Electronic Payment Systems EPS Robs Small Businesses Blind Jacksonville Florida

I co-own a maid service and a painting service. To attract more clientele, we decided to start accepting credit cards. In summer 2007, one of our painting customers paid by credit card and then disputed the charges. He also did this to the company who remodeled his bathroom.

The first time we processed his payment, it did not go through -- or so we thought -- because our machine did not print a receipt and did not act like it had processed the transaction. Our machine was also batching non-existent transactions almost hourly and would not print thr correct date and time on any receipts, so we called the company we leased the machine from to come out and fix it. The guy came and fixed it and we asked him to track down the painting customer's transaction. He called EPS and they told him that the transaction did not go through and to have us run it again. That's where the trouble began.

We called our customer and explained what had happened, but he not only disputed the double-charge (which is understandable), he also disputed all of our legitimate charges. We contacted EPS and told them what was going on and they sent us a dispute form which we sent to them and we also called them again.

EPS said they ruled in our favor (they also told us that it's up to our customer's credit card company to refund us), but they keep debiting $800 from our bank account every other WEEK. We have lost $4000 -- 5 times the original disputed $800 and almost twice the total amount of the work done and paid for. We have filed disputes with our bank and have recovered some of the money taken, but this has caused our checks to bounce. It seems like every time we deposit money, EPS steals it from us.

The latest correspondance from EPS is a letter explaining why they took our money this last time (25 Feb 07) "We did not receive a response to our previous inquiry for information. We have no further recourse. Contact customer directly." It seems they just want an excuse to rob us blind.

Amy
Jacksonville, Florida
U.S.A.