine I felt
at the time in good hands. He promised that he would make it a seamless
transition and have me up and processing with a new processor as soon as
possible - at this point I was still 2 full months away from desperately
needing another processor so worse case scenario I still had a time to
search for alternatives provided things with Monex didn’t work out.

Well, after a month and a half of waiting and playing email tag
back-and-forth frankly I was getting quite frustrated as well as a bit
desperate to tell the truth, as I was now only 2 weeks away until I no
longer had credit card processing for my business. I sent a last email to
Mr. Emad Tadros asking if he would be so kind as to possible give me a
phone call to provide an update with respect to the virtual terminal
service I required, and that it would be greatly appreciated –  but at
that point I had already begun looking at Square and other options
available to me. I was told by Mr Emad Tadros that these things sometimes
take time.

April was a bust, I had to quickly sign with Square to meet my customers
payment needs and incur a high rate as a result. Then I finally I received
an Elavon Activation Email May 3rd, 2016 and naturally I transitioned to
them because their rates were better. So I was told that I was okay to
process with another company named Elavon via Elavon (shesh, had I known I
would have just signed up directly with Elavon?! I am a Costco member and
would have gotten a better deal!!).  Anyways a week rolls by and I
processed just over $3,500 Cad worth of orders with new processor Elavon,
only to find out at the end of the week that account with them was
canceled, this was May 11, 2016. Nearly 4 months of waiting and work for a
week of processing. But wait, things go from utterly frustrating and total
waste of time to an outright small business persons' nightmare, please
bare with me.

Anyways, I took the wasted time and experience as a lesson learned and
moved on my search for a new credit card processor. I was never again
contacted by a Monex or any one of their agents.

To my surprise, 6 months after Monex and I parted ways (unbeknownst to me
at the time) a  $500 came out of my business bank account on August, 11th
, 2016 from a Money Express. I had never received a charge from a company
from the name “Money Express” prior (nor one from Monex or MonexGroup) so
I really had no clue at the time who this entity was and what where they
charging me for - even my bank couldn’t put 2 and 2 together for me all
they could tell me was Money Express's issuing bank was RBC and that is
was for an "inactivity fee", not much help or to go on.

After more frustration and wasted time I ended up having to go to my bank,
filling out forms, and having the Bank Manager cancel the charge and
refund all of my $500 taken from the account. It was then received an
email 8 days later, on August, 19th, 2016 with the subject heading
“MONEXgroup – Outstanding payment notification” stating;

"MONEXgroup would like to advise you that payment on your merchant account
is past due, and that a service fee of $500.00 was rejected by your bank
on 2016-08-10 due to NO AGREEMENT EXISTED PDA/BDA. The rejected payment,
plus additional charges are now owing and due to MONEXgroup within 7 days.
These include a return payment fee of $75 for each rejected payment, and a
security deposit of $500 to reinstate service."

I immediately called customer service and was forwarded to a Mr. Brian
Griffiths in the Legal Department/ Collections. I proceed to tell Mr.
Griffiths my problem and it seemed my issue fell on deaf ears. He was
extremely rude and certainly did not provide absolutely any help at all
(which I guess was expected considering the ridiculous fees charged that
were in question), I mentioned that my account was canceled after only
20-30 transactions. He said, "we have no information about that" - Ok well
my account was canceled with Elavon after 8 days, So why months later does
Monex feel the right to charge me for not servicing me.

After some research online into other complaints against Monex's business
practives it seems that I am not alone in experiencing the frustrations
Monex is capable of igniting. Here I found another RIPOFFREPORT oddly
enough with the exact same individual with whom I was told to talk to, Mr.
Brian Griffiths.

http://www.ripoffreport.com/r/Monex-Group-Canada/toronto-Ontario-M2N-6C6/Monex-Group-Canada-Monex-Legal-Department-useless-rude-and-ripping-off-customers-toronto-1267546

After getting super frustrated myself with Mr Griffiths' lack of knowledge
about my account and issues and not wanting or willing to help or further
look into the matter I angrily ended our conversation feeling unserviced
and completely unsatisfied.

5 DAYS LATER...

August 24th, 2016 I received another message from Monex/ MonexGroup's
Legal department collection specialist Mr. Griffiths stating;

“Prior to issuing a formal demand we wanted to extend an opportunity for
you to reinstate your service. The balance presently due is $1,075.00,
this payment can be made through a certified cheque or money order made
payable to Money Express POS Solutions Inc.”

So after trying to rectify the original fraudulent $500 “inactivity fee”
they tried to charge me they added a $70 chargeback fee on the erroneous
inactivity fee and then they wanted another $500 for reinstatement of
services?! To the tune of $1,070 ?!?!? What kind of predatory/criminal
billing practice is this, I asked myself.

2 DAYS LATER...

This issue has gotten to an inception level nightmare now - Aug 26, 2016 I
receive both mail and an email correspondence, again from Mr Griffiths
stating that my business now owes MonexGroup $5,300.83 and that the
payment is due Sept 15th, 2016.

So let us recap here: A $500 'inactivity fee' becomes $1,070 in 5 days,
another 2 days and that increases almost 5 fold to $5300, so by the end of
this week if things keep up am I to expect a bill for $26,000+. Absolutely
ridiculous that a company can do this to a small business, they should be
fined and criminally prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

I have also taken the liberty to share my experience thus far with Monex,
MonexGroup and representatives on RipOffReport, PissedConsumer, BBB.org,
and any other consumer advocate websites to provide any potential,
unsuspecting customers with insight and credible information pertaining to
Monex's diabolically shady billing practices.

Furthermore, under the advisement from council I will be entertaining the
idea of filing official complaints with the Ministry of Government and
Consumer Services as well as the FCAC, the Peel Regional Police Fraud
Squad, The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre and quite possibly the RCMP.

My advice is to STAY FAR AWAY FROM MONEX, MONEY GROUP, and Money Express...

PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD. I WILL KEEP UPDATING THIS RIPOFFREPORT!

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Thank you kindly RipOffReport for allowing me to voice my grievance.