There are about 17,000 nail salons in the United States. Nationally, 51% of the nail technicians are Vietnamese, and in some areas, like California, the percentage is much higher, perhaps 80%  The workers in these salons are especially vulnerable, because they are not fully assimilated into US culture. Even the salon owners are vulnerable because they often just work their way from the shop floor into ownership by pure hard work and thriftiness.

I have just been made aware of a practice that could be ripping off Vietnamese merchants to the tune of thousands of dollars each year per shop and millions of dollars collectively.  Every retail business needs credit card processing, and nail salons are no exception. The big daddy of credit card processing is First Data, a company that has credit card processing arrangements with most major banks. First Data has an equipment leasing division called First Data Global Leasing.  First Data Global Leasing uses outside marketers to sign up customers to lease credit card processing equipment from them.  One of these companies is Coastal Pay, LLC out of Carlsbad, California.  The world be better off if the company crawled into Carlsbad Cavern and hibernated there for a million years. Coastal Pay has numerous Complaints with both the BBB and Yelp plus some interesting stuff on ripoffreport.com.  The complaints involve both pushy sales calls and bad contracts.  In one contract I reviewed, sold to a Vietnamese immigrant businesswoman, for credit card processing equipment worth less than $500, Coastal Pay set up a 48 month lease with a payment of 235.08 for a total payments of $11,283.84.  In my client’s case, the salesperson cold-called her shop and conducted the sales pitch in Vietnamese before having her sign something in English.  It has come to my attention that Coastal Pay actively recruits Vietnamese-speaking employees.  This makes me believe that Vietnamese shop owners are being specifically targeted.

The more I research this industry the more it appears that fraud and decptive practices may be commonplace trhough out the industry. In 2013, another credit card equipment company, Northern Leasing Systems, Inc. paid millions of dollars in a settlement with the New York attorney general settling claims for multiple deceptive practices by the company.  The agreement covered Northern’s affilliates:  Lease Finance Group LLC, MBF Leasing LLC, Golden Eagle Leasing LLC and Lease Source-LSI, LLC. One of the alleged abuses was that the companies debited their customers bank accounts up to eleven years after they ceased doing business together.  

If you feel like your small business has been ripped off by any credit card processing company, please contact my office. If we can’t help you directly we will refer you to an attorney who can.