Heartland Payment Systems Reviews

I have been working at Heartland Payment Systems full-time for less than a year

Pros – Opportunity for uncapped income
Monthly residuals become yours after you are vested.
Company has a lot of opportunity, I am already getting a chance to move up.
Service Center is state of the art
if you cant make your own leads, you fail, if you are motivated to make money, YOU CAN MAKE IT!

Cons – Sometimes have to cut margin to compete.

Advice to Senior Management – keep coming out with new ideas and equipment to make us more competitive. Also, if you have people who aren't cutting it, time to let them move on.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at Heartland Payment Systems full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Because HPS is a small company that grew up, there is more openness to new ideas and processes. Senior Management, from the CEO down, have high integrity and really care about the employees. Work/Life balance is very good for most people. I've been promoted significantly which shows the company does try to promote from within.

Cons – Because HPS is a small company that grew up, there aren't established policies for some things, with the exception of security and card processing functions of course! The company is still trying to find the balance between benefits, salary and bonus. Security is always a concern, and is part of everything that goes on here.

Advice to Senior Management – Offer some smaller benefits that have high perceived value and are affordable to be more in line with other companies in our space. Increase salary and decrease bonus, or find a way to minimize tax impact for highly bonused leaders.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at Heartland Payment Systems full-time for more than a year

Pros – Somewhat create your own schedule.

Cons – There is a tunnel vision mentality- and everyone in upper and middle management work off a script. They do not explain the true compensation structure until after you have suffered from ridiculous true-ups and charge backs. You have no rights as a salesperson- you are trued up for everything to the point you are paying Heartland to work every day. If you are an ethical salesperson truly working in the best interest of your merchant, you will not make a living with this company. But they will make a ton off of you!

Advice to Senior Management – Stop. Just stop with the scripted responses and answers to every question. Re examine your compensation structure and your policies. Check out your local management better...DMs/TMs working the system and doing unethical practices are a very real concern for you. Stop abusing your sales force and providing lackadaisical statements/responses to address changes you implement more and more. Everything is in your favor- sales people have no rights and the Payroll and Marketing teams are paid based off what the sales people are out there enrolling but these salaried and hourly people never get "trued up" for doing their job poorly and frankly wrong after it has left the hands of the sales person. Only the sales person suffers. Shame on you. May you continue to lose hard working , ethical and professional salespeople. Shame on you!

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at Heartland Payment Systems full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – Great State of the Art Service Center
Veterans employed on the sales force really know their stuff
Heartland works with many hardware and software companies

Cons – * Constant knee jerk reactions due to Wall Street never being happy no matter what numbers are posted.
* Management in the field cheats the system by installing accounts with a preloaded Visa gift cards on terminals that they load at their home office on new accounts.
* Micro-management brought to a new low by asking reps to fill out a spreadsheet that asks reps how much their bills are every month. Once that is complete, you have to fill out a business plan that states how many deals you will get each week and specifically from where (BNI networking, local POS dealer etc..). After that, you are asked to put in 5 new appointments per week into their CRM system. If you do not do this every Friday, you are harassed until you do.
* As recent as this week, management is asking if anyone wants to sell their portfolio back to the company. I guess the residuals that we earn each month are too much of a liability for this company and in order for their stock price to go higher they seem to ask for this but it seems this may be a repeat of August 2010 when they did a buyout against our will of 50%.
* Company has cut every in-field service agent that we had so now as reps, we have to do everything with no 5% pay (like we used to get). We don't even get a $50 service call UNLESS the Heartland Service Center asks us to go out to a location.
* We were sent custom recruiting cards to our home with our names on it so we can hand out cards to recruit people we know to this company. When they treat us this badly, why in the world would I ever refer anyone to work here?
* We are constantly being told that we work for an "ethical company" by upper management but at almost every turn, we are being screwed somehow, someway as sales people.
* Attrition is at an all time high due to Heartland's processing costs going up and we just can't be competitive anymore.

Advice to Senior Management – Please stop with these requests for portfolio buyouts from us. Haven't we given you enough? We now service everything for no (5% extra residual), no signing bonuses' on ownership changes, no comfort of knowing that we will actually be paid lifetime residuals because you keep taking our residuals from mandatory buyouts & A/R balances that get above $2,500. And stop allowing this micro-management and bullying from managers. It's got to stop.

It's really getting old to be used by Heartland for the gain of your stock price and stock options that upper management gets. In fact, I like how on the Q1 earnings call, the CEO said this: "The rookies have higher averages than our veterans in terms of margin. And they're trained better, and they don't have a lot of bad habits that were learned years ago before we adopted this model". This is just completely wrong coming from our leader. If the veterans are so bad, why don't you just fire all veterans and work with just your rookies that are so much better? Oh wait, I know why, because you wouldn't have a company or any new merchants anymore.

I have been working at Heartland Payment Systems as an intern

Pros – To touch the production data and best thing is you get the chance to touch almost every thing from SQL, Asp.Net, ASP, C#, javascript, and JQuery etc. Good place to get some practical experience in a very friendly environment.

Cons – open floor environment and usually its very noisy. Keep stock of Tylenol all the time :).

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I worked at Heartland Payment Systems full-time for more than a year

Pros – The integrity, honesty, and the mission of the company is what separates Heartland from many of its competitors in the merchant services industry! The family-type culture and extensive classroom and field training are very valuable. The products, services, and encryption security are top-notch in addition to the benefit of numerous association endorsements especially from the National Restaurant Association.

Cons – It's 100% commission based, if there was a small base for even the first 3 months, then it would ease some stress when you are just starting.

Advice to Senior Management – Upgrading the CRM to SalesForce.com.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I worked at Heartland Payment Systems full-time for less than a year

Pros – Good products, good customer service

Cons – Straight commission is difficult financially in certain areas

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Heartland Payment Systems full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Most of call Ctr seems to actually try to help reps when they call in with account issues. As far as call Ctr helping merchants....lacking in that dept!! Majority of the call Ctr employees have never worked out in real world and can't relate or empathize with the merchants on line who need help and need it quick.
Good payroll product.

Cons – Outdated and incompatible products
Ridiculous reporting games that are nothing but fluff numbers for stockholders
Incompetent management through out company.
No distinctions to help separate Heartland from competitors in field
Reps are lied to about "cost"
Never actually paid what you are owed
Horrible health insurance plan
False installs pushed by management to make end of month numbers look good but attrition tells true story
Serious HR issues are swept under rug
Leads are funneled to new hires so they appear to be successful hire. Veterans are never rewarded.
Merchants have NO local service
Heartland PURCHASES its endorsements !
Poor residual plan
Worse Gift/Loyalty program in industry

Advice to Senior Management – Get off your computers and phones and get out in the field and actually do what you require of your team. Lead by example and quit the pathetic ride on the "tall tales" of when you were in your glory days. Your making fools out of yourselves.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Heartland Payment Systems full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Their customer service center and infrastructure is very good. Can sign deals on an ipad.

Cons – Management of regions and territories is inconsistent and leadership is fragmented. If you are lucky to get a Territory Manager, District manager and Regional Manager that are all good there is a shot at making money. There were no leads or benefit to reps from association endorsements at the time. Though they hired a (failed in the field) manager to try to improve leads once research showed quality sales rep candidates want at least some quality leads to work.

Advice to Senior Management – Continue to purge poor territory managers. Invest in marketing and quality leads. Realize that some top reps are taking shortcuts signing deals in Atlas and that may come back to bite legally.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Heartland Payment Systems full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – The people (the "grunts") are GREAT! I stayed at HPS years longer than I otherwise would have because of my co-workers and I continue to stay in touch with several of them.

HPS is a great place to learn the payments industry. When I left HPS, I had absolutely no problems finding another job. Recruiters and employers were pounding on my door at a time when we were in the "Great Recession" and so many people were out of work. I had no idea how valuable my skill set was until I put my resume on line and was pleasantly surprised.

I think executive management (Bob Carr and his team) are great. I have a lot of respect for Bob. Unfortunately, I can't say the same about the management team in Plano.

Cons – I worked in the Plano IT office for several years. I worked under multple managers and directors, and I know the company well. I read reviews where they say "don't listen to the disgruntled employees." Well, they're disgruntled for a reason. If they were happy, they would give a glowing review. I've been away from HPS for a few years now and I'm still unhappy with how things worked out there, but in my case the grass was greener on the other side and I landed in a good place.

There is absolutely no recognition for a job well done. I worked my butt off putting in 60+ hours a week for years and in all that time the only time anyone noticed anything was if I didn't get their pet project completed in the time frame they wanted it done in. Never mind that I had multiple projects going at any time and for the first three years I was the only one who did my job there. I finally had to put my foot down by cutting my hours back to a reasonable 45-50 hours a week and letting the projects suffer. Management finally admitted that I needed help, so they hired more people. I trained those people to do their jobs and once I did that, I was put out to pasture.

A lot of promises are made and none are kept. I was told in my interview that I would manage a team of people within six months. That didn't happen. That manager left and another took over. It took two years for management to promote me to a senior level position and that came with more responsibilities, but no increase in pay or other compensation for the additional responsibilities. Then my manager and director wanted me to take on even more responsibilities by supervising a team of people (remember, I was already working 55+ hours a week as it was). I initially declined the offer until they offered to pay me more and promoted me to another senior level position. I agreed and took on those responsibilities, but once the new hires were trained to do their jobs, I was moved off of the team because I was told my skills and knowledge were needed elsewhere, and once they moved me to the new position, they tried to demote me! How's that for recognition and reward for a job well done? Eventually, I was told that my position was being eliminated and I was severanced out. By that point after everything that I had been through there, I was jumping up and down for joy that I was getting canned.

What it really comes down to is to be successful in that IT department, you have to keep your head down and do your job without expecting any rewards for doing so. Recognize that no one there really wants your opinion on anything and all that they want to hear is "Yes" to everything, even if it's nearly impossible to do. If you speak up, point out problems and issues, etc., you will be labled "difficult" by management, regardless if you were right and were looking out for the company's best interest. Recognize and accept that many of the people who are promoted do not necessarily know their stuff, but they are good at playing politics. Don't trust HR. They are there to protect the company and they are not the employee's friend. A lot of your happiness working for HPS depends upon the manager you are working for. There are good managers in the Plano office if you happen to be lucky enough to land under one of the few.

Advice to Senior Management – I've given my advice to management when I worked at HPS. They didn't listen and they won't listen now, so why bother?

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company