Merchant Club of America Fraud Allen Texas

I am the CEO of a small company in salt lake city. I was paying roughly between $50 to $150 a month for our merchant services about 1500 a year. We were with a company called Cutter LLC. I just got hired as the CEO I am was 20 at the time and was very inexperienced with business. I started on 8-1-2017. I was new to the whole business thing. Sometime later that month my recollection was during the second week of August. I got a call from a mani can't remember his name calling to ask if a salesman can come out to look at my merchant service and see if they could save some money. I told them, yes and so a few days later a man came. his name was Trail. He said he was with Merchant club of America. he seemed friendly so I invited him in and we looked at a bunch of information. He looked at my old statements and said wow you are paying way to much in credit card services. being inexperienced he told me all these wonderful things he could do. Here is a list

pay Cutters Cancelation fee. $350

Build us a website.

Get us a new security system up to 10 Cameras

Business card for a year

Free Supplies for a year for our Credit card terminal.

Free Credit card Terminal

36-month contract to be with them 500 Cancellation fee if we ever canceled

99$ flat for everything machine terminal +$.025 per debit

If I wasn't happy with the first 15 days I could cancel at no cost.

He then mentioned we could get on this smart pass/ smart pay where we pay 0% and we pass on that credit card fee to our customers that pay Credit. I said this all sounds great so I asked so for everything it would be 99$ flat nothing more nothing less. He then said yeah but there are some small fees and it should come out to be 107 a month. I asked again so (9 flat nothing more nothing less he then told me yes. He told me sounds good. We sat down and he showed me the contract. he showed me where it said 99$ 1.25% 25 cents for debits. He walked me through the contact page by page and I asked many questions and being a stupid 20-year old I believed every word. I will be back later with the papers you need to sign he said. The next day he says he can't make it so he had his manager call me and get some information and I gave it to him. I got everything set up and he sent all the information it was through DocuSign. I said how does this work and he said o you just click where we have your name. There were a number of pages and there was nothing or anything mentioned about a lease that I was aware of. So over the phone, this guy walked me through and said yeah its easy just click where it says you need to sign so as I was on the phone he told me yeah click here there and you should be good. we should get back to you on the website camera supplies and cancellation fees. I asked to put the cancellation fee towards my first few merchant service bills and they said that would be fine. at this time I was fully expecting to pay the $99 a month nothing more nothing less. I got on the smart pass program they offered I was happy. they said they would charge the customers 2.79%

The next few days I was still using Cutter until my equipment arrived. I had got the equipment they sent me 8 rolls of paper and the things needed to set it up. with the machine, there were 2 laminated papers saying that customers will be charged a 3.99% for using credit. This caught my attention immediately. It also caught my customers attention and the first day I lost 2 to 3 customers because they didn't want to pay the 3.99%. I called 10-14 days after I signed the papers and asked to cancel. They told me if you cancel today it would cost you $4800 to cancel. I was shocked because was told if it was early enough I could cancel my services. I then called trail and he would not answer. I then emailed Merchant and they said yeah you can't cancel. I was very upset at the time and hung up. The next day I called them and asked why it was so expensive and they said because you signed a non-cancellable lease the only way to cancel is to buy out the lease for the credit card terminal which was 4800 and the merchant service fee was 500. I was not aware of the lease agreement. Trail said the terminal was free. I was at a loss. I was 20 years old just started and didn't know what to do. I thought I would wait for the first month to see how it was. I started getting my monthly statements and the first was bad

September: $9.96, oct $72,23, $58.71, $255,40 the $255 At first I was happy thinking wow I thought it was supposed to be 99 maybe that smart pass was the reason it was so low. Then December came and that was the 255 and it caught my attention. I called them and they said O we charge a $185 annual fee. I was pretty upset and was not aware of this at all. I then called about my cameras, website and terminal supplies and they said they would get it to me. I also said when will I get the 350$ reimbursement and they said o we will take care of that. I continued to call every other month waiting for there security system the reimbursements and all the other stuff I was promised. They say if I leave or break the contract I will have to pay all this money and if I didn't I am the personal guarantor and it would hurt me financially forever. Didn't even know I was the guarantor or even what that means even to this day. 9-28-2018 I am so confused about what is going on I need help and I am going to sue these guys. At this time I was still unaware of the lease payments of 110.73  on the terminal machine each month until today. and that is when I call this morning and decided to really dig deep. it was until the owner came to me and asked what were these being pulled out of the bank account every month that I started to wonder what they were this was in August of 2018.

so basically it has been just over a year before I was paying roughly $1500 a year with Cutter now I am paying $2387.04 a year I have never received anything I was promised. I lost a number of my customers and Trail or anybody I talked to will not answer my calls. WhenIi call the company directly they will not answer there phones and when they do they say yeah we will get it worked out. it has never been worked out and they still ignore my calls dont ever do business with them they are all lieing theifs. The main issue is the credit card terminal is $200 and I am was entered in a noncancellable agreement on this one terminal for $4752