Monex Group HUGE RIP OFF With $5000 cancellation fee... Their Legal Dept will not return my calls or my emails! Woodbridge, Ontario Ontario

I own a small photography business and have been a client of Monex group for approx 6 years.  Until now I had no major issues with them.  The minor issue I had was about a year ago when my machine stopped working for debit transactions.  I was told to ship it to them and it would take about 5 weeks to get it fixed.  I would not be able to do ANY transactions for 5 weeks, so I just lived without accepting debit.

Recently I was told by some friends about alternate choices for credit card processing at better rates and decided to cancel with Monex.    I left a message on voice mail with Brian Griffiths who is in charge of their legal dept saying I wanted to cancel. Thats when the trouble began.   He then sent me an email and telling  me that I was in a 90 month contract (that I had no idea about). He then sent me an invoice for $5000 for early cancellation penalty.  I called and again got his voice mail and left a message explaining that there is no way I will pay that so I am NOT going to cancel until my contract expires in July of next year.

They sent another invoice with interest added.  I called them again, and again and again.  Each time leaving a message and asking Brian Griffiths or anyone from legal dept to call me back. Not once have they called!!  I emailed them numerous times as well and they have not returned my calls.  All I wanted to do is formally give my notice of cancellation ahead of their 120 day deadline, but they will not acknowledge my calls.

Now a new problem has popped up.  My machine just died completely.  I was told that my machine is the older swipe card type and did not support the new chip cards and they cannot fix it.  I have to upgrade to their chip machine for $310.  I only plan on staying with them for approx another 9 months when my contract is up so I don't want to pay $310 for the machine upgrade.  

I've read about numerous people who have had the same problem but have not heard about anyone's final results on the issue.   Has anyone reading this gotten out of one of their contracts?