We are a 3 yr old company who had landed some good contracts and were looking for some funding in way of a loan to purchase the stock that we had sold on these contracts.
We were initally sent to a company in Tulsa, Ok who then sent us to Richard Day at Rapid Capital in SC.
At first Richards emails made reference to that the loan was only approved for a certain length of time and after that it would have to reapply and so on.
Their email stated "Attached to this e-mail is the Term Sheet for your current loan request with us.
If the client is interested in proceeding with these terms, please have the Term Sheet signed
and faxed to us as soon as possible so that we can submit for a lock on this current offer.
Once the signed Term Sheet has been received along with the preliminary required retainer deposit, the required documentation forms for this transaction will be issued and our processor and underwriter will contact the client directly to carry out the loan due diligence process to proceed toward a closing and funding of the loan request.
We will be standing by to proceed quickly."
We then filled out the paper work and funded the required deposit. Then Mr Day came back with more paper work and things he wanted filled out. The charge total was $4500.
in the contract there are lines that state verbatim.
Preliminary underwriting expense may be non refundable if client mistates use, value, income, credit, accepts loan elsewhere, does not accept our offer or remit stipulations within 5 days, cancels this request, or does not communicate with us for 5 business days.
The specific line that REALLY would concern me would be.. or does not communicate with us for 5 days. That is very vague, and intentionally so. Here is what I mean. It does not state if you do not REPLY within 5 days, it states if you do not communicate. From what I see here, these guys are basically stating, they guarantee nothing, in fact what they state is that if the application does not meet satisfactory underwriting guidelines, the entire $4500 is refundable unless and then launches into a string of instances. Any one of which can cause them to keep the fee. In my OPINION, they are a fee collection outfit. Any fee upfront is not right.
At the time we did not know this nor did i really see anything wrong with the terms. I thought well why would i accept a loan elsewhere or why would i turn them down.
What ended up happening and the out that Rapid Capital needed was to simply go after loans that were not what we requested nor what we could work with. We explained up front we had no cash reserves to speak of. MR Day at rapid capital had me on 2 conference calls both of which were loans we could not accept because they both required us to fund 20% of our purchase order or at min 20% of the cost of the stock. They also then would say well your profit spread must be 30%. Again MR Day knew what our profit was and knew what we needed. In the end he went after loans that he knew we would have to turn down because they accepted us but i not having the profit spread they wanted or not having the 20% down means i had to say no.
Then when i asked Mr day to just refund the money as we were both wasting our time as it was clear he did not have the connections or the lenders to loan what we needed and it was just going over and over to companies asking for the same thing.
His initial response was Attached to this e-mail is a copy of the LOI that you signed with us. I suggest you read it carefully before you talk about canceling and getting any money back.
Then a day later it was
As stated in the LOI. 'We are pursuing the loan on your behalf.' We will have a match for your funding need eventually and then it will be available to us for subsequent transactions. (Against the po face value rather than the profit margin.)
My response was Saying eventially there will be something means nothing. How long should we have to wait? His response was As long as it takes. The LOI you signed states, "Initial closing can within 15 days after the borrower has returned the letter of intent and requested information has been submitted." 1). We still have not received all requested information. (the non info he says he did not get was a patriot form and he did have it but said it was incomplete because the date was not filled out completely. But he waited till now more then several weeks later to bring this up)
2). Your information has evidently not been submitted to a lender you will accept yet.
So far you have failed to do what you were supposed to do which was find us a bridge loan for the value of the Purchase order. You have failed to comply with the LOI you signed on two counts. I bring investors who have the money to finance transactions.....if you can not afford to participate it does not mean I have failed at all. The LOI states that I will pursue a loan on your behalf under the terms listed; not connect you to an investor who will do the deal for free or at 100%LTV.
They are PO investors.....that is what you need. The fact that you do not have the funds to participate in their financing options was not discovered until after the conference calls.
At this point it was going nowhere and he did know we did not have the funds i have the emails to prove it. We have talked and showed these emails to many reputable lenders such as Bibby financial and others as well as many lawyers all saying that these types of companies are fee collectors. They get people who are desperate for a loan to put up the money claiming it is underwriting fees. Then they pursue loans that they know you cant accept and then they can say we did our part.
Stay far away from this company and others like him. His address links back to a UPS Store in Sumter, SC. That right there says it all.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Criag Hecker, CEO Rapid Capital Fun
Miami,Florida,
USA
Wrong Company
#2REBUTTAL Owner of company
Mon, August 29, 2011
I am Craig Hecker, CEO and founder of Rapid Capital Funding, LLC, a direct funder of merchant cash advances. My company is NOT Rapid Capital of South Carolina. I do not know Richard Day or any of the people who have posted complaints about this company.
Rapid Capital Funding has offices in Michigan and Florida and is one of Americas most trusted and reliable merchant cash advance providers. We have maintained an A rating with the Better Business Bureau for close to four years. 80% of our clients are repeat customers. Since 2007, RCF has been providing working capital solutions to all types of businesses nationwide. We do not now, nor have we ever, charged up front fees for our cash advance services. We have dedicated underwriting, in house funding and legal departments, on site customer service and pride ourselves on 100% customer satisfaction. We also have certain relationships with third parties representing our services in certain markets, all of whom have met and maintain the highest standards of professionalism and ethics.