As some of you may have seen in the last couple of weeks, I had posted regarding a $300,000 deal that was ready to be funded when the lender pulled the plug last-second without explanation. Both we and the merchant were told funding would be taking place that day.

The lender had initially informed us our commission would be capped and, when we confronted them, they retracted that requirement. (Although the underwriter later said that requirement was never communicated - even though it's in emails.) We advised that we'd take the deal to another lender, so the lender made the retraction.

The lender then killed the deal for an unsubstantiated reason re: late payments by the applicant to a trade partner. Trade Partner later told us the borrower had never been late. I petitioned many of the executives via email and was later notified final UW would commence. UW then completed the merchant interview and told us the deal was being funded. They called us later that day to tell us they were backing out and would not even be willing to make any revisions whatsoever to the approval to make them comfortable. Despite the deal looking perfect.

We did some research, made some calls. Merchant was solicited by this lender's back office and another funding party. The merchant never gave out his info to anybody else but was solicited via his cellphone #. Our subsequent approvals for this merchant were essentially sabotaged and undermined by new offers from this lender.

We are considering serious legal action but I wanted to see if this is something any of you had been through before. Obviously it is - seeing the complaints that pop up on any which funder - but when such a high commission is at stake and there is actual cooperation from various sides giving us the information - how would you pursue?

Some of the older dogs in the community have advised we let it go. That won't be happening.