Back in Feb of 2010, we were approached by a rep, Clinton Thompson, from Icon to have our small business use their credit card services.Since our contract with Fifth Bank was almost completed, we were ready to shop around for a good rate. Clinton had me fax our statements to him and he promised us that he could save us a great deal of money by giving us a great rate.He also said that since we still had a few more months left with fifth bank, that they would reimburse us the $295 early termination fee.
After getting my first statement in March, I realized that they charged us at least double the amount that they promised and had not reimbursed us the $295 from fifth bank.After many phone calls and emails, they apologized and said they would reimburse us for both along with an extra $20 that Fifth Bank charged us from Icon not telling them we were coming on board to them. (Icon promised me that they would "Take care" of all paper work in the transition from fifth bank to them)
When the May statement came, I saw that they charged us even more than before and there was still no reimbursement. After again of many calls and emails, they used the excuse that someone was fired and the girl that handles their billing, Kristen, was off getting married.Again they promised to reimburse me for March and April and would fix the rate for upcoming months. When I got the May statement in June, guess what? Not only did the rate not change and I not get any reimbursements, now they had set us up into 2 accounts which meant double statement fees, batch fees,card fees and access fees.
This time we took no for an answer when we asked to speak to the president, Sean or Brian. One of them got on the phone and was very abrupt and said there was nothing they could do since they were a result of high rates of the visa and mastercard people themselves.This of course was not true since we've been using credit card services since we've been in business for 19 years and never had charges like these. Plus the fact that they promised us that our charges would be lower, not higher if we joined their company. After much arguing with Sean, Peter, Will (could have been the same person for all we know), they again promised us reimbursements.
This time, we did not wait a full month. When after 2 weeks of seeing nothing changing, with the advice of our bank, we had to close our checking account and open a new one and cut our losses.We have lost a total of $3915.00 which is about half of what our normal visa charges have been on average.This of course doesn't include the hassle and mental anguish they have caused our company.We told them if we didn't get reimbursed by check from them that we would seek legal means. We haven't had a chance to do so until now but will certainly put all efforts into this project to not only get our money back, but to try to stop them from running such an unethical business and have other small businesses like ourselves, get suckered into their bad, evil practices. I had chills when I went online and googled their name and read all the horrible things they have done to other businesses. I just wish I had done this before signing with them! I feel so disgusted with myself that I allowed this to happen to my business!! Live and learn!!
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