Bankcards Equipment Service & Technology of Iowa Took delivery of equipment from me and never paid - admitted on phone to have sold at least some but won't pay Urbandale Iowa

If Tom would look up what "extortion" and "innuendo" means, he would be getting somewhere.  If he had any real evidence of extortion, he would have shown it or acted on it with the cops. 

When I shipped equipment to Tom Devine at B.E.S.T of Iowa, I knew there was value in the equipment and expected he would make good on it and pay me fair value for it.  Instead, Tom sold some or all of my equipment as the seller "bankcardsequip" on eBay (and/or other avenues) without paying me anything for it yet refused to send back to me AT MY COST using my UPS shipper number anything he couldn't sell. My repeated requests for return shipping or payment were ignored and, as such, Tom is a welcher and a thief.  

Nothing I have said is a lie - I pasted my entire string off my Yahoo account.  (Tom must be confused or drunk to think I was pasting from his Mediacom account.) Of course, there were other emails I sent outside of this pasted string that went unanswered.  As a business person, Tom does not communicate if he is stealing from you or it isn't in his best interest!

So I meddled with Tom on eBay.  Nothing I did was criminal, only against eBay's "policies." Committing to purchase his goods but not paying for them is much less than what he did to me outside of that online marketplace! Tom committed, received property and didn't pay.  That isn't exactly criminal, either, but civil.  At this point it would be a waste of my time to fly out to Iowa to do a small claims court.  I WOULD win a small claims action but then collecting that result would be a real pain.

BTW, Tom is bashed by others on Yelp as well. Rest well, welcher! 

 This crook is using the SAME tactics as he used with the Better Business Bureau to continue on with his attempted extortion.  I explain what really happened and he files yet another report---thereby trying to force me to waste even more time with him.  It appears this is a portion of his Business Model.  When extortion is your business, you have to take the time to continuously assault your intended victims. 

 I told the BBB what he was trying to pull on me in my initial response to it, and did not feel it necessary to say the same thing again and again.  Because I didn't respond to his continued reports the BBB closed the case casting me in a negative light.  Oh well!  After 16 years in business and tens of thousands of sales to satisfied customers I can live with one negative BBB report.

 You will notice this guy didn't even make any attempt to repond to my statements about the various additional criminal actions he committed in his extortionist activities toward me.

 And, of course, with Eric being the type of criminal I have already PROVEN him to be in my previous rebuttal, he attempts to use email correspondence.......correspondence that he has changed to meet his needs.  He has changed dates, left out interim messages, and even changed the contents of some of the messages.  If you read through the email chain this crook provided here in his latest rip-off attempt it is VERY OBVIOUS he has left out and changed them.  Several times comments are made for which there are no previous reference points.  I guess if you are dumb enough to try to earn a living in his manner it is bound to show through!

 I, too, still have our email chain of correspondence.  Furthermore, it wasn't even Yahoo email---it was through Mediacom (hence the "mchsi.com").  I guess when you are lying it's prettty hard to cover all your tracks.  ISN'T THAT RIGHT ERIC?

 And you have to enjoy his simpleton usage of innuendo to try to make himself look good!  First it was the police, now he wonders if I really regularly travel to Arizona.  There is a car sitting in my garage with Arizona plates on it that we just drove back last weekend for the summer.  

 Then he says he would win in court.  There is nothing I would like better in this matter than to get this con artist in a court of law and expose all of his actions he has taken to try to extort money from me!  Come on Eric---"MAKE MY DAY!".

 As every business owner knows, properly running a business requires nearly an all-inclusive devotion of time, and time is money.  This will be my LAST response to this criminal's actions in this forum.

 One additional comment:  I find this forum despicable.  Anyone, real or fictitious, can file a report here and make up whatever claim they please.  I had one previous experience with this site where a fictitious person filed a phony claim against my business, and even for a type of business activity I do not offer nor provide.  AND YET, it is on my record and shows up whenever a Google search is done on my business.  I find this to be inherently wrong!  A business owner should not have to be subjected to (and waste time responding to) this type of scenario!

It is pretty clear from the manner Tom Devine is speaking in his rebuttal that he is a bully.  His use of "honor" in the last paragraph is out of place too because honor must be earned - which he didn't - and he does not know how to honor a business arrangement.  

Tom's accusations that I am an extortionist are pretty crazy. Actually, he lies a lot in his rebuttals (like he did during his defense of the Iowa BBB case he lost.)  Check out our email conversation from October 2013 that I have pasted at the end of this...straight from Yahoo.

If Tom really wasn't profiting from this arrangement in 2012, why did he want more equipment in 2013?  First, to say that he said "no" to me offerring to sell him equipment is really a lie.  Our dealings in 2012 appeared to have been successful on his side or he would not have entered into a new arrangement in October 2013.  I never asked for payment of anything until after he received them and he said he was going to take some time to get through refurbishing. All I asked is that he settle up in batches 

It is not possible that I am a criminal in this matter because we had an arrangement for me to ship him 44 credit card terminals at my cost ($200+), he would evaluate them and let me know his proposed value for purchase.  We had done this before.  The only thief in this arrangement is Tom because he wouldn't pay anything for what he received, he won't pay me any proceeds out of what he has admitted he has sold, he would not communicate, and he will not ship back any remaining items he claims are broken.  It is likely he has profited greatly by accepting my equipment and selling all of it.  I could have sold all of this individually on eBay myself as just "parts" as I have done before and netted a couple thousand $. 

I repeat my original comments that the majority of these terminals were completely working when we took them out of the restaurants several months prior to shipping them to Tom. They weren't broken.

The issue of not offerring Tom my UPS shipper number until March was simple - Tom would not provide a status of how his refurbishment was going.  As previously stated, I had to reach him on a different phone where I caught Tom off guard.  He admitted to already selling some of it and that the rest was still sitting in boxes in his shop. Tom refused to pay anything for what he admitted to have already sold.  He said he was going to AZ for two weeks and would let me know his status at the end of February. He never called or wrote back and I doubt he actually went to AZ.

The BBB is pretty objective in their case management. Tom was not able to prove he was right and he refused to ship back any of my equipment he still had (at my cost) or pay something out of his sales of my equipment.

I guess this Iowa businessman saw a trusting and unsophisticated seller and knew he had a "sucker." if I lived any closer to Iowa, I would have won this in small claims court!!

EMAIL STRING:

On Nov 19, 2013, at 2:18 PM, "Tom" <tom.devine@mchsi.com> wrote:

Hi Eric,

At this point, I'm still trying to figure out where I stand on these machines. EVERY SINGLE ONE of them had problems to the extent they could not be resold without being sent in to repair firm. Some of the Vx570 are supposed to be back to me this week. The FD-100ti terminals pretty much all need new keypads and, apparently, there are no aftermarket keypads to be had for these! Not sure what I'm going to do there!

It appears most of these came out of a taco fast food chain, and they basically wore them out. It's going to be a challenge to get a lot out of this equipment batch.

Regards,
Tom

From: Eric Hitzelberger 
Sent: Monday, November 18, 2013 5:35 PM
To: Tom
Subject: Re: FIRST DATA EQUIPMENT

Hi Tom,

Hope all is well. I wanted to check in on your progress towards reviewing for a price. As I mentioned before, if you are done with some of them then it may make sense to do this in batches.

Thanks,
Eric

From: Eric Hitzelberger 
To: Tom <tom.devine@mchsi.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2013 5:22 PM
Subject: Re: FIRST DATA EQUIPMENT

Hi Tom,

I'm glad they all made it to you. Would it work to settle up things in batches instead of waiting until you have sorted and tested everything? Maybe start with the easy ones like the FD-100ti terminals?

Thanks,
Eric

From: Eric Hitzelberger 
To: Tom <tom.devine@mchsi.com>
Sent: Friday, October 18, 2013 11:37 AM
Subject: Re: FIRST DATA EQUIPMENT

The V numbers are tracking on a different type (level) of insurance slip.

From: Tom <tom.devine@mchsi.com>
To: 'Eric Hitzelberger' 
Sent: Friday, October 18, 2013 10:33 AM
Subject: RE: FIRST DATA EQUIPMENT

Thanks Eric. At this point, we can only hope we get some good working units in the bunch. The ones that are broken (and make sense to repair) I will also let you know about so we can discuss their fate.

$200 for shipping? WOW! I think we'll do OK on the Vx570 and FD-100ti and, hopefully, we'll both come out way ahead of that expense.

I'll let you know as they come in. Are those "V" numbers also tracking numbers from the Post Office?

Thanks,
Tom

From: Eric Hitzelberger 
Sent: Friday, October 18, 2013 10:04 AM
To: Tom
Subject: Re: FIRST DATA EQUIPMENT

Hi Tom,

I sent these out from 3 different post offices on Tuesday. All are brown corrugate boxes with an 8.5x11 preprinted address - your's is in very large lettering and in red in small font at the bottom I wrote "Enclosed units not yet paid for".

All are insured USPS and here are the tracking numbers, which will not have tracking as granular as UPS or FedEx:

13071300000100746649
13071300000100746663
13071300000100746632
13071300000100746656
VH823279894US
VI399630113US
VI399630100US

I think there were two more boxes but I cannot find the receipt for it...but I may be wrong. Everything will match the inventory listing I sent last week except for the Eclipse terminals. Let me know how things go. This was over $200 in postage so I hope the numbers work out.

-Eric

From: Tom <tom.devine@mchsi.com>
To: 'Eric Hitzelberger'  
Sent: Thursday, October 17, 2013 1:24 PM
Subject: RE: FIRST DATA EQUIPMENT

Hi Eric,

Do you have tracking numbers on these so I can be watching for them?

Thanks,
Tom

From: Eric Hitzelberger 
Sent: Monday, October 14, 2013 10:27 AM
To: Tom
Subject: Re: FIRST DATA EQUIPMENT

That will work. I'll send in batches starting today by sensible box size and starting with the FD-100ti's.

From: Tom <tom.devine@mchsi.com>
To: 'Eric Hitzelberger'  
Sent: Friday, October 11, 2013 10:18 PM
Subject: RE: FIRST DATA EQUIPMENT

Hi Eric,

That’s a lot of equipment, and will take me awhile to work through. I can’t use the Eclipse terminals---too old, and, just so you know, the FD-200 are a specialty terminal, so they are very slow movers.

Naturally, I’m agreeable with your proposal. The “high-value/high-demand” items are the Vx570 and FD-100ti terminals. If you want to start with them it would make the most sense.

Tom Devine
7716 Deerview Dr.
Urbandale, IA 50322
(515) 897-3605

From: Eric Hitzelberger 
Sent: Friday, October 11, 2013 6:15 PM
To: Tom
Subject: Re: FIRST DATA EQUIPMENT

Hi Tom,

Here is my inventory listing. I have not, and really won't, have time to do the whole diagnostics thing. If there are items on the list that you will not want, I'll just send to a recycler locally so I don't waste $$ on shipping. What I propose is to ship you what you like in batches and determine value after you receive it and test the items out.

I trust your input on the machines and I don't foresee a lot of back and forth. Shipping cost will be on me. Thoughts?

Thanks,
Eric

From: Tom <tom.devine@mchsi.com>
To: 'Eric Hitzelberger' 
Sent: Tuesday, October 8, 2013 11:25 AM
Subject: RE: FIRST DATA EQUIPMENT

Hi Eric,

The default password for First Data terminals is 990712 However, with these you really don’t need to worry about clearing them out because they are a proprietary terminal to First Data.

What you WILL want to do is run diagnostics on them using the internal program----very easy to do.

I think best would be if you put together a list: Quantity of each make & model. At that point, I can walk you through the diagnostics & test-out procedures on the different models---fairly easy, other than there are various methods depending upon age of machine.

Please just put together an inventory & we’ll discuss how best to proceed.

Thanks,
Tom Devine
(515) 897-3605

From: Eric Hitzelberger 
Sent: Tuesday, October 08, 2013 12:10 PM
To: tom.devine@mchsi.com
Subject: Re: FIRST DATA EQUIPMENT

Will do - I think I have over 50 items so it will take me some time to list it out. The 1st question is on clearing data with the passwords. Are there different than the old Omni's and vx570's?

From: Carmen <carmen.e@mchsi.com>
To: 'Eric Hitzelberger' 
Cc: tom.devine@mchsi.com
Sent: Tuesday, October 8, 2013 11:07 AM
Subject: FIRST DATA EQUIPMENT

Hi Eric,

This is Tom---the owner and one you actually have always dealt with here. Carmen is “history”----I couldn’t get her to stop drinking. My email is: tom.devine@mchsi.com


Now, to your question: Yes, I AM a buyer for First Data equipment. Please let me know what you have & we’ll figure out a fair price on all.

Best regards,
Tom


From: Eric Hitzelberger 
Sent: Tuesday, October 08, 2013 10:11 AM
To: Carmen
Subject: Re: 11 Omni 3750 / 4 Vx570

Hi Carmen,

Are you interested in a new batch of machines in good condition? The FD-100 and FD-100ti models are in the best shape as they are newer?

Thanks,
Eric

 This man is a criminal.  Plain and simple!  He is an extortionist. He is a con artist.  He is a proven liar.  He has even committed Internet fraud in his ongoing attempts to extort money from me.

 I have been in business since 1998 selling bankcards processing equipment to business owners and professional bankcards reps.  Additionally, I have accounts in every state in the USA plus in Guam, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands.  I sell new, used, and refurbished payments processing terminals, pinpads, and check readers/imagers.  I sell 800-1000 machines per month, and most all is to regular, repeat customers.

 In 2012 this man (who wasn't even man enough to use his real name here) contacted me to sell me a batch of used equipment.  When I received it, most all was broken.  I was forced to negotiate a partial refund of my monies paid so I could send in the repairable machines to be refurbished.

 In October, 2014 he again contacted me to sell me equipment.  Due to the previous experience, I told him NO---not interested.  He continued to pester me, and finally told me he would just send the equipment to me, no strings attached, to see if any had value.  I made the mistake of allowing this to move forward.  

 Five days after he shipped the equipment to me, before I had even received it, he began demanding money from me!  And it has been non-stop since.  He began a personal vendetta against me and my firm toward forcing me to pay him money for the junk that he had sent---supposedly with no strings attached---to see if they had any value.

 When I did receive the equipment it was, of course, broken and most items were not even economically feasible to be sent in for repairs/refurbishing.  I did send in twelve terminals thinking they could be salvaged, but there were no replacement parts available.  It cost me out-of-pocket several hundred dollars to make the attempt.

 When I discussed this with him, I told him I was going to try to sell what I could salvage and the proceeds were going toward off-setting a portion of my incurred costs.  The remaining, and the vast majority of equipment was junk and in January sent to an electronics recycling firm.

 Months later, he claimed he wanted me to return the equipment to him----long after he sent it to me and long after he had told me to do what I could and should with it.  If he wanted this back, he should have made made that point back in October, instead of after-the-fact.

 In his report here he has lied and made misleading statements  throughout in his attempt to discredit me.  Examples:

A)  These were replaced in his (father's) restaurants because they were broken.  And they weren't simply dirty, they were FILTHY!  He KNEW all this when he sent to me, and that is precisely why he didn't ask to be paid before shipping to me.  I can picture him telling his father "Daddy, I found a sucker in Iowa we can send this broken equipment to and then force him to pay us money.  Aren't you proud of me daddy?"

 B)  His "police" comments are riduculous.  Apparently, about five years ago someone using the same name and a different social security number did something wrong with an Internet account through Century Link.  The detective Andy Morlan came to see me about it.  He came on very aggressive right upfront (20-something year old with a gun & badge).  When I advised him that I have had the same Internet service account through the local cable company, Mediacom, for over ten years and had never even had the need for Century Link services of any kind he got huffy with me.  I told him he was acting like a jerk and showed him the door.  I suppose I hurt his feelings.

 C)  Regarding his eBay comments:  I have a "Top-Rated-Plus" status with eBay----were hard to obtain----and 99.5% positive rating on over 1200 sales over the past year.  The criminal who has filed this complaint against me failed to mention that he committed Internet fraud on eBay in his extortion attempts against me!  He opened three accounts on eBay on April 1st and immediately purchased nineteen machines from me.  Of course, he did not pay for them and tried to leave nineteen negative feedback ratings on my account.  And now, just so you know PRECISELY what kind of person he is:  All three accounts were set up using phony names, phony addresses, and phony telephone numbers.  Yet, he is so foolish he used his own personal email address to set them up.  DUH!!!  And for additional insight into his character, one of the usernames he set up is "ernieswille" (Ernie's Willie).  Cute fellow isn't he, and a class act, indeed!

 D)  The only Better Business Bureau complaint I have ever had was from this criminal.  I promptly responded to it.  He subsequently came back through them trying to waste more of my time in his extortion attempt.  Every time he sends a note, I am supposed to respond, and he knows that.  I am not willing to be forced into wasting more of my time by telling the BBB the same thing over & over again.  The facts that I have been in business for 16 years, have just that one complaint (from this criminal with a vendetta), and over 90% of my business is with repeat customers most certainly supercedes what the BBB file may indicate! 

 Once again, this criminal has forced me to waste my time, but I did want whoever may read this to be aware of the character of the individual (who doesn't ever even use his real name) who filed this report so you may use your best judgment in determining the circumstances involved.

 ONE LAST COMMENT:  I find it deplorable that business owners should be placed in a situation where it becomes necessary to have to defend their honor in a forum such as this, where just anyone (whether real or fictitious) can file reports.