Trinity Merchant Group Review

BEWARE of doing business with Trinity Merchant Group. I cancelled our services with the Trinity in the “small window” that you have, had all the paperwork to show we were done, and sent the equipment back as requested. Thought we were done, but we kept getting billed by Merimac for equipment lease. This is the catch, Trinity has a 3 year contract, Merimac is a 5 year contract. Now I’m getting charged for equipment that is no longer even in my possession. Very underhanded way of doing business

There are lots of hidden fees contract with third party and fine print that was not disclosed by their independent sales representative. I was unaware I was entered into a 5 yr agreement with a merchant called Merimac for equipment lease and a 3 year contract with automatic renewal without a written cancellation notice. I question the legality of the auto renewal into a new contract once the old contract is up or get hit with a $495 fee for early termination. This is bad business and very deceptive. I fulfill my 3 year contract and the window to auto renewal is small especially you have many other things to about running a business to worry about. Now I’m stuck with another year of renewal contract or pay the termination fee. I’m currently not with Trinity but was unaware about this policy. I have never run into a business that does not care to make things right with from the independent sales contractor giving their customers misleading or not disclosing information and to continue to charge fees regardless.

I would not do business with Trinity Merchant Group again. In 2013, we signed up with them because they had amazing rates. The processing was fine and the customer service agents seemed friendly, knowledgeable, and professional. The first problem was the rates. They went up dramatically over the course of 2 years, and we still had a year left in the contract, which worried us. we called up to complain about the ever increasing rates. The person on the line asked if we would like to request a fee review and possibly lower our rates. We said sure, and they did a fee review and did lower our rates, which mollified us. Then in October 2015, they made us buy a new overpriced credit card machine to meet the EMV compliance. After we got it, we tried to use the machine with the chipped credit cards. It didn’t work. We called up Trinity and they told us they didn’t have the new programming or software yet to use in the machines to accept the chipped cards. So why did we have to get the new machine? They never did get the software for the machine as far as I know. We decided to cancel at the end of our 3 year contract instead of renewing. Four months before our contract terminated, we called and asked what date we needed to cancel by. The representative told us we had 2 years left on the contract. We were incredulous. They said that we had requested a fee review, and anytime a fee review was requested, you automatically got a 2 year contract extension! No one ever told us that! The rep said to read the contract, and sure enough. In the 16 page contract made of 8 point print, the 3 lines dealing with fee reduction and contract extension were squirreled away on page 5, section 27, paragraph 5. We were very upset and Trinity would not listen to our “no one told us” complaint, so we decided to pay the $499 fee to terminate our contract early. They said we still needed to cancel in writing, so we put in writing that we were canceling services the following week, so we would have time to find a new merchant processing company. They charged us the $499 immediately and canceled us the next day. We called them and they said they would fix it as soon as possible, but it took 2 days to get us back online, which was very stressful. I would NOT recommend any other merchants use Trinity.

After my 3 year-contract expired, I decided to switch to Sam’s Club Merchant Service for much lower rate and no annual fee. When i called the Trinity customer service dept to cancel today, I was told that there is a 90-day advance notice before contract ending date in January, and must be IN WRITING to cancel, and only a 90-day window out of a year to do so, otherwise will be penalized $495 just to cancel this agreement now, otherwise it is automatically renewed for another year with $90 annual fee and $50 monthly fee continuously being charged to my account until I see anther 90-day window to cancel next year.
In other words, even after the initial contract expires, not only I don’t have the freedom to cancel it any time, but also I have only a 90-day window out of a year to HAND WRITE a letter to them to cancel, or will be penalized. The small fine print of this obvious extra revenue on the original contract is very very deceptive and unfair. I am not even sure if this is legal since the sales person told me I can cancel anytime after 3 years without penalty and pretty much just flip through the contract ask me to sign. Very high pressure sale at the time.
I feel victimized by this company and now have to pay $495 to cancel the contract or wait for 10 months to cancel at $50 a month extra cost.
Not sure if Trinity will make it right, this is unfair business with deceptive small fine print on contract of large penalty. Beware!

I changed credit card services a year ago and waited until my service was good and expired. Upon contacting the service provider ” Trinity Merchant Group” to discontinue my service I learned that in the fine print I authorized an automatic renewal for the term of one year if I did not cancel my service within 90 days prior to the end of my contract. I do recall in a phone conversation last year that I was told that my contract ended at the end of August 2014. This was clearly an intentional deception on the part of the employee of the service provider to see the contract renewed for an additional year. This was very deceptive on the part of the service provider furthermore it lends to reason that if a customer wants to terminate after the contract has ended it should be within their right to do so and not be subject to an auto renewal that was not explained at the signing of the contract and was hidden in the fine print. “again more deceptive trade” I will be conducting further research to determine the legality of this “auto renewal” and ask for your assistance on this matter as well.

Phillip,

Hey man, I wanted to introduce myself to you. I am one of the two managing partners of Trinity Merchant Group. I recently discovered this site and I want to commend you for you efforts to provide information to merchants so that they don’t make mistakes in selecting their provider.

In reading your synopsis of my company, I am very troubled by your research into how we do things. The most glaring mistake that you have made is assuming that for the past 7 years that we have been in business, we have been promising our merchants a “flat rate” with one line item. The reality of the situation is that we started the flat rate program back in August because we didn’t want to be associated with all an industry that bills their customers a thousand line items in a statement and hides fees left and right. Have a flat rate program does so much for the merchant. It reduces the time that they spend reconciling their statements and it also provides an added layer of accountability that we are charging exactly what we said we are going to charge.

You also talk about how we charge monthly for PCI Compliance as well as an annual PCI Compliance fee. That is completely untrue. We charge a one-time annual fee of $124.75 precisely 90 days from the time that their account is activated. Nothing else. Ever.

I’m sure that there are other items on your site that you have stated that I probably disagree with but these are two factual statements in which there is no room for interpretation on. Please remove them immediately. I know it’s not hard for you to do that.

Today, your site is on page one of google search results for my company. Like I said at the beginning, I have no problem with your site as a whole, as long as it’s accurate. I think what you are doing has very admirable intentions but your research is very wreckless and distructive to our sales efforts.

Phillip, you and I would probably get along great as both colleagues and friends because anyone that looks out for others is a guy I want to be associated with. Unfortunately, we are communicating under these circumstances and so we will probably never have that chance.

Please respond to let me know that you have received this and please provide any feedback you feel is necessary.

Best Regards,

Nathan Randel