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I am a small business owner in Surrey, BC Canada. 2 sales reps approached me and signed me up with this CollectivePOS in mid Feb 2011. They claimed they offer lifetime warranty for the terminal but they do not own the terminals. They also advertise 'lease to own' that's also false. They only process debit transactions, not VISA/MC/AMEX as they claim or advertise. Once I signed the contract(s) they denied that they have anything to do with the other 2 companies they hooked me up with. They are crooks!
They also added additional monthly charges by altering my contract with them after I signed it, and it took me forever to get them to correct this and other so called 'billing errors'. For example they charged me $5 a month for an imprinter, which I never received. I call them almost everyday, for exactly 29 days. The person handling my case became either 'busy' or 'out on lunch' all the time after I sent in my request for a refund.
The contract they presented me was actually a 3-in-one contract, with missing pages! Not all the terms and conditions were on the contracts I signed, and when I confronted them about this they just said 'You signed the contract, there is nothing we can do'.
Once signed up with Collective POS I was also hooked with 2 other companies (Northern Leasing & Elavon), that both had hundreds of thousands of complains filed against them as well as a class action lawsuit lodged against this Northern Leasing company in New York.
I was trying to cancel my contract with them then I was told that I will be charged for $300 from CollectivePOS, $195 from Elavon, and I can't even cancel the lease agreement with Northern Leasing. Northern Leasing were asking me to pay them $3000 to buy out the lease agreement and plus another $240 if I wanted to keep the terminal. (Lease to own? haha)
Here is how to fight them:
1.) Close your bank account, stop payments won't work as they will just use a different company ID to withdraw the money.
2.) Make a complain to Financial Consumer Agency of Canada. (CollectivePOS is being regulated by this agency)
3.) Make a report to Canadian Anti-Fraud Center.
4.) Make a complain to Better Business Bureau. (354 Charles Street, East Kitchener, ON N2G 4L5 Email: [protected]@mwco.bbb.org)
5.) Report to your local police, make sure you file it under identity theft/fraud.
6.) Make a same report to the Ontario Police by mail or e-mail.
7.) Contact your local MLA or someone represent your area, and make a formal complain and ask him/her to forward it to the proper authorities.
8.) Once you got a police report number contact your credit bureaus to place a 'fraud alert' on your file, because they might try and screw up your credit. They will do it for free if you have a police report number.
9.) Contact your local news station and tell them about your business experiences with this particular company and have them make it a national news.
10.) Keep all documents and get ready to take legal action (If you want)
11.) You can ignore Northern Leasing & Elavon if they decided to harass you with mails and phone calls. But you do have to answer them if they sent a collection agency to try and collect money. First ask them for a copy of the contract, and tell the collection agency that the debt is actually a fraud and you already reported this to the police and ask them to put a dispute status on the file, and ask them not to get involve in this. They will usually back off at this point. If not, ask for the license of the collection agency, as well as the agent's license. Inform the agent that you will only accept regular mails for future communications. Give them the evidence and show them that they can throw the contract in the garbage, or a judge will. By law in Canada they can only contact you by mail once you tell them (by certify letter) you will only accept mail communications. The law says they can only call you once a day, if you can prove that the collection agent violate this rule (or the rules i mentioned above) you can actually sure them and have them pay for all legal fees.
12.) Don't be afraid to stand up and fight them. If they called you and harass you just hang up and dial *57, have the call traced and write down date and time, after their 3 attempts call the police and they will follow up the case. If they threaten you with life hang up right away and trace the call also, then call 911 or the police immediately.
You can buy the terminal for around $300 on-line. It is a scam, do not do business with them. See for yourself, Google Collective/Northern Leasing/Elavon (DBA Ladco Leasing) complains and see what you got!
Your story is almost an exact replica of our experience, except we bought the terminal! Promised it was chip ready - 6 mths later we are still waiting for the upgrade. They have stopped returning our calls, so once again we're left holding the bag.
The sales reps are the real villans in this story because they blatantly lie and take advantage of new business owners who are not as savy and aware as experienced business owners are. The fine print on their contract totally covers them and provides nothing for the business owner. The contract is actually labeled as an 'application' but within the fine print (I'm talking a font size of 4!) of that application it states that if the application is accepted then your signature indicates you are agreeing to a contract with both them and Elavon. Stay away from this company! There are so many other choices and they, at least, have the decency to be up front and honest about what you are signing up for.
I am facing teh same problem with collective point of sale and leasing compnay.
Sent them registered letters and letters return back for "unknow address"
I closed business acount, open new one then sucessfully stoped payments, , , ignoring them and the phone calls. Collective Point of Sales, , , is the worst service i ever had.. so you take care guys.
Exactly same situation! I'm wondering is there a camp to train those crooks!
I'm a sales rep for a merchant service provider (I won't say which one because I'm not here to sell). These scams are VERY common for these small white label companies. They will lure you in with low discount rates, but will have hidden monthly fees, setup fees, long contracts & lease contracts with big cancellation fees.
In Canada, you need to be very careful, and only stick with 4 companies. Moneris, Global Payments, TD Merchant Services, or Chase Payment Tech. All the other companies are smaller and will most likely even process through these companies.
You can tell if a merchant services provider is a "white label" company if they offer you lease & purchase options only. They want you to lease the terminal so that you'll be in a long contract with a leasing company. (usually 7 years)
What happens if the terminal breaks down? Odds are, if you leased the terminal, they will make you pay a fine to replace it.
Do yourself a favor, and stick with the big 4. Don't be fooled by low discount rates!
Then how can you get out of this ? Because I have an exactly like your case.
And I live in Ottawa Ontario.
Thanks
Anh Nguyen
We have a home decor shop in Colborne, Ontario, and share the same story. NLS leasing is now threatening to sue us. They are telling us we are to pay 1, 500.00 to get out of the contract. We were told by Collective Point of Sale to lease the terminal...that was the best way to go they said. We have gone through 4 terminals in four months, they were double billing, so many problems. They would not help us so we went to another provider. Now NLS is calling us everyday. We have asked Collective Point of Sale to refund the money for the terminal to NLS leasing so the leasing contract could be closed because they couldn't fix the problem, flawed terminals. This has been going on for a year now. We have tried to work with both companies, all we get is "you signed the contract" Can they actually sue us? Does anyone know of anyone being sued by them. This has caused us great distress. Please advise.
I am also have problem with collective point of sales and NSL leasing. The rate they are givening on Contract are not through.They are charging much more. Also I have lease issue with them and they are misleading and they try scam small business owner. There are 76 compline about this company. I think all we should try to bring this to Media so all business owner know about it. We should call our MPP, MP and asked for help and sure call police. Please if anybody else has same issue let us know so we all togather can take a action againest them. Welcome any comment
I totally agree that Collective POS is a company you should stay away from. All their sales tactics (or I should say scams) are out from the Pierre Berton's book "The Big Sell". Now, in retrospect I can't believe that I fell for those lies. My advice is don't trust anything a salesman tells you. In Canada, what you sign is what matters, and they are real specialists of deceiving new business owners and trapping them with shady contracts.
please be aware of this company they will not reply to u and i put a stop payment on their acct and they add a few more cents so they can take money out ur acct on and on i am going to sue them is there a few to join a a big sued against them . they have to be put out of business