Call for Artists, Making Money at Juried Art Fairs, Craft Shows and Festivals
Warning! Do not use TransFirst Merchant processing!
I want to warn other artists about Transfirst Merchant processing company based on my own experience.
Following is the letter I sent to them to dispute the charges they had made. This morning I received a call telling me that they would refund the incorrectly debited monthly fees, but not the $295 early termination fee that they charged, though I had never agreed to a 3-year contract.
TransFirst LLC
3131 S. Vaughn Way #350
Aurora, Colorado 80014
Fax: 303.482.8096
Dear Sir or Madam,
I have had a seasonal merchant account with TransFirst since October 2008. Unfortunately, your firm has been debiting a monthly fee instead of the twice-annual seasonal fee I had agreed to. This incorrect debiting has resulted in numerous overdraft charges on my bank account, which I have paid. I brought the errors to the attention of one of your representatives by telephone and she refunded the incorrectly charged amounts. I discussed cancelling my account at that time. Nancy Nguyen emailed me a closure form that included an early termination fee. I questioned that, and she claimed I had a three-year contract. I told her I did not recall committing to a time period of any kind, and would not have done so, so she faxed me my application paperwork on file in your office.
When I received the paperwork, I noted that there was a discrepancy between what she faxed me and the original application that I signed. The final four pages (Merchant Card Processing Agreement) were not included with the papers that I signed. If you examine the paperwork, you will see that the final four pages do not have the fax headers found on the previous pages nor do they carry my signature or initials. I sent another email to Ms. Nguyen with this information and the statement that I was therefore not bound by the Agreement or the early termination fee. She replied “not a problem.” (See attached email string).
After this, I was charged incorrectly again for the months of June and July. I decided to use the account for an art fair on August 15, and then cancelled the account because of the repeated errors in fees charged. I faxed the closure form to your office, and also sent an email on 8/24/09 to Nancy Nguyen letting her know of my account cancellation and requesting reimbursement of the two months’ fees that had been incorrectly debited. I watched my bank account for the reimbursement, and was stunned to instead see a debit from your company for $295 on 9/4/09 and another for $56.35 on 9/10/09. I had the assurance in that email from Nancy that I was not bound by the early termination fee aspect of the application if I cancelled my account, and had crossed out the fee on the closure form before I signed and faxed it.
Therefore I am claiming reimbursement of the $126.28 in incorrectly charged monthly fees and the $295 in incorrectly charged early termination fees. Please send me a check for $421.28 at the address below. I have closed my bank account to insure there will be no further charges by your company.
Anyone have any ideas how I can get them to reimburse me? $295 was most of my bank account at the time. I'm sure legal fees would be far more than they owe me.
I realize I'll probably never win against a large company like this, but I hope I can help someone else from having a similar experience. By the way, my bank referred me to them . . .
Following is the letter I sent to them to dispute the charges they had made. This morning I received a call telling me that they would refund the incorrectly debited monthly fees, but not the $295 early termination fee that they charged, though I had never agreed to a 3-year contract.
TransFirst LLC
3131 S. Vaughn Way #350
Aurora, Colorado 80014
Fax: 303.482.8096
Dear Sir or Madam,
I have had a seasonal merchant account with TransFirst since October 2008. Unfortunately, your firm has been debiting a monthly fee instead of the twice-annual seasonal fee I had agreed to. This incorrect debiting has resulted in numerous overdraft charges on my bank account, which I have paid. I brought the errors to the attention of one of your representatives by telephone and she refunded the incorrectly charged amounts. I discussed cancelling my account at that time. Nancy Nguyen emailed me a closure form that included an early termination fee. I questioned that, and she claimed I had a three-year contract. I told her I did not recall committing to a time period of any kind, and would not have done so, so she faxed me my application paperwork on file in your office.
When I received the paperwork, I noted that there was a discrepancy between what she faxed me and the original application that I signed. The final four pages (Merchant Card Processing Agreement) were not included with the papers that I signed. If you examine the paperwork, you will see that the final four pages do not have the fax headers found on the previous pages nor do they carry my signature or initials. I sent another email to Ms. Nguyen with this information and the statement that I was therefore not bound by the Agreement or the early termination fee. She replied “not a problem.” (See attached email string).
After this, I was charged incorrectly again for the months of June and July. I decided to use the account for an art fair on August 15, and then cancelled the account because of the repeated errors in fees charged. I faxed the closure form to your office, and also sent an email on 8/24/09 to Nancy Nguyen letting her know of my account cancellation and requesting reimbursement of the two months’ fees that had been incorrectly debited. I watched my bank account for the reimbursement, and was stunned to instead see a debit from your company for $295 on 9/4/09 and another for $56.35 on 9/10/09. I had the assurance in that email from Nancy that I was not bound by the early termination fee aspect of the application if I cancelled my account, and had crossed out the fee on the closure form before I signed and faxed it.
Therefore I am claiming reimbursement of the $126.28 in incorrectly charged monthly fees and the $295 in incorrectly charged early termination fees. Please send me a check for $421.28 at the address below. I have closed my bank account to insure there will be no further charges by your company.
Anyone have any ideas how I can get them to reimburse me? $295 was most of my bank account at the time. I'm sure legal fees would be far more than they owe me.
I realize I'll probably never win against a large company like this, but I hope I can help someone else from having a similar experience. By the way, my bank referred me to them . . .
Tags: TransFirst, card, credit, merchant
Replies are closed for this discussion.
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Michelle Sholund on -
I hope this post does help others. It is really important to shop around. What you have outlined is exactly why I have and never will go with a bank for a merchant account. They have no idea what it is like for a person who runs an art/craft business - all they see is small business and the go full steam ahead. I have been working with 1st National Processing - a company which caters to artists and craft persons as well as small retail businesses - and haven't had an issue.
I do hope you are able to get things resolved. - Michelle -
-
Permalink Reply by Marguerite McGrath on -
File a claim in small claims court where you live. That will not cost you much and you can recover your filing fees in the judgement. Find out who in the company is responsible for accepting service and send them notice of the suit via certified mail, return receipt. They can spend the money to send someone to respond to your suit (and lose) or they can ignore you and you will win a default judgement. You should then contact the company, tell them you have a judgement against them (I would use the certified mail, rr again) and that you will pursue every legal option to collect the debt, including filing liens on any property they have and freezing any bank accounts they have.
To collect on that judgement, you can contact the attorney general for the state where they live and request assistance in collecting your judgement. They should be able to give you advice. Some of the things you can do with a default judgement is to go on every public forum you can find and post that you have a judgement outstanding against this company and make sure you notify the banking oversight department of the state where they are chartered that you have an outstanding judgement against this company.
Good luck -
-
Permalink Reply by Amy Atkinson on -
Wow!! You certainly know your legal rights. I think I may just follow your advice, if for no other reason than to let them know they can't get away with being unethical.
Thank you!
Marguerite McGrath said:File a claim in small claims court where you live. That will not cost you much and you can recover your filing fees in the judgement. Find out who in the company is responsible for accepting service and send them notice of the suit via certified mail, return receipt. They can spend the money to send someone to respond to your suit (and lose) or they can ignore you and you will win a default judgement. You should then contact the company, tell them you have a judgement against them (I would use the certified mail, rr again) and that you will pursue every legal option to collect the debt, including filing liens on any property they have and freezing any bank accounts they have.
To collect on that judgement, you can contact the attorney general for the state where they live and request assistance in collecting your judgement. They should be able to give you advice. Some of the things you can do with a default judgement is to go on every public forum you can find and post that you have a judgement outstanding against this company and make sure you notify the banking oversight department of the state where they are chartered that you have an outstanding judgement against this company.
Good luck -
-
Permalink Reply by Chris Hoyt on -
Amy,
I agree that you should persue it in small claims court. Not enough people know of that option.
But now the big question. What made you decide to go with them in the first place? What did they do to entice you? Low fees? A "free" terminal?
If you Google Credit Card Processors you'll probably get a hundred thousand hits. These are the new "used car salesmen". They will tell us anything we want to hear in order to get us to sign up. Most work out of a spare bedroom in their house. They take our money, assign us to a bank for processing, and collect a commission either on sales of terminals or from the bank they place people with.
I wouldn't be surprised if Ms "Nguyen" isn't the guy's wife. Or the owner of the company herself.
I also believe they gave you only part of the actual contract to sign. The "conviently" left out the part where you have a locked in contract. I have heard of this happening before. And you can have a hard time trying to get out of the contract. They will take as much money as they can from your bank account. A long time ago I was with a processor out of Florida. They were taking "fees" on a regular basis. I actually had to close the bank account so they couldn't take any more money from me!
Yes, take them to court! -
-
Permalink Reply by Juli Adams on -
I just dumped Wells Fargo because they suddenly no longer support my Nurit 8000 Visa/MC machine. (No one told me this, it just stopped working) So now I have to lease another machine for $48 a month. Or buy a new machine at $600 (double what my new provider is charging).
Add that to the $60 they are charging me per month (and this charge is for a month with no sales). Then they said that I would have to pay a $500 penalty to get out of my contract.
Awesome.
So I told them that the $500 is a savings as I would end up paying them $800 if I waited out the contract. I also told them that I would post this information and do my best to spread the word that the way they do business is to rely on people not knowing any better.
I'm going with 1st National Processing. -
-
Permalink Reply by Patty on
-
I would also file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau to help people avoid them in future- I still check to see what they have to say about a company before going with them-
-
-
Permalink Reply by Amy Atkinson on
-
I thought I'd post an update to this issue:
After reading this thread, a non-member of this forum located my email address and told me he was also having trouble with TransFirst. He said that he had filed a claim with the Better Business Bureau of Denver (close to where TransFirst is located) and that TransFirst had subsequently contacted him about his complaint. Since filing a claim costs nothing, I did that, too.
I filed the claim online on Tuesday 11/24, using essentially the same letter I posted here. On Wednesday 11/25 I got a call from a TransFirst employee asking me to forward her the email in which their employee had responded "no problem" when I told her I was not bound by the early termination fee. I emailed that to her over the Thanksgiving weekend, and yesterday (Monday 11/30) I received a call from the employee telling me that they were refunding all the disputed funds!!! I should see a check within two weeks.
So, use the Better Business Bureau. If the business is legit and wants to keep a good rating with the BBB, they may respond and try to resolve things to everyone's satisfaction. -
-
Permalink Reply by Connie Mettler on -
Good for you! Thanks for supporting 1nbCard - their company has been a sponsor of this site since it was first conceived. It is great to see their faith in us paying off.
Juli Adams said:I just dumped Wells Fargo because they suddenly no longer support my Nurit 8000 Visa/MC machine. (No one told me this, it just stopped working) So now I have to lease another machine for $48 a month. Or buy a new machine at $600 (double what my new provider is charging).
Add that to the $60 they are charging me per month (and this charge is for a month with no sales). Then they said that I would have to pay a $500 penalty to get out of my contract.
Awesome.
So I told them that the $500 is a savings as I would end up paying them $800 if I waited out the contract. I also told them that I would post this information and do my best to spread the word that the way they do business is to rely on people not knowing any better.
I'm going with 1st National Processing. -
-
Permalink Reply by Pauline Ross on -
This sounds exactly like what I experienced in 1995. It could of well been the same company but it was out of Florida back then, "The Commonwealth". It took me MONTHS of phone calls to the cc service and calling my bank every day. They failed to reimburse me for any charges after I cancelled them! It was a nightmare. I lost about $600 with this kind of BS! I felt like I was taken for a ride as a new business back then and abused monetarily. Have been extra cautious ever since that experience. I think if I had cancelled my business checking account right away, that might have saved the monetary loss. You just cant trust big financial businesses.
-
-
Permalink Reply by Christine Heisler on -
Sorry to hear about your troubles. Without going into a long story about it, I basically had a very similar experience with going through Chase for my merchant account. I was bullied, lied to and charged exorbitant fees and had no recourse finally other than to take all of our accounts out of the bank after canceling my merchant account. I'm out quite a lot of money, but I'm smarter now... I hope.
Please shop carefully for a merchant processing company.
Christine -
-
Permalink Reply by Libby Hintz on -
So who do you use now? I've spent a lot of time doing research on the internet, reading about merchant accounts, hidden fees, free machines vs. not free machines and reading all these threads about credit card machines etc. as I'm in the market for one. I believe I'm way more educated this week than I was last week when I started researching.
Are there any questions that anyone out there feels are important to ask that you wish you had the first time around?
Thanks for any and all input! Libby -
-
Permalink Reply by Connie Mettler on
-
Libby, there are two merchants who have built their business around art fair artists, as a result, they have fair fees, excellent service and understand our business. If you polled the people on this site their names would come up over and over again. Make it easy on yourself, choose one of them and sleep well at night and put your brainpower into making some fabulous art :)
Michael DiGiovanni - 1nbcard.com and Guy McDonald - Teamac.com -- great guys
Libby Hintz said:So who do you use now? I've spent a lot of time doing research on the internet, reading about merchant accounts, hidden fees, free machines vs. not free machines and reading all these threads about credit card machines etc. as I'm in the market for one. I believe I'm way more educated this week than I was last week when I started researching.
Are there any questions that anyone out there feels are important to ask that you wish you had the first time around?
Thanks for any and all input! Libby -
Free Email Updates!
Click for Art Fair Insiders Blog updates automatically by EMAIL (free)!
SPECIAL OFFER:
Ready to Make Money at Art Fairs?
Here are answers from Connie Mettler, Publisher of ArtFairInsiders.com: Special Report I:
17 Secrets to Success at Art Fairs and
Special Report II: Getting Into Art Fairs - 20 Questions Answered
Download these ebooks now in a special package deal: Only $24.95!
For more information...
© 2012 Created by Connie Mettler.
