Harbortouch | United Bank Card REVIEW: Comitment to Harbortouch’s executive team and employees are committed to customer satisfaction. Harbortouch’s approach to business is focused on providing the highest customer satisfaction in the industry.
The way they do make money is to sign up you as a sales agent and show you with all the commissions and bonuses you could get when you signed up merchants. Once you signed up some merchants, then they don't pay the full conversion bonus. If you do not sign up any more merchant in 3 months they will terminate you as an independent contractor and take all your residual income.
Their contract contradicts their website. Here is their website mention the residual for you is forever as long as the merchant is still using the company as a processor
Take a look at one of their websites http://www.ubcmerchant.com/sales-reps.php
Ongoing Recurring Residuals
Receive ongoing monthly residual payments for every merchant you refer to us for as long as they use our services. Receive a percentage of the revenue earned from your merchants' sales and recurring fees month after month. This amount varies widely based on processing volume, but for a merchant that does not process any transactions we pay you about $5 each month. On larger merchants you can earn $100 or more per month. There is no limit to how much you can make or how many merchants you can sign. You will receive your residual check monthly no minimum number of applications required and no minimum check amount either! We send you a residual report each month showing your entire merchant portfolio, how many merchants signed up each month, how much Visa/MasterCard volume they processed, their average ticket, and the revenue on each account.
So here is my story and I hope no sales agent should go through this.
I signed up as a sales agent for United Bank Card, but they assigned another company called Terminals Plus ETC LLC to work with me. The guy called Gerald from the 2nd company who I had to report to was as unprofessional as you can get. The following is what his company or he did to me
1. They did not deposit a month commission. They claimed they did and were very rude. I had to proved that they did not. Then they finally gave me after all the trouble.
2. They did not pay me the 3 large conversion bonuses as I met all the requirements. It was about $1500
3. They put all the earnings for 2 years into one 1099 MISC. I told them it was not correct and the guy told me I was wrong. I told the guy I do income tax part time so I do know. They finally fixed the 2008 and 2009 forms. However, my tax return was submitted late to the IRS.
4. They shipped the terminal to the wrong address and made me paid for it. Thank god I was able to recover the terminal from my neighbor. They forgot to put the suite # on the address.
5. They false advertise on how long you can get your residual. If you do not sign up any merchant for 3 months then you lose all the accounts that you work so hard for. So don't get sick or go on vacation or work full time.
6. They charge 1 of my merchants with leased equipment fee every month even when the merchant owns their own machine. the merchant who is my friend got mad at me because I signed them up. I had to spend hours to fix it up. This stupid company finally refund the amount but they refund to my bank account instead of the merchant's bank account.
There might be more problems that I did not report here. For all the problems I experienced, I never got any apology from the guy at Terminals Plus ETC LLC. Not only that, the guy spoke to me with loud and rude voice. Because of that I had to email him and sometimes he did not response. Right now this company is grossing about $500 per month from all my hard work.
It was better to flip burger than working for them. At least I did not have to go through so many nightmare and I actually make more. I spent a lot of money on traveling and phone calls to sign up the merchants. I was hoping to make money on the residual for the future. so sales agent BEWARE.
Jack
New York, New York
U.S.A.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
GCMS
Pace,Florida,
USA
Rebuttal - Not all companies are that way
#2
Thu, September 17, 2009
We have been a sales partner with UBC for sometime. We have never had any issues of the nature that you have had. Sounds like possible you were referred to an outside ISO company that processes with UBC and they are the ones that possibly that mis handled things. I speak with Jared the owner and some of the top officials of UBC on a regular basis and should they know of things of this nature, they will seek answers.
The biggest downfall to the industry is poorly trained sales reps. There are alot of companies out there that promise the moon and to make big money. All the hype is not true. In order to succeed in this business it takes years to build up the income. Alot of the big companies that promise all the big up font money is to far fetched. They have to many restrictions and guidelines to obtain and if you do you are in my opinion over charging the customer. The residual income is where you make your money in this industry. As we have been at it for quite sometime our offices boom. We train all our reps in house and practice golden rule. We do not want bad deal in our office. We do not want the reputation of what you see on this board all the time. Most things you read about on this board is because a greedy rep was not worried about the customer he was worried about his pocket book and not the customer. He come up with some BS story that sounded good for the moment, rushed customer to sign and then gone to the next only thinking of himself and the issues and side effects of the business he had just created. Our sales office really do not do any leases unless its a big POS system. Other than that there are to many free terminal programs out there that are legit than to be leasing a terminal for $99 for 48 months when most terminals only cost $200 to $600 bucks based on the terminal and features it has.
I am really and truly sorry for reps and merchant that have been taken advantage of. Usually after this happens most of the companies terminate that rep. Should you been seeking a company that will take care of you with reasonable rates and fees and be honest please call 850-292-0370. That goes for any reps looking for a good honest company to work for. Please note we are not going to turn you loose to sell right away. We will be doing training of products and services and working on the golden rule. We are not looking for the con artist reps. We want reps that want to make a good honest living. We review ever application before approval and if it priced to high or on the follow up call the merchant states that you did not notify them of this or that you are gone. We will not take a black eye due to your stupidy.