Heartland Payment Systems Hit with Class Action Over Alleged Termination of Vested Commissions

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Heartland Payment Systems is staring down a proposed class action lawsuit filed by a former commission-only sales employee who claims the American Express payment processor terminated his Amex commissions without contractual authorization to do so.

Heartland Payment Systems employees such as the plaintiff sold the company’s Amex processing services to merchants in exchange for a monthly commission, the lawsuit begins. During his employment, the plaintiff achieved “vested” status, the case goes on, and entered into a vesting agreement with Heartland that guaranteed the man would continue to receive commissions so long as the merchants to whom he sold Amex processing services kept their business with the defendant.

According to the complaint, which has recently been bumped to federal court in New Jersey, Heartland sometime thereafter implemented a new pricing scheme for its card processing services, converting all qualifying merchants to the new pricing model for Amex processing services. The defendant, at the same time, amended its sales policies that governed the plaintiff’s vested commission compensation structure to reflect the new pricing, the suit adds.

Though things remained static for a short while, the plaintiff claims the defendant “unilaterally” stopped remitting Amex commissions to all vested former sales employees while continuing to pay such to its active sales force for merchant accounts converted to the new Amex pricing scheme. As for why this was allegedly the case, the plaintiff says he was told “all merchants on that program had to go through extensive analysis and re-pricing of American Express and therefore are now House accounts.” 

The case argues that Heartland’s termination of commissions “should have applied equally to the active sales force,” if, indeed, all accounts had undergone the same analysis and re-pricing as the defendant claimed. Heartland, however, continued to pay the active sales force and terminated commission payments to vested former employees “under identical circumstances,” the suit notes.

“Heartland, without legal justification or notice, wrongfully terminated Amex commission payments to [the plaintiff] and the Class,” the case alleges. “There is no provision, language, or term in any controlling document (or elsewhere for that matter) that supports Heartland’s stated reason for terminating the subject commissions.”