Class Action Claims PNC Merchant Services Overbills Customers with Excessive Fees

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Florida-based spiritual counseling group Healing for the Abused Woman Ministries (which does business as Abused Woman Ministries) and a separate one-person LLC that sells artwork have filed a proposed class action alleging PNC Merchant Services Company, L.P. overbills customers by charging unanticipated and excessive fees through long-term, insufficiently explained contracts.

Alleging the defendant exploits the position of power it holds over merchants who use its credit and debit payment processing service, the lawsuit claims PNC Merchant Services “aggressively” perpetrates a scheme whereby it, after inducing companies to agree to its terms of service, floods customers with “additional fees that either were never disclosed in the standardized agreements or were concealed in the fine print and never brought to the merchant’s attention.” The plaintiff companies allege that defendant, as policy and practice, intentionally misrepresents, omits or conceals key facts concerning fees charged to merchants, who, the lawsuit argues, would never agree to do business with PNC Merchant Services had they known they would be systematically charged extra contractual fees.