Stayt away from Cornerstone Tech merchant account.

Note to all webmasters.
Look before you sign a merchant account contract.
The very last page of our contract stated that the contract was 2 years. Cancellation fee was condidered as the greater of the two: 240something penalty, or the remaining contract of like 25.00 per month for the remaining 2 years.
I now highly recomend reading the fine print(actually the fine print is blurry, extremely small font, and faded but read it anyway.)

Now I feel like an idiot.
Cornerstone is an Authorize.net seller.

I this steep cancellation normal?

 

Wow, I'm going throught the same thing with them! They claim I signed a contract binding me to three years and are trying to charge me $240 to cancel. I signed no such contract. I signed up through a third-party and they took care of all the details. They assured me when I signed up that there would be no problem stopping the service at any time. I'll be seeing them in court if they don't let me out of the contract. I asked cornerstone to fax me a copy of the contract they claimed I signed, and they said they would, but that was two weeks ago. It doesn't exist. Are you sure you signed it?

Edit: I see now that you say you do have a copy of your contract and the 2-year clause is there. In my case, I did not sign a contract with Cornerstone. They were very rude on the phone, too.

 

Yes, Actually after reviewing the clause it was not on the contract at all. It came seperately on an agreement that was not signed. It was on an "agreement" that came in after we were already set up.

When we tried cancelling earlier, they were very rude to my girlfreind and refused to let her speak with anyone in management. This person that answered the phone was also not qualified to answer any questions regarding her account about the cancelation fees. Then she was hung up on.

I called the next minute to tell them it needs to be cancelled. She said that there was not a manager that was not available.

The cancelation form stated that we accepted to pay any and all fees that they stick us with.

 

The intermediary company with whom I signed up now will not answer their phone. I always get voicemail. I left an angry message then I got a voicemail in response saying they would take care of it, but I can't get through to them or ever get anyone on the phone. This kind of thing boils my blood! I'm 100% not paying them $240.

 

We went to our bank and signed a paper blocking them from taking our money. The bank says that even if something went through dated after the signature of the blocking of this payment they will reverse it for us.
Our other idea is to change banks as well.
It's not even about the money. It's about principle. Even cell phone companies tell you what the cancelation fee is before you sign up. Not when you are ready to leave.
Cornerstone is going to have to just put us on their mailing list.
I'm going to have our lawer look over it.

 

Yep, it's definitely the principle. They can't do business that way. I'm going to call the bank and tell them not to accept any charges from them. I think I"m going to leave about 50 message for that intermediary. I went through them because they waived the $600 or something setup fee.

 

Your going to have to go in personally and sign something.

 

I finally got the intermediary on the phone today. They said indeed I would not have to pay any fees. Whew! However, it seems I have to contact Amex, Discover, and Authorize.net separately in order to cancel them. Apparently this guy I signed up with has a special "deal" with cornerstone that none of his sign-ups will have to pay cancellation fees.

It doesn't sound right what they did to you, throwing the 2-year thing at you after you had already signed up.