Premier Merchant Services

Review: I am asking for your help in recovering what I consider to be a theft of our funds by Premiere Merchant Services. Premiere has fabricated a story, a complete falsehood, that was used to justify their seizure of our funds. We were with this credit card merchant services company for 8 years and there was never a problem. On 3/**/2013, a Saturday, we had three transactions at our place of business by credit card. Two were with the same person, one for jewelry and one for coins and the third transaction was with a separate individual, also for coins. The three transactions totaled $2243.76. On the following Monday Premiere called me and asked about the two transactions with the same person and I faxed the credit card slips to them and I told them what the transactions were for. They called me back after a short time and said that because I had transacted coins through their system that they were seizing our money for a period of at least 9 months and immediately terminating our account. I was speechless. I had sold coins many times over the years through their system with never a problem. A restriction regarding coins is not in their contract and they had never provided a list a restrictions either in writing or verbally to me in the entire 8 years that I was with them. I went to premiere’s place of business to talk to them, but they were adamant. I got together with the lady who had done the two transactions and she called her credit card company and had her charges reversed and she then paid me in cash. The second customer who did the third transaction will not help me out in this regard and so premiere is still holding his payment. Three days after Premiere terminated my account they went into my business checking and took another $11.64. After that happened I shut that account down and opened another business checking account with Citibank. Citibank then sent a new Merchant Processing company, 1st Data, to us and they immediately set us up with a new merchant credit card processing account ..and they were as shocked as I am at what Premiere had done. Premiere still owes us $571.37 for that third transaction plus the $11.64 they took out of our account after they terminated us, They also took a $99.00 membership fee from us in the latter part of 2012 and they owe us at least a prorated part of that. The fact that they seized our funds based upon a story that they made up, a pure fabrication, I do believe rises to the level of criminality. The relationship between a merchant and a merchant processing company is one of pure trust. They should not be allowed to get away with this. They have literally stolen our money and then made up this story to cover their theft. We recently received a statement from them which reflects these credit card transactions, but no-where in this statement does it show that they kept our money. This statement is actually crafted as if we got our money, but of course, we did not. Something has gone terribly wrong with this company and they need to be reigned in before they do this to others. Please help us to recover our funds. Yours truly, [redacted].Desired Settlement: We expect a return of our combined funds of $612.00, (incudes prorated membership refund $28.99 plus $11.64. plus the $571.37) by check sent to Antique Equities, Inc at [redacted] as soon as possible.