AMERICA ONE MERCHANT SERVICES AMERICA ONE EMPLOYMENT OPORTUNITY A BIG SCAM---RUN FAST AND FAR SUNNYVALE CALIFORNIA

I was a District Manager for America One and I believe they are out of business now because they sold their portfolio to another company, and it maybe called Pink ...

America One was the biggest rip off that I ever worked for. They had a lot of hype! And they tried selling you on the fact that they were experts on PCI Compliance and that they did this because they cared about their clients, but nothing could have been further from the truth. They pushed PCI Compliance so they could charge more for their equipment and charge Super High Processing Rates above any other processor's rates in the nation. They also put the merchant into a non-cancelable 5 year contract. They con each merchant into using their services by scaring them using the fear-factor prooving to them that they must use America One or they will pay huge fines in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars which would put them out of business. It is all a scam. I have worked in the payment industry since 1999 and have never seen a scam operation like the one America One pulled on me and thousands of merchants and representatives. They were really good at running this scam for years!

I really couldn't understand your complaints. I've had to use my own car in every job I've ever had, and buy my own gas. I've always had to use my own phone. I've been in the workforce for about 40 years, and no company I've ever worked for has offered to reimburse me for any of this. Why should this company be forced to pay for your 'tools' just because you feel that they should?

If you had a job that paid for all of that, then maybe you should have stayed there.

On the subject of the auto insurance, they only asked to be put on the policy as a "person of interest", which doesn't raise your rates one penny. The only reason this policy was in place was to protect them if you got into an accident while on 'business'. We all know the reason is that some unscrupulous lawyer would smell the money and go after the employer.

Faxing documents in will make it quicker for you to get paid. However, if you want to wait for snail mail to get the documents into the home office, you can wait longer for your commission checks. Personally, I would rather spend a bit more and get paid quicker, but then that's just me.

I have had field training, as well as classroom training. My district manager can be hard to get ahold of at times, but then he's expected to manage the entire state of Texas, and then still have time to be out in the field selling. I don't expect him to drop everything just because I have a boo-boo on my pinky.

There are many merchant services companies out there, and some of them are indifferent at best and some are downright crooked. Personally, I feel that America One is one of the few good ones.

The training I've had with other merchant services companies amounted to little more than the sales manager telling me, "Go get 'em, tiger!" I've received copious amounts of training from America One, and not just the "How to Sell" variety. I've learned more about the industry since joining this company, than I've learned in my previous 15 years in the industry.

For example, I didn't even know what PCI Compliant was before joining America One. Just in case you don't know either, the FACTA Law (the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003) is what created PCI Compliance. PCI stands for Payment Card Industry.

Merchants had until December 2006 to become PCI Compliant, and according to Visa/MasterCard, at this time over 99% of all small and medium sized business are still not PCI Compliant.

America One is the only merchant services company I've seen (and I've worked for many of them) that is actually out in the field, educating merchants about PCI Compliance and trying to help them become compliant. All the others were still out in the field trying to sell by getting the merchant a lower rate.

What can happen if a merchant isn't PCI Compliant? For starters, heavy fines can be levied -- and I mean fines of up to $25,000 per month until the merchant is PCI Compliant. And this is just the tip of a very ugly iceberg.

Enterprising, although I would also say "crooked" lawyers are starting to initiate huge lawsuits against businesses that aren't PCI Compliant, under the FACTA Law.

Who has been sued to date? Big names like Fedex, Kinkos, Costco, Toys 'R Us, have been hit with lawsuits under the FACTA Law. In fact, Costco is being sued for $17 Billion, which is 15 times their 2007 earnings.

The big names make it into the news. Small businesses getting hit with lawsuits like this wouldn't be considered news by the big networks, and thus nobody would know about it. Between December 2006 and April 2008, over 300 lawsuits of this nature have been initiated.

Realistically, it's not much more than legal extorsion, but the lawyers are making big money at it and ruining businesses in the process.

I'm proud to be associated with America One. Would your chief complaint be that you were expected to work for your income? I'm suspecting that it is since you expected everything else to be handed to you for free.