What Do You Pay For Credit Card Acceptance?

Grumpy

I'm definetly going to start acepting credit cards some time real soon. What are you paying for credit card acceptance?

My first choice would be to use the quickbooks feature to accept credit cards because it's built in and saves time. I am wondering what you guys are paying, this is what quick books charges:

Card-swiped: 1.69%
Key-entered: 2.39%
Monthly fee $17.95
Per-authorization fee $0.23
One-time set-up fee $59.95

$18 a month? That seems hefty. 2.39% also seems hefty but having to go to the customer's house with a cellular swipe machine when ever they want to pay seems tedious.

PipeGuy

[QUOTE=Grumpy]I'm definetly going to start acepting credit cards [\QUOTE]

Consumer credit is a beautiful thing. Nothing like counting (depending) on tommorow to pay todays bills.

Grumpy

LOl Rick, it's not my responsibility to manage their finances. I just want to manage my own, which is why I am trying to compare rates from various merchant account providers.

Unregistered

I would think it would be beneficial for a service contractor to take CC. The percentage could be considered small, and probably would pay for it's self in sales and collections. Isn't there a way to set it up so you could take payment by phone? Seems like collection hassle would go up if you have to visit the customer everytime a payment was due.

Check the 2.39% against your annual sales, it is a pretty big number. For the projects we do, I always get worried when a client asks if we accept credit cards.

Grumpy

Phone charges the same as mail. There are 3 general ways to accept. Swipe, phone/mail in, and internet. Swipe is the cheapest. This means you literally swipe the card through a machine and have them sign a receipt. This means I have to go to their house or they come to my office. Either way it's a hassel.

I've seen some company's charge 2.5% ontop of their rates as a convenience fee for accepting credit cards. I think this is illegal.

I might just bite the bullet on the 2.39% and write it into my overhead variable to be spread evenly across the board to all my customers... but $18 a month is not acceptable at all. I did a hunt and found much cheaper rates, which leads me to believe quickbooks is on the high end for sure.

PipeGuy

I live in Maryland. My local Pontiac dealer told me I'd have to pay an additional $1,000 for a $20,000 vehicle when I told them, after agreeing to a sales price, that I'd be charging it to my GM Mastercard. I told them to shove it (I'd already checked with GM about using it to run up discount benefits and they said it was OK) and after about 20 minutes of "discussion" they sucked it up. Based on that experience I'm guessing they get away with charging 5% for credit card sales.

Agnessa

I don’t like monthly fees either. I’m not a supermarket and I try use cards minimally. Here what I pay:

Card-swiped: 1.65% + $0.20 per transaction
Phone/Web: 1.99% + $0.27 per transaction
Monthly fee FREE
One-time set-up fee FREE

These is a rate for Costco Executive Members (non-executive pay $5 monthly fee). I get cheapest 800 number and answering service from them too, as well as very good deal on webhosting.

It might vary but in most states it illegal to charge for credit card use. Many companies protect themselves by requesting minimum credit card charge. I don’t see big benefit of minimum in my business.

__________________
Agnessa Uchitel
Bergen Remodeling, Inc.
____________________
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.

Grumpy

I am a member of cosco! Interesting.

Whoa Agnes, I checked out their webhosting and if you are paying $15 aq month you are paying too much.

Teetorbilt

Why even mess with credit cards? Why should I pay for someone else's convienience? It's not just the rate either, it's allowing them to hold the money. If they think that a shingle is out of place, they call the card company and you're in limbo until the problem is resolved which is a few weeks at best, months at worst. If they pay most any other way the money is in your account and they are trying to get it back. At least you are accruing some interest during the debate.
Don't forget the cost of extra bookeeping as you have just added another account(s) that has to be kept track of.
If folks want convienience with me it's Ben Franklin baseball cards hands down, less work for me and better price for them.

Agnessa

Grumpy, I’m planning to pay them only to host me e-store. Regular web space cost me about $4/mo if paid monthly. I need lots of gadgets for e-store and they provide it at lowest cost around.
BTW, is your web space or web traffic so tight that you have to take off the .zip file with the forms all the time?

__________________
Agnessa Uchitel
Bergen Remodeling, Inc.
____________________
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.

Grumpy

Teetor as I have said before. I mess with consumers. Consumers want to use credit cards. I have lost jobs at my last job for no other reason that we didn't accept credit cards. Most of these owners are well to do and had more than enough cash, and didn't need the credit. Most credit card companies have "Rewards" I know I used my card as much as possible for those rewards.

Yes those problems CAN arise, but I have never had that happen in a year and a half of accepting credit cards at my lat job... and I'd rather my money be held in limbo for a month than the home owner calling all sorts of agencies like bbb or attorney general or worse yet, lawyer.

You do large scale construction, where credit is home improvement loans. My jobs will range from $150 all the way up to $20,000 but when you do the math, the average will be somewhere around $6,000. Unfortunately this falls within credit limits for most american consumers, therefore if I want to compete I have to accept credit cards and find a way to bit the %.

Agnes I pay $35 a month and have the ability to host 20 web sites. No my space is not so tight that I HAVE to take the file down but I am doing people a favor by putting it up in the first place. I actually have space and bandwidth left over. I checked my server logs and over 20 people grabbed the file without a thanks. All I have to say to those people is "Fug you too!"

When I have come to find out in my long 27 years of existance is if you do continuous favors for people they come to think that they deserve these favors. I also think that 5 years of hunting down business forms and packaging them into a neat organized file and giving them away is at least worth a "Thank you Grumpy."

Now let me also be brutally honest. Some of the forms I distribute in the package have copyrights. Are those copyrights infringed if I redistribute or infringed if I make changes? I don't know but I'd really rather not find out this is why I only want to give the forms to people I know, not some sneaky lawyer hunting the web and pops up on a gold mine to sue me.

PipeGuy

Dude- were you holding back up to that point?

I'm new here but I can see how much you contribute to the value of this site. Thank you for your energetic approach and thoughtful input. I'm sure your "attitude" encourages a lot of people (like me).

Grumpy

Is my attitude good or bad? I have mood swings like a chick on menopause. I love helping other people but I was raised in Chicago where BS just doesn't fly... and I am a needy sensative man

Oh yeah I also want to make the point I wasn't telling Agnes "Fug You".

Grumpy

I just filled out my application with costco.

I literally waited until the last minute because I have a customer who wants to put her down payment on her credit cards.

Agnessa

Good luck and play nice

__________________
Agnessa Uchitel
Bergen Remodeling, Inc.
____________________
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.

Grumpy

Oh... I find it very hard to play nice.

Grumpy

Blargh! They want $480 for a terminal I see on ebay for $250. Pshaw!

It's either that or $180 for some software and then $6 a month to use it... I really hope they let me buy a terminal from ebay, since it's the same one they sell.

easyrider241

So what happen Grumpy??? Did you buy the equipment from them or what???

Grumpy

Friggin Nova systems, Costco's partner, declined me. They A) don't like new businesses and B) don't like construction businesses. That's two strikes against me. My personal credit was the 3rd strike. It's not bad but when I was 18 I ran a credit card up and that's been hurting me ever since I've done alot to fix my credit but alot of creditors fixate on that one card.

Oh well I went to card services international and they hooked me up. The only difference is that I pay $10 a month service fee, and with Nova/Costco there is no monthly fee. I should have my $69 terminal in the mail any day now!

easyrider241

Still thats not a bad deal ten bucks a month..... 69 for the terminal but you can except cc payment :Thumbs: