LEADERS MERCHANT SERVICES LEADERS MERCHANT SERVICES - BAIT & SWITCH RIPOFF CAMARILLO California

Leaders Merchant Services is sorry for the experience the merchant has had with this account. To the best of our knowledge, in researching this case, it seems as if there was a misunderstanding and miscommunication of information.

First, the merchant notes that he received a keyed rate plan of 2.09%-2.09%-4.99%. The merchant states that he told the sales rep that he would only be running corporate cards and the sales rep told him that the cost would be 2.09%, and that the 4.99% would only be if the merchant did not batch out his transactions every night.

I spoke with the sales rep without offering any insight on this account. He said that he did let the merchant know that the transactions would downgrade to 4.99% if he didn't batch out every night. But the sales rep was completely unaware that the merchant would be doing business-to-business sales only. He said if he was aware of that, he would have put the merchant on a B2B rate plan, which LEADERS has. Therefore there was a miscommunication of what the merchant really needed for his business, and a misunderstanding as to what causes a transaction to downgrade to 4.99% OTHER THAN not batching out every night.

The merchant states that someone told him that he would only be receiving a 2.09% rate if the customer was "standing there" handing the merchant the card to run. This is completely untrue. The 2.09% was available for keyed transactions of check or consumer cards. This too must have been a misunderstanding.

The merchant is also upset about a fee that was charged on a credit he processed. Unfortunately, the costs associated with charges and credits come from MasterCard and Visa. Therefore when either transaction is done, the merchant will be charged. LEADERS cannot waive this, as the fee is a cost that we are passing through to the merchant.

I have personally restructured the merchant's account so he's on a business-to-business rate plan, with very low rates to accomodate the miscommunication that he dealt with. He claims that the account was closed out, but the account is still open, as he never sent in a closure request letter. He will be able to process his corporate cards at much lower rates than 4.99% now that his account is set up properly.