Credit Cards

[Ron Lindeboom]

[Chris Blair] “They also charge more if you key in the credit card number rather than swipe it. That’s really ridiculous.”

Actually, Chris, there’s a very good reason for this. It is because when you use a credit card at a restaurant or store and the kid you gave it to writes down your credit card number (before they hand it back to you) and gives the number to his friends also, they’ll all be hammering your card by manually writing the number — they won’t be swiping the card through a machine.

It is a fairly common occurrence and credit card companies charge extra because these types of transactions have a more common frequency of fraud.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

[Chris Blair]

Ron Lindeboom
It is a fairly common occurrence and credit card companies charge extra because these types of transactions have a more common frequency of fraud.

Well that makes sense. Wonder why our local bank didn’t charge differently if we swiped it or keyed it in? It was the same fee.

Zane Barker
Its does a LOT more then just ringing people out….I NEVER said that that one software was for every one, but it is very good software. Having all your transactions go through something like that can provide a lot of useful information…

I wasn’t trying to be harsh. I just don’t believe an advertising, marketing or production business could justify the expense of a dedicated computer system like that unless credit card transactions were key to sales.

Quickbooks collects all the information you could ever want about clients, sales, trends etc. Peachtree does too…and most businesses are going to be using one of those two for accounting. For us, the only benefit of being able to take credit cards is to get paid quickly by the clients that use them, and in the case of the client that forces us to take AMEX, it sucks over $30,000 a year out of our pocket.

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com

[Ron Lindeboom]

[Chris Blair] “Well that makes sense. Wonder why our local bank didn’t charge differently if we swiped it or keyed it in? It was the same fee.”

As I said, it is a fairly common occurrence and doesn’t mean everyone enforces it — or that even the ones who do will always pass on the fee to their better accounts. Usually they won’t. Bank policies are nearly always “flexible.”

One of these days I may just get around to doing my “working with your banker” series.

(More affectionately referred to as my “Working your banker” series).

:o)

Ron Lindeboom