First Financial USA (FFUSA)
I am sorry to all who are now finding this article, there were quite a few comments outlining others experiences however I went through a data loss and the comments are not able to be recovered. You can still see some of the comments by viewing the page that Google Cached
Last week I was contacted by First Financial USA, they said that they had found my resume on a website like Monster.com (this is very true as I am seeking work) and that they had a position for me. They wanted me to attend a conference call where everything would be explained however this is what they stated in the initial contact.
Your resume came to our attention recently and your background appears to match other highly successful members of our team who are motivated to build a career over the next 3-4 years.
FFUSA is an 12 year old financial services firm specializing in payment processing services for retail and medical merchants. Currently FFUSA serves thousands of merchants with over 100 sales professionals nationwide.
You owe it to yourself to take a few minutes exploring the FFUSA site to find out more about this unique career opportunity. We are looking for a limited number of sales professionals to add to our growing team.
Click here and you will be directed to a website that gives you more detail about the position and an opportunity to schedule a time to ask questions.
We look forward to hearing from you!
Melinda Hanson
FFUSA Human Resources Representative
805 Meander Ct
Medina, MN 55340
I went ahead today and attended the conference call and right from the beginning they stated that the portion you will hear from the President of the company is pre-recorded so that they do not waste any of our valuable time. I listened to the recording and then it was back to the live agent. The agent also had someone from the HR department on the line for a live QA session. Everyone asked questions that they had and they directed us to a URL where we could sign up to be a company agent. Before I sign up I wanted to do a little research. I hit Google and started to type in ‘FFUSA’, as soon as I got to the ‘A’ google suggested a search term of ‘FFUSA scam’. I decided I would check that out because if they were scamming people I wanted to know before signing up. What I found is that there are not a lot of posts about FFUSA scamming anyone. There is one report which I found on Ripoff Report. After reading through this in it’s entirety it seems like there is only one person complaining about the company. DocBox goes on to state that there are numerous complaints with the Better Business Bureau of Greater Minneapolis. Doing this search myself I see that there is 0 complaints in one listing and only 1 complaint in the other and this is over the last 36 months. You can see the results here and here.
My question for all of my readers is: Have you tried this out or are you currently an Agent for the said company? I am considering giving this a shot even though “DocBox” listed out all of the complaints. I feel he is whining when he should not be. I am not stating whether he is lying or not but a lot of what he is complaining about is outlined in the “Independent Representative Agreement” that they provided and he willingly signed before becoming an Agent.
Anyone else out there have thoughts on this company? Have you been screwed by them? Being that they are working with Chase and Wells Fargo I have a hard time believing that they are scamming anyone. I am not sure if it is true that they are selling you the hardware at retail prices and then to make a profit you have to charge the merchant even more. However you see this in all industries. For instance in the past I worked with web design companies that would charge me the same price they would charge their direct clients for web layouts. I had to mark-up that price to make a profit from the design sale. The income from FFUSA is really not meant to primarily come from hardware sales or leases, it is meant to come in the form of Conversion Bonuses and Residual Income. The hardware sales/lease is a secondary income that they offer. I am thinking this guy is just complaining because he did not read all of the documents before initialing every page of the agreement and signing it at the end.
I am sorry to all who are now finding this article, there were quite a few comments outlining others experiences however I went through a data loss and the comments are not able to be recovered. You can still see some of the comments by viewing the page that Google Cached
Barry
I have read all of the comments in this post. I can’t address anything before I was contacted by FFUSA back in late October. I went through the call, received the information and decided to try this mainly because I had been in the IT field for 20+ years and had faced 3 layoffs in the last 36 months. I figured that at least I would be in control of my own destiny and would succeed or fail based on my own work ethic as opposed to some executives whim to downsize or cut cost. I have found the staff at FFUSA to be extremely friendly and helpful. Have I gotten rich? Absolutely not! I am struggling financially, but not because of FFUSA not paying me commissions or residuals. I have struggled because this is a very competitive service with many companies to go against. My question is why is that? The answer is simple…there is money to be made. Banks would not offer merchant services if they didn’t make money. I think this career is like any other…you get what you put into it. I know I need to be more aggressive at following the script that FFUSA lays out and do a better job of closing the sale. These aren’t scam tactics, just good sales practices. FFUSA has been in business for over 14 years now and they wouldn’t have lasted this long if they were simply running a scam. I have signed clients that are processing and I check on them regularly. I have received no complaints. I applaud anyone for doing research on a company before making a decision to work for them just as I did. Here is what I discovered before I signed: You are vested to receive residual income for as long as the account stays with FFUSA after 200 accounts are signed. You make residual income on accounts prior to that, but if you walk away prior to 200 accounts you do not continue to receive this income. You must sign at least 1 new account per month to remain active and receive your residual income. Residual income is based on the profit on the account. Janie mentioned in an earlier post that she had a client that did $150,000 in a month and she only received $50. FFUSA states that account executives will receive 50% of the profit on the account. With the variety of deals that I have worked on, clients’ sales volumes don’t necessarily translate into big residual commissions. It could be the account was already in a great position with very little profit and FFUSA cut this in order to gain the business. I have clients doing an average of $25,000 in volume/month paying me a residual of $46/mo and another doing $35,000/mo paying $100/mo. The second account had much more room to save them money but still provide a nice profit for FFUSA and myself. The bottom line is this is not for everyone, but if you are a go-getter, like talking with merchants, and enjoy selling and servicing clients, I have found this to be a great career.
[Translate]