First Data Restaurant POS reviews

A little over 5 years ago we opened a new business, Wine Bar Restaurant in Mount Vernon, Ohio. After about one year we were approached by Merchant Services about switching to them and saving BIG money for our credit card transaction fees. They use First Data as the equipment provider, and quickly slipped a LEASE AGREEMENT past us without filling in the term of the lease. YES, they left it blank. We didn't realize at the time that the $216 per month we were being charged for the equipment would tally up to over $10, 000 in 48 months. We were so busy running our business that we just didn't pay any attention to the automatic withdraws from our business accounts.

Well, after nearly 3 years past things settled down and I started to look very closely at expenses. We quickly discovered that we're paying WAY too much for credit card fees, and found another company and switched our service. Almost another year goes by and one day I'm looking at bank statements and noticed that we were still making payments directly to First Data for equipment we hadn't used in nearly a year.

I IMMEDIATELY contacted them and stopped payment, and was quickly told that we could NOT stop the lease for any reason. Not if we had closed our doors, passed away, switched to a better company, or just flat didn't have the money to pay it. The instant we signed the lease agreement we were locked in for $216 for 48 month, NON-NEGOTIABLE for any reason.

I told First Data that our original contract was blank where it showed the lease term. They didn't care. I also told them that the salesperson did NOT disclose the specifics of the lease term to us. First Data very quickly told us that they were NOT affiliated with Merchant Services, and that our lease was a completely separate transaction. Instead of coming to some sort of settlement with us, they had their attorney trash our credit and take us to collections. I even told him on several conversations that our contract was blank where the lease term was supposed to be filled in. He didn't care one bit. I also told him that the salesman did NOT disclose the specifics of the lease, nor did they offer to sell us the equipment instead for around $400 instead of locking us into a binding contract for over $10, 000.

The real rip-off here is non-disclosure from the salesman who sold us the original service. They should be REQUIRED to tell the customer that you can purchase the equipment for about $199 to 249 for each business. In our case we had two businesses when we switched. For just two months of lease payments we could have went out and purchased the exact same equipment that they were charging us over $10, 000 for!!