My name is Armin Babaei and I am owner of Pars Market LLC. About a year ago I met the owners of East Payment Solutions, Jake Bensimon, one of the owners, walked into my store and introduced himself as the owner of a merchant processing business. He seemed like a nice man and very intent on switching my credit card processing so that I could save a lot of money. During that time, I was using Heartland Merchant Services. After he convinced me to switch companies, he returned with Mike Forst who then introduced himself as Mr. Bensimon's partner. Since they represented themselves as the owners of the entire credit card processing company, they insisted that there would not be a middle man and I could start saving money immediately by using their service. They promised to pay my termination fee of $295.00 so that I could use their service without any worries. Yet after I had terminated my contract with Heartland Merchant Services, East Payment Solutions refused to pay my termination fee. I told Jake and Mike that I would not sign a contract just in case if that later on I needed to cancel the service, I did not want to find myself in a problematic situation. They assured me many times that there would not be a contract or any hidden fees and that I would be able to switch companies at my convenience. This all occurred during the busiest season at my establishment. They returned to my store with several papers and told me that they were necessary for processing my information and depositing the money into my account. After that they convinced me that this company would process all of my Credit / Debit Card transactions. Come to find out that the rate they had given me was amongst the highest rates in the market that anyone could get! Also, they signed me up for a Check processing service (the machine was defective) that I did not want or need yet despite telling them several times that I did not want that service, they did not cancel it. After sometime, I began to receive my monthly statements and I discovered that Jake Bensimon and Mike Forst were in fact contractors for a company called First Data; and that Jacob and Mike were only middle men responsible for supplying new clients to First Data.By end of the month, I was being charged through First Data (not through East Payment Solutions) as they processed my transactions. Then to my surprise, I discovered that I was also being charged through the Northern Leasing Systems company. When I confronted Mr. Forst about these multiple transaction he told me that he was not making profit by processing my transactions. Mr. Forst and Mr. Bensimon were being dishonest and manipulative and stole a lot of money from my business under the premise of cutting some of the costs of running my establishment. I hope that the USA Consumer Complaint will be able to assist me in resolving this issue with East Payment Solutions.
Signed,
Armin Babaei
Owner and CEO
Pars Market
Columbia, Maryland
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