Leaders The Merchant Services Co CROOKS Thousand Oaks, California

I noticed their advertisement on facebook one day and being in the need to start taking credit cards I inquired. After several emails back and forth an account rep called me and I advised him I have never done this before so I needed to know what all of the fees would be. He advised me that the lowest "per month" Charge he could do was $9.95 which covered the "Gateway" Fee. He went on to tell me that the fees were like .20 per transaction and 2.75%. I asked him repeatedly if there were any other fees such as set up fees and he advised that there was not. After using them for a few months and processing on average $200.00 a month in transactions we had a month that had no transactions and I noticed a $7.00 dormancy fee which is exactly what I had asked about before and he said there were no fees. We went on for a few more months until I received a call from my bank advising me the account was in the negative. I looked through months of statements only to find that they had been taking $117.00 a month on top of processing fees but it did not say for what. I called Authorize.net to find out what they were and they advised that it was coming from the processor. I then called Leaders and after getting the runarouond on the phone I got a man that told me the fees were for "non compliance of the PCI complaince" I asked what that was and he explained that this was told to me in the beginning. I told him about my conversation with my account rep and he said "well it is in your contract and on your statements" I told him again that this is not a very good way to conduct business because the rep told me there were no fees. I told him I wanted to cancel the account then and he asked if there was anything he could do to change my mind, I said give me back my money and he said he couldn't do that so I told him to cancel the account. I figured chalk it up to another crooked rep trying to make a sale and I should have read the contract which I might add nearly requires a law degree to muddle through. So the guy tells me I have to fill out a cancel account form and fax it in and he said he would send me one via fax. I received it a few minutes later and this was on 12/14/2011 so I filled it out and faxed it in thinking I was done with them. OH NO WAS I WRONG! I noticed a week or so later they charged me a dormancy fee of $7.00 again so I called and was told that it took a little time to process. I told the nice lady that in my business if a client calls to cancel it is done immediately and if I should mistakenly bill them after that very minute I would cancel charges because this is the only way to do business honestly. She apologized and said they would get it processed. I looked again at my account on 1/03/2012 and they had taken $117.00 again from my account so I called them thinking it was just a mistake and they would reverse the charge but boy was I wrong, the rep spent the whole call defending their right to bill me for the charges again as "it can take like 30 days to process the cancellation"  Companies like this one are crooks that give the rest a bad name, using a lame a*s excuse to bilk people out of money they did not earn. They should have cancelled my account immediately and if nothing else refunded the money they did not deserve. I then did some looking and apparently they are owned by Wells Fargo so I closed the account with them and I would not go back to them or Leaders for any amount of money and I would advise you do the same!