Can I just briefly breathe a breath of fresh air... we are not alone! yay!! :) We too are victims of MBF Leasing & Capital Merchant Services located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We had Sharon Barnette, a marketing director for Capital Merchant Services meet with our struggling business with promises that SHE HERSELF would personally be responsible to increasing our company's profit margin by 15-20%, and to let her work her magic.
She promised us that she would include our company in a brochure she'd bring around to other prospective clients and we'd be in a commercial. She also promised us a website with the design, hosting and everything along with business cards and flyers! We were WAY WAY too trusting.
If you are contacted by her or anyone from Capital Merchant Services, run the other way! The day they installed our Credit Card reader, Sharon showed up at our doorstep being all nice, telling us that she had to change the contract so my husband signed some more pages. She told us we'd get a copy of the contract within a few days. We never did.
Then total cost of the machine that was going to be debited from our bank account each month was 117.00 but it ended up being about 160.00, they added all kinds of additional fees according to some "open-ended" contract that we haven't seen yet! Also, Sharon Barnette claimed that it was EASY to transfer your machine if didn't work for you. But it took 90 days to complete it, and that Capital Merchant Services would transfer it for us.
Well, we ended up being disgusted at all the extra charges coming out of our account each month, so we called to have it transferred. The woman from Capital Merchant Services in Albuquerque, her name is Sonja Villalobos was in charge of our account. And she would never call us back. Her receptionist continually gave us the run around telling us she was on a 4 hour long phone call, or she was always conveniently in 5 hour meetings. blah blah blah, a bunch of crap.
Well we finally got ahold of her and she said it would take at least 6 months, possibly longer to transfer the machine. So we put our name on the list. Capital Merchant Servies also outwardly denied all the things Sharon promised us. Saying if we didn't get it in writing.... our word against theirs.
The next month, we just closed that bank account and opened up a new one. It took MBF leasing 2 days to contact us about the $130.00 owed to them for our 48 month lease. We told them we weren't going to pay them another cent. Well, that was a month ago, and they call 15+ times a day and 1/2 of those times, someone is at the other end just breathing, it's soooo creepy and total harrassment. They've been reported to the FTC.
I've gotten to the point where it's kind of fun. I give MBF leasing a taste of their own medicine, I call their office 10 times a day and yell and complain at them. And they always put me on hold and refer me to their manager, whom is always a voice mail- I'm sure she enjoys my messages something aweful :). I will continue to do this until the number of times they call dwindles. I keep telling them to proceed with taking us to court because we are ready for them.BRING IT ON BABY!
I think with all these testimonials on here with how MBF rips everyone off, no judge in his right mind is going to judge in their favor. Also, MBF leasing told us that it was OUR responsibility to transfer ownership of the credit card machine lease, no wonder Capital Merchant Services gives us the run around every time we call. They are liars who have no intentions of EVER doing that.
We tried to ship our machine back to Sonja Villalobos at Capital Merchants (on the box, it was the place it originated from), and conveniently, when the package arrives, the UPS man was told Sonja doesn't work there anymore. Funny, I just called this morning, and she was conveniently on a phone call. BEWARE.
My gosh, if I can prevent anybody from doing business with either of these companies, I will! DON'T DO IT! My husband's credit will suffer from this, but we have learned a valuable and possible costly lesson, don't trust anyone... unless you have their promises in writing and read all the fine print in what you sign. I will give updates as needed. Thank you all for your comments, they're helped greatly
Tif
Salt Lake City, Utah
U.S.A.