National Merchant Services LLC.

Review: This representative for this company completely lied and mis represented this company. When he entered my shop he took a picture of my last statement of the current company I was using. At that time he sent it to headquarters in NY for a response. He then showed me on his phone the money his company could save me if I changed, this was shown on his phone which was very small to see. He constantly reassured me that he would save me money. I asked him several times about the extra charges I had on my current statement and he told me that is what makes his company different then others, THEY HAD NO EXTRA CHARGES. here is a list of things I asked and his response to them

Did I have to PCI compliance, he told me several times no that his company handled that on their end...complete lie

Is there a lease on the equipment, he said no there was no lease and he would send me the most updated unit that would take future credit cards when there is a chip and not a strip,,,I had someone look at the machine and I am not positive if this is what I got. But that is just the small part because yes there is cost to lease. Which I found out later...I am now paying 1400.00 for a machine that is only worth about 350.00. Again I asked him about buy it outright and he said there was no cost to using. Another lie

The cancelation fee from the company I am using,,,he told me they would take care of that. Again that has not been done. Because I told him it was 495.00 to cancel he again told me to not worry he would be sure that was taken care of. He failed to mention it takes 3 months. I did become very upset when he asked me to stay with my current company till my 1st year was up because it would save him alot of money.

He told me there were NO EXtra CHARGES NOT TRUE. When he filled out the paper work he left alot of blanks and told me later that he would fill them out when he got back to the office. I did sign the contract but he did not leave me a copy. Before signing I wanted to call my company to besure I could get out of the contract and he definately would not let me do that, he kept telling me to wait till I was up and running with him. That was the biggest mistake I made besides letting him talk me into this. I called him a couple days later and asked him to email me the contract, it took several calls and emails to get my copy. Once I did I noticed he had alot of extra charges listed. I called him right away and he said don't worry I will take care of that when I come to set up the equipment. I received the machine on Feb [redacted] but he did not return to the shop for several weeks to get me started. By the time he got here I was charged for a month of equipment lease and a month of service. I explained to him that I thought this was not right and he assured me that he would get that credited back into my account...HAS NOT HAPPENED. At this time he is not welcome in my shop, and I told the main headquarters to never send him back.Desired Settlement: I want all charges returned to me, these include the montly fees...the equipment lease (the machine was used once by an employee that was not aware to not use it). The PCI compliance fee...this was the biggest lie and reason I signed that contract so I didn't have to deal with that.

Business

Response:

Let us address all of the customers issues below.

1) PCI compliance fees are not charged as long as the merchant complies with PCI. The merchant needs to log on and become compliant. Its an easy take and could be done by calling us so we can assist.

2) The machine the merchant recieved is a fully EMV compliant machine.

3) The lease was on the contract which the merchant signed so there was no misrepresentation whatsoever. The merchant was fully aware of the lease from the beginning. Pricing a piece of equipment will be different when you lease it vs. when you buy it.

4) There was nothing brought to our attention about a cancellation fee reimbursement.

5) If there were pricing issues we could have and still could address them but this needs to be brought to our attention.

We would love to work with the merchant and make them happy but were never given the chance because it seems that conclusions were made before clarity was provided.

Consumer

Response:

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID# [redacted], and have determined that my complaint has NOT been resolved because:

[[redacted], I am not happy with the response , I have included the emails for you to look over. you will notice there were some promises listed and not followed thru with.

1) If there is no charge for PCI why was $ 115.00 taken out of my account , and yes I have a certificate for being certified that he said I didn't need.

2) I can not verify that without more information

3) This is what makes me upset, yes I did sign the contract but at the time he told me there was NO cost for the equipment, since he did not leave a copy of the contract I did not notice that till he finally emailed me the copy]

4) As you read thru the emails you will realize that yes [redacted] did tell me that they would take care of the cancelation fee from my current supplier. and the day he came to hook up the equipment again we talked about that and he asked me if I would continue till my 1st year was over it would save his company money.

again as your read thru the emails you can follow that I did try and resolve issues, those were just emails not to mention the several phone calls to [redacted] and [redacted].

At this time I just want out of the contract and to send the machine back.....

Thank you for your time trying to resolve these issues.

In order for the Revdex.com to appropriately process your response, you MUST answer the question above.

Sincerely,

Business

Response:

The application was signed in accordance to first data global leasing and first data’s guidelines. The appropriate fee is on the contract which was signed by the merchant at the time of application.

We have done everything correctly here and there is nothing we can do as we are only following the rules set forth to us.

Sincerely,

National Merchant Services

Consumer

Response:

Revdex.com

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID# [redacted], and have determined that my complaint has NOT been resolved because:

[This company may have done everything they needed to do, but the lying to me is what got me into this situation. at this time I have contacted the first date company to be released from that contract. This will not be resolved till that happens since [redacted] was the one representing that company also. First data has alot of complaints and is a d rated busines in my eyes that is because they do not explain all the hiden cost completely to the consumer.....

Your Answer Here]

In order for the Revdex.com to appropriately process your response, you MUST answer the question above.

Sincerely,

Review: A representative called asking to speak with the former owner about merchant services. I asked for him to not call back and remove our number from the list. He immediately called back and told me "Being rude will get you nowhere!"Desired Settlement: I want our number to be removed from their list and I want future Revdex.com users to be warned of their foul (and illegal in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania) behavior.

Business

Response:

Please be advised that we have updated our list and Midvale Avenue Auto has been removed.

Consumer

Response:

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and find that this resolution is satisfactory to me and the matter has been resolved.

Sincerely,

Review: National Merchant Services provides credit card processing services for merchants. I signed contract on 9/**/2012. Contract states no annual fee which was a condition that was necessary as over 95% of transaction conducted are by check and this service was just for the occasional credit card transaction as a convenience to that customer.

On 12/*/2012 NMS debited my bank account $145. Of that amount $130 was for an annual fee in violation of contract. The other $15 was for "non-matching federal ID #). This was bogus as I have had same fed. Id # for almost 40 years and it was listed on contract. If it was not matching then why was December the only month for this charge. I went in person to file my complaint and spoke with the head of company and he refused to give a refund with no valid reason but said he would be willing to cancel the service which is normally not subject to cancel without a penalty fee. I told him their would be no reason for cancellation if he were abiding by contract and not padding unjustified charges on my account. I had to file a form with my bank to prevent further unauthorized intrusions on my account as I could not trust this companyDesired Settlement: I want NMS to issue a $145 check refund as I will not authorize them to access my bank account in any way due to their unscrupulous and unwarranted debits on my bank account in the past.

Business

Response:

There was no annual fee on this account. The $115 that was charged was an annual PCI compliance fee which is a fee charged to all merchants accepting credit cards who are not PCI compliant. We have nothing to do with this fee but just pass it through. Once again the annual fee on this account was in fact at $0. First Data would never charge something that was not disclosed and signed off by the merchant in they're contract.

The $15 fee was also charged by first data because the federal ID did not match. This has nothing to do with us but a mismatch in the tax id. We could have easily updated it for billing going forward but the merchant wanted to have they're account closed. The rest of the fees in the We just wanted to keep them happy but cannot take loses on these fees in the bill were for the months processing.

There was absolutely not wrong doing and the client didn't even pay us the $495 early termination that he signed off to pay.

We were the ones really that took a loss here.

Business

Response:

[redacted] is still repeating the same thing we have already answered and tried to help with. We are sorry he feels this way and understand that he needs to do what is necessary for his business.

Consumer

Response:

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID# [redacted], and have determined that my complaint has NOT been resolved because:

[Your Answer Here]National Merchants answer to my complaint was to not accept responsibility for their poor business practices and charges that they should have and did not prevent or adjust. This is my final response . This matter will be handled in court and they can pay my attorneys fees as this is an open and shut case. **

In order for the Revdex.com to appropriately process your response, you MUST answer the question above.

Sincerely,

Review: I have been calling their ###-###-#### for 4 hours and the taped recording just keeps playing over and over and then disconnects. You cannot get a department or an individual. I tried to go on their website and that is down. All direct phone numbers to contacts I was given are disconnected. I must talk to a representative as we have sold an entity that is eligible to make charges on my terminal and it needs to be cancelled.Desired Settlement: I need to be contacted so that one of the business that I run charges on can be removed from the terminal. The business no longer exists.

Business

Response:

I have called and resolved the merchants issue. Our site [redacted] is not down and was not down at anytime yesterday.

Consumer

Response:

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and find that this resolution is satisfactory to me and the matter has been resolved.

Sincerely,

Review: This company has called me for many months now on a daily basis and most often nobody responds when I answer. Recently they did respond and I asked numerous times to be removed from the call list and they REFUSED and become argumentative and hostile. They keep calling and trying to get into fights with me. It is the ,most absurd thing I have ever seen in 20 years. I have a heart condition and they are messing with me so badly, that my heart is going wild. Calling from a number ###-###-####. I don't know what to do. Have called the company and nobody answers the phone or returns my calls. Have e-mailed as well.Desired Settlement: STOP CALLING ME! I am to the point where I am going to talk to a lawyer about harassing communications! Outraged!

Business

Response:

this merchant has been deleted from the dialer, All calls will cease.

Consumer

Response:

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and find that this resolution is satisfactory to me and the matter has been resolved.

Sincerely,

Review: Requests have been made to stop phone calls from sales agent, but they are continuing. We receive multiple calls a day and it is disrupting our business.

Business

Response:

Please be advised that

have been removed off our list.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

Review: When we agreed to switch our credit card processing to National Merchant Services, we were promised they would refund us for the Early Termination fee with our previous processor. After contacting them numerous times over the course of months I was repeatedly told it was “being processed,” or that “the check was in the mail,” but no reimbursement was ever sent. We have been repeatedly double charged many of the fees. It is now over two years since we switched to National Merchant Services, our agreement is expired, and we are no longer using them for processing. However we continue to be charged by them. I have tried to call their customer service a dozen times in the past month, and am always disconnected by their automated system, or directed to a voice mail service that is full, and no longer accepting messages.Desired Settlement: We are requesting cancellation of our service and reimbursement for all erroneous charges.

Business

Response:

Upon reviewing the account Merchant ID: [redacted] it is apparent that the 36 month agreement which commencedin February of 2013 expires in February of 2016. In order to cancel a merchantaccount you would need to send a cancellation letter signed by the responsibleparty on the merchant account.As a Courtesy due to the experience you state you have had with National MerchantServices I am prepared to waive your $495.00 Early Termination fee. I havetaken immediate action to close your merchant account per your request. If you have supporting documentation showingyou are owed more than the 495.00 ETF then instead of waiving the ETF I am committed to issuing payment for whatwould be owed.I have taken immediate action to close your merchant account. I have not yet charged the ETF, should you decide toaccept the waved ETF as a resolution please respond letting us know that you do. If not, please provide documentation supportingwhat you claim to be owed and I will work to get you compensated provided we do in fact owe you reimbursement based on the agreement.

Review: In December 2012, my company began using National Merchant Services for electronic payment processing. [redacted], the sales office manager, appeared to explain all of the possible charges involved, and this made it seem like his company would save us money so we switched from [redacted] to National Merchant Services. [redacted] said that the charges that he had explained were the only charges we would incur, so we signed the contract. After a couple of months, however, we started noticing a lot different charges on our monthly statements that he did not explain to us before we signed the contract. These charges were not small, but actually doubled our monthly charges and took hundreds of extra dollars from my small business. When I contacted [redacted] the first time about these charges, he acted like he was confused about us getting those charges and said that he would do something about it. Several days later we spoke over the phone and he said that the charges had to do with my company accepting business cards from customers, but my company had not accepted any business cards. After telling [redacted] this, he said that he would get the charges removed and send us a refund check. This was the last time I was able to speak with [redacted] for about 4 months. I called his cell phone (which he provided to us on the contract), his office phone, the sales office, and the [redacted] number. I would make about 6 calls a week trying to contact [redacted]. Several times I left voicemails, and several times I had customer service put in a ticket for him to call me back. One time I finally got through to the sales office (which is very difficult because it usually goes to voicemail) and they said that [redacted] had just gone on vacation and that he would call me the next week. I received no call. My company continued receiving bogus charges, so one day I called and asked to speak with someone about closing my account. I was careful to say that I only wanted to talk about my options about closing the account, because I knew that our contract had a $495 early termination fee. The representative said that someone would be calling me soon to discuss account closure with me because no one at her level was authorized to do so. I did not receive a call for several days, so I called back and was told that my account had been closed and I was charged the $495 fee. I asked why they did not call me, and the representative I spoke to was in agreement with me and was just as confused about why the company did this (she happened to be the same lady that put in the ticket for someone to discuss account disclosure with me, and she could see from her own notes that I had requested talking to someone first before any actions would be taken). The next time I got through to the sales office, they told me that [redacted] had left his office early that day because he was sick. I called the next day and the sales office assistant said he still had not come in and that she was going to send an email to a supervisor instead and have them resolve my issue. This was a Friday, and they said that they would for sure have an answer by Monday. I was not called on Monday, and I was not able to reach the office either. The next time I got through, however, I was able to speak with [redacted]. First, he said that my account didn't get closed (this was not true, not only because of the fact that the representative had told me that it had been canceled, but because the $495 early termination fee had come through to my bank account). After that he said that we had been placed in the wrong program from the beginning (we had been with his company for six months, and he just now realized this) and that he was going to put us in the right program. He also said that he would email me by the end of the day about what his company could do for us in terms of refunding all of the bogus charges. I did not receive an email from him and all calls made to his office since then have not been answered or returned. There were other mistakes: we did not receive proper tax forms (1099-K) for year 2012 from National Merchant Services until July, several months after our taxes had to be filed. Also, we were getting a $15 charge every month for an invalid Tax ID#. I called immediately the first month that I saw this on the bill, and [redacted] told me over the phone that he had fixed it, but for the next several months we continued getting this charge. Another complaint I have is that [redacted] told me that I could not bypass his company and enroll with the payment authorizing company ([redacted]) directly, but that I had to instead enroll with his company. I found this to be untrue whenever I later contacted [redacted], but I had already signed the contract with National Merchant Services because I took [redacted] at his word.Desired Settlement: I have calculated all of the bogus charges that my company has been charged, and it totals $471.20. The charges would have been more had I not called my bank about six weeks ago and told them not to authorize any more withdrawals by National Merchant Services. I did this because the company would not respond to my calls and simply kept drawing bogus charges out of my checking account. When I called my bank, that's also how I found out that they were trying to charge me $495 for the account cancellation that I had not yet approved. My desire is for the company to now cancel my account (I have already gone with another company so that I could continue serving my customers), refund the $471.20, and notify their collection agency to stop contacting me to collect on bogus charges.

Business

Response:

The following merchant signed up with our company wanting to switch from [redacted] to a terminal that would allow them to print receipts. [redacted] only allows electronic receipts but the merchant needed to provide his customers with paper receipts. The charges the merchant had experience arise from different types of transactions. There are qualified, mid-qualifed, and non-qualfiied transactions, corporate cards, as well as other types of cards that are charged higher rates due to risk. The merchant was told that depending on where the charge would fall he would receive a certain fee for processing the transaction. [redacted] mention this to him on several different occasions but the customer refused to try and understand how this works but kept saying that these were "bogus charges". This account was closed by [redacted] because of [redacted] rejects because the customer didn't not have funds in his bank account to clear the transactions and/or chargebacks he received. This was way before we tried to charge him the $495.00 cancellation fee as the account was still opened. The $495 fee was never obtained because of insufficient funds therefore the customer breached the contract altogether but we (NMS) decided to let it go in good faith. The rates on his account were the lowest we can go before we start losing money on the account (profit was literally under $10). We did everything in our power to try and kept he customer happy. If you were to take a look at his statement then you would see the fees are extremely minimal. I believe the customer services here was 100% efficient as I am sure you guys will agree now after hearing the full story.

Please feel free to contact me with any other questions or explanations that are required.

Consumer

Response:

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID# [redacted], and have determined that my complaint has NOT been resolved because:

I am glad to finally receive a response from National Merchant Services because, as I stated in my original complaint, they have been unresponsive and have seemed to put forth no effort in either communicating with me or resolving the issues that I had with my account.

First of all, I do not know who responded on [redacted] behalf (in the response, they refer to him in the third person so I am assuming it is not [redacted]), but I believe it is [redacted] who should be responding because he is both the manager of the department and the person who made the sale of his services to my business. He is the one who handled the contract and made all of the explanations to us, so he would best know what happened. I think this is clear right from the start of the response where it is claimed that we switched from [redacted] in order to allow them to print receipts. I do not know where they got this information, but we never stated this to [redacted]. Paper receipts have never been a concern for us in electronic payment processing. We switched because [redacted] told us that he could save us a lot of money if we switched from [redacted] to his company. My next issue with the response is that it leaves out the fact that [redacted] never explained the different types of transactions before we signed the contract. We went over the contract together and I asked about every charge that we would receive, and I had [redacted] clarify several times that these were the only charges that we would incur. The charges were a small (around 2%) transaction fee, monthly statement fee (he added this later, right at the end when we were ready to sign, and we decided that didn't want to back out at that point), and opening fee. I asked [redacted] if these were the only charges and he said yes. He said nothing about qualified, mid-qualified, non-qualified, corporate cards or anything. It was later, after we were signed into a one year contract with a $495 cancellation fee that he talked about these charges. If he had explained them before, we definitely would not have signed up with his company. These extra charges cost a lot more than what were paying to [redacted], so it wouldn't have made financial sense for us to switch. Also, the business's response does not explain the different confused and contradicting responses I received from [redacted] and some of the other company representatives. If the extra charges were made so clear to us, why did [redacted] act confused that we were getting them and then say that he would try to get them refunded? The company has never made it clear why we were getting the extra charges. One representative told us that we had been set up for swiping credit cards rather than online key entry, and that this was the reason for the extra charges. But when [redacted] set up our account, he led me through the steps of online key entry. Why would he do that if he was setting us up for swiping instead? [redacted] offered other explanations, including that we were put in the wrong program and that he would get us in the right one, etc. However, not one of his promises were ever fulfilled.

Which brings me to my third issue with the response. It doesn't offer any explanation for what has seemed like dishonest business on the part of National Merchant Services. About a month before we ended our relationship with National Merchant Services, I was able to reach [redacted] on the phone and he said that by 3pm that day he would email me with an amount of money that they would be able to refund my business for charges that we shouldn't have received. I own a small business that cannot afford to ignore extra, unexplained charges, so I had been trying for about 6 months to get something done about them. At this point I thought that I was going to finally get a small amount of restitution, since he told me over the phone that he would. I did not expect someone from an established business to so blatantly lie to me. I received no email like [redacted] had promised. He had also told me that if we did not receive it by 3pm, then I should call him. I tried, and as usual, I could not get through. It took another month to get through to speak with [redacted], and when I did I asked him "do we have a problem" and he said no. He told me that he could not get any refund to us but that he could for sure get the collection to drop the charges that they were trying to collect from us. He said that he would send an e-mail to them right then and CC me into the email so that I would have a copy of it. I said that I would stay on the line until I received it and he said that was find. He then acted like he sent it and said "did you get it?" and I said "no". Then I told him to hold on while I keep looking for it, and then he waited a few seconds and then hung up. We never received the email he spoke of either.

We have since received notices from another, different collection agency stating that they were collecting on behalf of National Merchant Services. They never had any explanation as to what these charge were from. My company had paid them in order to avoid harassment, but we have never received a justification for them.

Another issue that I have with the response is that they say that the fees were "extremely minimal". The fact is that they more than doubled our monthly charges. The extra fees were in themselves larger than the fees that [redacted] had originally explained to us. For example, in an instance where the regular transaction fee (the ones that we expected because [redacted] had explained them to us) would be $50, there would be a non-qualified fee along with it of about $65. There were non-qualified fees connected with every single transaction on every single statement. I can provide documentation to back up my claim if necessary. I have kept all of my statements from National Merchant Services.

In conclusion, I think it is clear that I do not agree with the response that our company received 100% efficient customer service, nor do I think we were treated with honesty. I believe that the truth is that we were lied to and received 0% effort from National Merchant Services to resolve the issues with our account.

Business

Response:

All the fees were disclosed to the merchant and they signed the application which is very short and does disclose everything in large print (not fine print).

The cancellation fee, transaction fee, monthly statement fee were all on it.

The rates this merchant was given were next to wholesale so there was almost no profit made on the account. We believe we did the right thing here and the merchant is just nitpicking on anything he can make an issue.

I think the merchant really didn't want to pay anything to process cards but unfortunately that is not possible as we incur costs ourselves because we are no [redacted] or [redacted].

There is only so much you can do to make someone happy.