Merchant Lynx Services review: don't fall for the lies by omission 40

Run run away from Merchant Lynx. They took unauthorized money from me as well. The merchant company I was using got taken over by merchant lynx. They added 3 additional $20 charges a month..$60 extra a month. It took me 8 months to realize this as they put different company names to the charges so I had 1 from them and 2 from 2 other companies. Then i tried to close it and they took almost 30 days to get me the paperwork to close it. Then it's supposed to take 30 days to close but the shut it off early. Then they charged me a $500 termination fee which was never something that was on my contract... which by the way was never from merchant lynx since I was not told that my company was being taken over. I only had a signed contract with my previous company and it had no early termination fees. If you call and talk with them they act like the are helping you but they never resolve anything. Basically they took almost $1000 from me over 8 months that I should never have been charged. I'm a very small business and things like these aren't easy to recover. Please do not use Merchant Lynx. I've seen multiple complaints from others with similar issues. Please stay away from this company for your sake.

lair scam and fault make you sign up for the contract and let you hang never hepl.

They stole money from my account for 2 years after termination of the contract. They did not return what they stole with the excuse they don't keep records for more than 9 months. THIEFS.

Worst company I've ever had to deal with.What can you tell if even the customer service manager Gina Beckham is not returning complaint customer phone calls for the weeks! Every year repeatedly I have to get involved in the situations when they unauthorizedly debiting my business bank account. It hours on the phone and months to get my money back.DO NOT DEAL WITH THIS COMPONY!

they are cheats, notice there is no way to contact the sales rep after they rope you in... oh and one of the employee keep coping me on their internal emails to another person with my name... that's how I saw this complaint board.

agree,

This is unbelievable! If I only did some checking, real checking, before I listened to this agent, I will not be a victim of Merchants Lynx. After several times of being assured of saving a lot of money, I entertained the idea of meeting with the agent and decided to switch to them. Lo and Behold when I see unexplained charges on my checking account, I knew I made a mistake. First of all, it is so difficult to call them because the waiting time always is a very long wait. I tried to call the agent and will not return my call. Today, I called FDGL to ask what is this $223.26 charges on my bank account. They told me it is $49.95 reantal fee plus monthly sales taxes for the remainder of the year. Merchant Lynx charges for the month of March 2011 is almost $200 more than my previous credit card processing company charges. After reading a lot of the testimonials here, I am now ready to hire a lawyer to guide me in cancelling my contract with them and lease contract with FDGL.../Bloomfield, NJ 07003

Never go under contract with merchant lynx. They will only trick you. I had them as merchant service for more than 4 years because I was under their contract. First, I signed three year contract, and after about three month signing they raised the rate. They raised the rates more than 10 times during three year contract. Then when the contract was over three years, I call to terminate the contract but they had assigned me with the credit card machine company for four years instead of three years and they ask us to pay termination fee of $500. Crazy, huh, but that's not all. Merchant Lynx automatically renewd the contract so even when the equipment company's contract has been expired, I need to pay the termination fee of $300 to Merchant Lynx. When I had called them to terminate the contract after three years they said that the account will be serviced monthly if I don't sign another contract, so I waited another year for the equipment company's contract to be over, instead of paying $500 termination fee. Now, I've call to terminate the service and they are saying totally different thing that my account was not serviced monthly and if I wanted to terminate I'll need to pay $200 termination fee plus $100 a supply guarantee fee(which I never knew about). This is so wrong. Their rates are high, customer service is so poor, and they need go out of business.

They are crooks with nothing better to do than call repeatedly and harass you. i run my own business and i don't have time to run back and forth to the phone every thirty seconds. So the phone rings i crawl out from under the dash board of the call I am working on I run to the phone only to hear that its some other pin head who couldn't get a real job do to lack of any skill what so ever trying to pitch me a new credit card proceser. I wish that there was a law protecting business from this crap. No matter how many times you request to be taken off there call list all you just get more and more calls.

I ended my 4 year contract I got trapped in with these crimainals in March, 2010. They lied about everything. All I've read in the previous comments is true. I could never get confirmation of the contract I signed or of termination. No fees were being deducted since I stopped doing business with them when my contract ended, filed paperwork and returned the terminal I was supposed to own so I thought their harassment was over. Then on 12/30/10 after eight months I get a deduction from my account for an annual fee of $139 for LAST YEAR!. A representative siad I owed it becuase I had the terminal for two months in 2010 so I owe for the whole year. I'm contacting the state attorney general's office here in CT. If you are thinking of signing with these people, DON'T. By the way, I have two letters here from lawyers regarding class action suits against this compnay. That should tell you something.

Keep breaking the machine its under warranty

I'm yet another victim of the completely outrageously disgusting business practices. If they put as much effort into customer service as they did in their fancy offices and lawyer fees for ridiculous contracts, maybe they'd have a few satisfied customers. I've been wanting to dump them for 2 years and haven't been able to figure out how without being raped financially. Salesman misprepresented fees, sales office won't return calls, service number can't even find my account, hold forever on phone and get bounced around and end up at the same place you started an hour before. Bottom line, its going to cost me over $2000 to get out of the contract because of the 4 year "lease" of the equipment at $65/month whether I use it or not. So I'll pay over 3500 for a machine that I won't even use for 2 of the years, can't be used by any other merchant service provider, and I won't even own at the end. The machine cost about 800 to buy it! And of course, they won't agree to change my equipment even though I pay another $10/month for a "warranty." And this doesn't count the high rates and extra charges they come up with every month. I'm taking the hit just to get the heck away from them. As a new business owner, we didn't know --HARD LESSON TO LEARN IN THESE ECONOMIC TIMES. BEWARE -- AND RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN AS SOON AS YOU HEAR THEIR NAME! TOTAL CROOKS!

Same thing here they are f***** crocks.

I had the same thing happen. I was told I would save half but it ended up being higher. I did not initial the part of the lease that says it is non-cancelable. I'm hoping to get out of it fut FDGL says got to talk to Merchant Lynx and vise versa. I just need to find a way for them to stop taking money out of my account

j powell... you are a disgruntled ex employee that didnt quit... you were fired for unprofessionalism.
I (Kyle Salone) was never fired from Merchant Lynx and we have thousands of happy merchants.

I am sorry, to all merchants that I may have set the appointments for the lies the reps told you I had no idea and left the company after one week, the chandler office is worse the manager Kyle has been fired twice then re-hired and to this date six people have left, not only do they fraud merchants also emp-loyees, please file with the f.t.c as we have all done.the name of the company is really ground hog productions not even honest enough to use a real name

These folks are CROOKS! They lie to get your business! Don't beleive a word they say .. trust me you will pay more, get less and be fummed every time you have speak with them .. that is if you speak with them .. most of my experience has been leaving messages which they rarely return... I have lost so much money dealing with these folks its funny plus being charged double every month for 7 months for that silly GA Warranty Fee which they don't tell you is non cancelable, lets see if I can really still order machine tape once my service cancellation has been finilized, I bet not... In short find yourself another company to deal with, but be careful most of the processors out there are shisters!

Feel for you. Your story is the same as mine, except the lease we never discussed was for $100 a month for 48 months for a machine that retails for $159. What kind of idiot would knowingly agree to that. Merchant Lynx has finally left me alone. Here's what I did... first, freeze or close your checking account so they can no longer "take" your money. They'll get nasty, but once the money dries up they know you are serious. Second, spend a hundred buck or so and have your lawyer send them a letter that says their contract was fraudulently misrepresented and demand a refund of all money owed. Here in NJ we are fortunate to have a very tough Consumer Fraud Act which allows for treble damages and all attorney's fees to be awarded from companies perpetrating frauds like this. After I got my attorney involved, they stopped harassing me. They did send a collection agency after me, but once I told them that the charges were disputed and we were represented by council, they gave up too.
I don't know if I've heard the last of them yet for sure, but it has been months since they've bothered me, so I'm pretty sure they gave up when they realized the fight wasn't worth it and they would loose in the end.
Fight them back.

Same old story, but I'm one of there victim too.*&^^%%$$@**^^%%$g!

Worst company I've ever had to deal with. After two months of calling and repeated complaints with no call backs, I fianlly had the customer service rep hang up on me! Our contract said no debit card fees instead they were double charging us on ever one. There were tons of other charges that were waved in the contract, all of which showed up on our statements. After talking to our previous merchant processor and bank (PNC) we decided to change our bank accounts and let them try to contact us. PNC has been great and if nothing else at least you can talk to someone.

I have a similar problem with them. Who should I contact? They changed the contract after I signed. When I called them, they said the contract copy that I have is not valid to them. really need help to resolve this problem.

I forgot to add that we have filed complaints with the BBB both in NJ and NY.

Enough complaints - it's time to do something about these scam artists! We also were scammed by Merchant Lynx/First Data - we live in NJ. Last week on Channel 7 News there was a story regarding local deli owners who were scammed also but by another 2 companies. Apparently there's more than one company that does this or maybe they're all one in the same functioning under different alias. We need to all get together and make a formal complaint to either the Attorney General Office or someone in authority. This is crazy what's going on and how they are robbing from small "mom and pop" stores who are just trying to make ends meet. The scammers actually were automatically withdrawing money from our business account. We called the sales rep repeatedly and of course he mysteriously disappeared and never returned a call. We called both companies and they inturn sent us "alledged" copies of our signatures and initials (none of which were ours and we never saw or signed any lease contracts). THEY MUST BE STOPPED!

Sorry I never finished my complaint. First Data filled in 4 years on a 2 year lease and then got into my account multiple times and took out unauthorised amounts of money. This went on for 2 years before anything was done. I was persistent in getting help. The lesson learned in never sign a contract without a layer present.

I had a company do the same exact thing to me. They are called First Data Global Lease. I would never sign up for a credit machine ever again in my life. They are all crooks!

Spoke too soon. I just got a letter from a collection agency demanding $3, 768.00 for Merchant Lynx Services. For a $250 credit card terminal that I used exactly one day!
These people are the ### of the industry. How can this company continue to perpetrate fraud on small businesses and not get in trouble for it? Unbelievable.

We were promised 2 credit card terminals with pin pads and a check processing scanner... along with a full supply of paper and consumables, and the rep promised he'd be there by Friday... after a week and a half and 3 phone calls, a guy showed up without an appointment with ONE machine, no pin pads, no check scanner and no supplies and said he's be back later in the week with the rest of our stuff. We never saw him again.
TrooperJohn... did they snake you into a LEASE for $200 a month for FOUR YEARS for a machine you can BUY brand new for $250?

Knock on wood, so far, after I hired a lawyer and made them realize I wasn't going to cave to their threats, they seem to have disappeared. There was about $150 in bogus charges that we never got back from them, but I guess that's the price I pay for being so gullible to begin with.

Beware of this company they make there money by cheating merchants. From the first day when you are installed try calling there helpdesk or anyone for that matter. You will get nothing but attitude. The only good thing they had was the gentlman that came out to install the terminal he was very polite and made us fell very comfurtable with our decisions until we had questions about statement and thats when the sh-- hit the fan. I know a few merchants that use to do business with this company and they all say the same thing Installer was GREAT! but after that its all down hill.

i have closed my bank account and get a new merchant account with no contract they been billing me but i try to ignore them i'll post latest news to everyone.

Thanks for the tip. Actually, they have totally stopped bugging me. I think once they realized I wasn't going to let them rip me off without a fight, they decided to move onto the next sucker. I still have their terminal too... haha.
But I will keep this number handy in case they do crawl out from the rock again.
D

Merchant Lynx Services is an ISO for Wells Fargo Bank [protected]) Call the bank and file a complaint about Merchant Lynx Services. Wells Fargo will help you get your money back as they take these complaints very seriously and they receive a lot of them about Merchant Lynx Services.

First, I froze, then closed, my checking account so they could no longer draft money automatically. Then, I had my attorney review the contract and send them a letter stating that the contract was willfully misrepresented and they were in violation of the NJ Consumer Fraud Act. They called here a couple times and sent from threatening letters, but each time we simply replied that we were represented by an attorney and all inquiries should go to them, since we considered this a case of criminal fraud. My bank actually charged back most of the charges that had been automatically deducted. They are no longer bothering us, but I don't know if more crap will be coming. After seeing all the complaints on the internet about them, it is obvious they are a total scam outfit and this is normal operating procedure for them. My lawyer's take is once they see they are in for a real fight, they won't bother, as it is easier just to find another victim, plus the light shone on them by a court case would be very unwelcome.
So, that would be my best advice. Spend a couple hundred bucks and hire a lawyer to represent your interests.
BTW, I still have the terminal they were supposed to "give" me. I haven't used it, or their processing service. It's in a box waiting for them to come get it. It can sit here until hell freezes, for all I care.

OMG! These people need to be stopped. We are currently faced with the same situation. The rep actually had my husband sign a contract but neglected to fill in all the boxes of information until after it was signed. We called him 100 times and he never returned our calls. We have since tried to cancel with Merchant Lynx and First Data and they tell us we're in a noncancellable lease agreeement. THAT IS A LIE! The word lease agreement was never mentioned.

Can anyone tell us how to resolve this issue? I have filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau but so far no resolution.

Please help.

I had the same experience. The Rep from Merchant Lynx never said anything about a lease or endless payments and charges. We already owned a terminal and when I asked if we could use it, she told us "Don't worry, we are going to give you all new equipment." They promised us 2 terminals and a check scanner. They showed up 2 weeks late with one machine, then I got a letter telling me I had committed to a 4 year lease at $100 per month! For a machine I could buy for under $200. When I called to complain, I was threatened with a lawsuit and a lean against my property. The sales manager told me the contract I had signed was iron clad and non-cancelable and he knew because he had to sue one or 2 clients every month! What a rip off outfit!
I contacted a lawyer, had to freeze and eventually close my checking account because of all the charges they were taking, and stopped using the machine and service immediately. Now I'm getting threatening collection letters from all kinds of different companies I never heard of. The sales manager has called my lawyer and been abusive and very nasty with the staff there.
My bank was helpful in charging back several of the disputed charges. So far I am only out about $130, but this isn't over.
This is a bad news, fraudulent, rip off company that should be avoided at all costs. Don't believe a word they say!
Like everyone here has said, the sale people are slick and make it sound like a great deal. I have been in business over 30 years and didn't consider myself a sucker by any means, but these people are good at what they do... sucker people into bad contracts with lies and deception.

My tale of woe is just about the same. The sales person told me how much money Merchant Lynx Services was going to save me but never disclosed that If I didn't meet a quota for a particular credit card I would be charged and at any point if they feel that a charge might be contested they can hold the funds as long as they want. I have not had even 1 chargeback and they still insist to hold funds at their discretion. This has caused countless charges from my bank since holding back funds caused my accounts to be overdrawn. In today’s business climate cash flow is critical and Merchant Lynx Service s and I Payment make it impossible to plan your finances since at any time they can cut off that much needed cash flow. Please spread the word that Merchant Lynx Services and I Payment is the absolute WORSE credit card clearing company that exists. They do not disclose all the information at time of signing the contract and then tell you to read the fine print when you have an issue.

The same situation happened to our Company, only we have 11 studios that we used their service for. We kept our lease for the agreed contract term of 4 years.
Well for starters for 11 machines it cost us over $28, 000.00...and when we did try to cancel the contract AFTER the 4 year period we were still charged $ 350.00 x11 times to cancel. We returned the machines and they still have not closed out all the accounts, and they posted a bad credit reporting on our business as well as our personal. And just this week another rep from Merchant Lynx came into our business and tried to regain our business again by making the very same promises they did the first time. They even "promised" to reimburse us
$ 2, 000.00 for erronous charges they took when they had our business before. Since we were taken so badly with their lease contract we have since purchased all 11 of our machines, I informed the new rep of this and she proceeded to tell me that my machines were not in compliance with PCI standards and I was going to have to replace all my machines anyway. I immediatly researched what she had told me and found that we are in complete compliance with PCI and she told me an out and out lie about that. I asked her how she could figure we would come out cheaper if we leased the machines again paying another $ 28, 000.00 over the 48 month lease. I asked her why I could not have my own machines and get the same rate she was "promising" me now. She said she could only offer the lower rate if I agreed to lease the machines again for 48 months. I am absolutly enraged at this point that another rep would even come into our business and present such a ludicrest deal that we were ripped off on just two years before. She "promised" me the business pratices and standards of Merchant Lynx had changed and they had changed all their management personnel. Upon pulling my old records and researching on my own I found the very same President, the same names as all my previous paperwork, so again she lied about that as well. She had all 11 contracts written up and ready for my signature before she had even finalized her attempt to regain our business. She advised me that if I did not sign the contracts that day her boss would be very upset with her when she went back to work. I told her I would never sign a contract again without researching everything first ( I learned a very hard and expensive lesson the first time), she continued to harass myself and my husband by phone and by stopping in our business for two weeks.
Beware Consumers...I do not beleive their business pratices or standards have changed.

I had the same experience. I am currently trying to get names together to fight this. They lie, cheat and steal. My rep, Leo Inowlocki, came in to my business and told me how much money he can save me. I was processing credit cards for 14 years and owned a machine. He told me the machine I had could not be used. He looked me right in the eye and said " don't worry there is no charge for the machine". From the no charge machine he got me for $69.95 plus tax, $10.00 for insurance and other hidden fees for 48 months. This machine can be bought online for as low as $89.95. I now have a collections company calling me. I told them about this fraud. I wrote the Better Business Bureau, Attorney General and the Federal Trade Commission. BBB and the Attorney General will not help. I am still waiting for the Federal Trade Commission. I have been posting complaints on every site I can find. Please file complaints with the BBB, Attorney General and Federal Trade Commission. The more complaints the better. Please contact me at JB515@aol.com. We can't let them get away with this.

The same happened to me ! My husband was away and came back on the day they were to initiate the system and he stopped them dead in their tracks after reading the contracts fine print. THEY LIE LIE LIE! Even though we didn't finish with the start up, and called to reject the contract, the company went ahead and charged us for months, and months, and I am still on the phone with them almost every day trying to get my money back (close to $400 in 3 months) for something I didn't even buy! They promise the money is being processed and will be sent, but as soon as they send a piddley amount back... they add a new charge. I have spoken to over 12 reps and no one gets it right- and the supervisors are never available, and they never call you back so ... don't hold your breath. Don't use this company!

The same thing happened to me. Also read the fine print. After you pay all of the lease payments, you have to buy the equipment - which is 10% minimum . So you are paying another $300+ on top of what you have paid. I got them to make an amendment saying that I could buy the machine outright for $1. Cavet - only if I stay with MLS. Won't happen because I am changing to another credit card system tomorrow. Plus, each month they charge a fee for this, a fee for that. Yeah, I'm screwed with the equipment and I feel stupid. But, I refuse to keep doing business with them. Let's all go to whatever websites we can go to to let people know about this company. They are so slick in their presentation. They make me sick! Oh well, what goes around, comes around.

i was trap in the same situation i wish they burn in hell i am piss