Complaint Review: Merchants Barter Exchange + Steve Bolles - Near Scranton Pennsylvania

Their sales pitch sounds wonderful..."Save hundreds every month and don't pay taxes on your purchases by bartering".  The web site is glitzy and the radio talk show host praises the barter exchange as the cure to household finance problems.  The problem is, the talk show is a scripted "advertorial" paid for by Merchant's Barter Exchange of Pennsylvania which has been dodging the law and the IRS since 2005!  Worse still, they have become a front for an identity theft ring that spans the entire U.S. and parts of Canada.  Hundreds of people are lured every day by the smooth-talking telemarketers, glitzy web site, and the above radio shows. They are asked to pay a $895 annual fee ostensibly "save thousands of dollars every year". I was even give the names and phone numbers of three "satisfied customers" to call.  I too almost took the bait, but fortunately my husband suggested I "do a little Google research" which I did using these key words:

MBE, Merchants Barter Exchange, complaints, problems, litigation, fraud, FTC, investigation, IRS, criminal, record, and report.

30  seconds later...I was horrified!  The below is just a sampling of what I found but I was amazed at just how easy it is for a convicted felon with a 6 year history f defrauding people to continue a sophisticated criminal scheme that is stealing the identities and money of hundreds of Americans every day from a business that does not even publish their address or a real telephone number.

Visiting the below sites gave me a crash course on how easy it is to acquire the personal, banking, and credit card information from anyone. We are the idiots who provide it every time we are asked to fill out a loan application, or in this case a "barter exchange membership application".

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http://www.ripoffreport.com/franchises/steve-bolles-merchan/steve-bolles-merchants-barte-d3a7d.htm

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BTW... I called the three "satisfied customers" and none of them would tell me the name nor address of their business and when I told them I was recording the call, they all hung up the phone!  The following week I called back to the same numbers and all three were "out of service".  Is it mere coincidence that all three "satisfied customers" would decide to disconnect their mobile phone numbers the very same week?  Not!

So I must publicly thank my husband and Google for saving me $895 and plenty of grief had I actually paid it!  If I am just one of 500 people that boiler room calls every day, and only 10% of those called fall for that slick sales pitch, they are putting $44,750 in their pockets every day!  I don't think even a corrupt Congressman makes this much money!  

But if everyone emails a copy of this article to just ten of their friends, we can spread the word before the casualty count gets too much higher. I did my part - hope you do yours.

- Rhonda

CLICK here to see why Rip-off Report, as a matter of policy, deleted either a phone number, link or e-mail address from this Report.