Universal Merchant Services Phone call scam Irvine California

Received a call yesterday to our office,( solo family physician), stating that it was "Merchant Services" and needed to contact us to reduce the amount of increase in access fees due to take place 4/1/09 on our Master Card/Visa transactions. Returned the call to the number given-female voice answers "Merchant Services" and spoke with a male representative Darryl at the extension given. He indicated to me that he was with First Data Merchant Services-we currently are with First Data Merchant Services through Wilmington Trust. He stated that by dealing directly with First Data instead of through an allied bank we could avoid the higher fees being assessed-we had just received a letter from First Data Merchant Services advising us of the increased fees. He stated that he would need to have a rep come in to the office to verify that our equipment was in compliance and to go over contracts that would allow us to purchase the services direct. He stated that the rep was extremely busy due to the time constraints and we would need to meet with him tomorrow during a 2 hour time frame.

I became suspicious when he told me I needed to bring along two months worth of our transaction statements to provide to the rep. He also pretended to have difficulty bringing up our account and asked me to spell it several times and verify the exact address. When I offered to give him our First Data merchant number to help him "pull up" our account, he told me no, that he could find it using the name only. After agreeing to the meeting, I called First Data customer service to explain that I was very confused by the call. They informed me that they never direct call to offices and that they would never have need to have me provide my statements. I then used the reverse look-up and discovered that it was a company called Universal Merchant Services.

I called them back and again they did not identify themselves by that name. I attempted to cancel with the rep but he told me that he was only a scheduler and I would need to talk to the area representative who would be calling on us. I was able to get his phone number and left a message for him not to bother coming to our office. I then contacted our First Data rep with Wilmington Trust to let them know that this company falsely represented themselves. Be very careful! We would have had to pay a penalty for early cancellation of our equipment lease in addition to whatever charges this company had in store for us.

Dew54
Wilmington, Delaware
U.S.A.