| First Financial Merchant |
| First Financial Merchant Services First Financial USA Deceptive Practices to Lure Agents, Highly Suspicious Contract Terms Medina, Minnesota |
| 24th of Nov, 2010 by User457869 |
I got an email from Jay Abraham (I was on his email list) telling me of an opportunity, the "Deal of the Decade" he called it. Normally I'd be suspicious, and I was a little, but since it was from Jay Abraham, I felt it must be legit, though probably overhyped. To check it out, you have to sign up to attend a teleconference at one of seven time slots. All mumbo jumbo. It was a prerecorded audio that could have been made available online. Still, "the deal" sounded good....
In the prerecorded "conference" I learned that Abraham has teamed up with John Eliason and Chuck Fowler to revolutionize the credit-card processing industry -- words to that effect. The idea is that merchants who sign on with First Financial for card processing get access to Jay's business building expertise at no extra charge. What they want from me is to become a sales agent signing up merchants with First Financial. On the "conference" website, they had brochures showing the bonus and residuals I would get. Damn, it looked good! I eagerly started the sign up process. AFTER giving my name, birth date, and social security (yes, I know...), I got to their contract form. Suddenly things didn't look so good anymore.
There were at least six different ways for First Financial to simply not pay me those nice bonuses or residuals. Worse, there were three different ways for them to dip into my private bank account and take as much OUT of it as they pleased. I should have stopped reading at that point but honestly I'm a tad desperate, so I looked for the termination clause. Guess what? There isn't one. Once you sign, you can't terminate the agreement for three years. They own you and they own your bank account. They can terminate whenever they wish, but not you. You're stuck. Oh, another nice thing. If you reveal what's in that contract, they can sue you for disclosing their business practices. Fortunately I didn't sign because if I had, they could come after me right now for telling you: Beware and steer clear of First Financial, Jay Abraham, Chuck Fowler, and John Eliason.
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If you had any common sense, you would realize that you could open a new business checking account, which is what you should do for tax purposes anyway. Once deposits are made into the account, you could immediately move the money to another account that they don't have access to, leaving nothing to "steal".
Paranoid much? |
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| Rhythm, even a separate checking account that you've moved money from once deposits were made can be overdrawn and have bank fees tacked on to it if an attempt is made to withdraw. It's better to steer clear of any situation that would even make you feel that you have to move money that is supposed to be a legitimate deposit to another account to avoid a potential unauthorized withdraw. |
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This company has been ripping me off since July 2011. When I was first shopping for credit card processing a fellow business owner gave me their information, saying she started working with them, that they have extremely low fees, and also they give 5% profits to a charitable organization of my choosing. I decided to go ahead and speak with a rep of theirs. This rep (Kristy) sent me over a sample of their contract so that I could familiarize myself with it & get back to her when I was ready. I mulled over the contract piece by piece, compared their fees to other companies, looked into their practices within the contract, as well as cancellation fees. The sample contract I was sent claimed that there were no cancellation fees, if I ever decided to term my contract with them I could do so with no penalties. I then checked them out with the BBB, they actually have an A+ rating with the BBB, which I don't see how, unless they paid for it. 3 months after signing up I noticed my monthly charges were about 40% more than they should be. The company claimed the more cards I processed the lower my monthly fees would be, when in all actuality the more cards I ran through the more they charged me. It was going up from $20, to $40, to $80 per month. I called the company to find out they reason, for which they had no explanation that coincided with their contract. I told them to cancel my account & was then informed I was going to be charged a $500 cancel fee, seeing as my contract was for 3 years. I then pulled my signed copy & noticed that it was different from the sample copy I was sent when considering, which of course i could do nothing about seeing as I signed it assuming it was the same. Every single page looked exactly the same, they managed to squeeze in the cancellation fees in a tiny paragraph right in the middle of insignificant information that was on the sample. I have been fighting to get my money back from them for months.
They offered to close my account with no cancellation fees in July, after my first report to BBB, I accepted their offer. To this day, 2 months later my account is still not closed & the company is still charging me.
DO NOT SIGN ANYTHING WITH THE COMPANY. THEY ARE FRAUDS. THEY ARE UNETHICAL, IMMORAL, AND A BUNCH OF CHEATS!!! |
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