Complaint Review: Nova Merchant Services

We originally signed up with Nova in the summer of  2014, they were partnered with PayPro Tech at this time. We only left our other processor because we felt they were out of date and at the time we thought the fees were a little high, worst mistake ever!

We were surprised to see a fee of $160.11 come out of our account, when we contacted them regarding this issue we were told we had signed a non-cancelable lease for the credit card machine for 4 years! When we did the math on that we were floored! We just dealt with it, since we were already in contract. That was just the start of it. We were constantly calling them because our merchant id's were not set up properly, we were not batching out properly, etc. They would send a new machine, then we would go through the same thing again. We sat on the phone on day during our busiest time of the year trying to understand a man tell us how to reprogram our machine, we were on the phone for 3 hours that day! Every time we would call Nova they would pass us off. This started becoming a regular occurrence.

 Come December 2014 Paypro Tech dropped Nova. Nova needed us to resign the contract with Bluesquare. They told us they would waive the cancelation fees and they could lower the cost of our machine each month. We were skeptical and didn't sign right away because we were still trying to work out the kinks on our current accounts. They kept insisting we needed to sign with the new company so we did. Not only did we not receive the new rate on the machine, which is stated on our current contract, we were back at square one with the issues and they were still taking fees out for our old accounts, these fees went on for four months. In May, again our busiest time of the year, our machine froze and we could not accept credit cards, we had to call and get an authorization on the customer's credit card (we were charged a fee each time use used this service) We called Nova exasperated but this time we wanted some type of customer service, we felt we had done all we could do. On Friday 5/8/2015 Dave Anthony from Nova said he would send someone out on Monday 5/11/2015 at 9am. On Monday  5/11/2015 no one shows up, no call, nothing. We call Dave Anthony he said he has nobody to work our area the person who normally worked our area had personal problems and he would send a new machine overnight. 5/12 no machine and no one called or showed up to assist us. From 5/18-5/22 (no contact from Nova) we had an error each day that would cause us to unplug and reset it. We were dead in the water! These issues made us look like fools in front of our customers. We did the only thing we could do, find a new merchant provider. Capital Bankcard South came highly recommended through another local business. Let me tell you, we were VERY nervous to sign another contract. We felt like we knew the questions to ask at this point, when we felt satisfied with the rates and terms, we signed.  Chris, whose cell phone is on his business card, came out, set up our machine (free machine I might add), ran a few test to make sure it was set up properly and we were good to go! Going on 6 months we've never had an issue.

 Back to Nova:

We dealt with the minimum monthly fees coming out of account along with the machine lease that we were not longer using. We decided in December that we were going to cancel, for obvious reasons. After looking over the contract we did not see a lease term for Nova, we looked through every piece of paper we had signed. We called Nova and spoke with Raphael Jones, he did everything possible not to give us an answer. He even stated  he thought that they shredded those contracts! How dumb could this company be?! He was no help at all so we tried to get an answer from Dave Anthony, he could not find the term length either, he did however locate the contract, the same one we already had with no term length stated. The cancelation fees were stated, just no contract length on their services. We were canceling due to breach of contract, they left us out to dry and made no attempt to get us up and running. We called and asked Dave Anthony on 1/8/2016 if Nova would kindly waive the cancelation fees, $500 per account and we would go on our separate ways. He said he couldn't do that, we asked to speak to his boss, he said he was the boss, we went back and forth on who the boss really was. Finally he said he would talk to his board of directors and would have an answer on Wednesday  1/13/2016. Well of course no answer on Wednesday, we patiently wait until Tuesday 1/19/2016 11am, call and ask for Dave Anthony and he's at lunch. Wait 2 hours to call back, he's still at lunch (at this point blocking our number so they answer). Once they finally get their story straight we were able to talk to Dave Anthony about what he had discussed with the Board of Directors, the answer was No there was nothing they could do.  

We just received a letter stating they were closing our account due to "collection due to ACH rejects" which ultimately means we had insufficient funds, we have never had close to insufficient funds in either account. This letter states "If those amounts are not paid voluntarily and within 5 business days, signor will be held responsible for all collection costs and attorneys' fees."  This letter is dated Friday 1/22/2016 Nova has fraudulently taken $584.40 out of both accounts, dated Monday 1/25/2016. We let our bank read the letter we received and they have advised us to file a fraud report, which we did.

Just in overages on our machine by not honoring the promised rate and the monthly minimum fees our accounts have been charged roughly $2,300.00 + the fraudulent cancelation fees of $1,168.00.

I have been reading the reviews on Nova and Blue square, all with very similar situations. These are two very dishonest companies and I hope with enough reviews other businesses decide to look elsewhere for their merchant services.