I have recently become an LLC company and had to chage all my banking accounts to reflect this. I was contacted by a member of my bank that wants to know if I want to start taking credit cards. Do you guys except credit? If so what are the Pro's and cons of using cards?


Ralph

For years we heard the horror stories about high costs and how difficult it was to take credit cards. We asked other friends in the business how much they really used them each month and most said hardly ever. We belong to a BNI group and a fellow member does this type of thing for businesses.Wow, we couldn't be happier.We only take visa/mastercard right now because there rates are more reasonable imo. We simply take down the info when job is finished or they call it in to the office and we also get an itemized statement each month. We pay $17.00 a month whether we use it or not. It has opened the door to a lot of out of town customers who have a friend or neighbor let us in and we get the money even though they're out of town. Also, has helped with commercial accounts instead of waiting for money or not taking the job because we were afraid of not being paid. I hear going through your bank can be more expensive that someone who finds best rates and companies to deal with. Definitely shop around.

Wayne

Over here you can take the wireless hand held unit with you on your truck.
no different than a cell phone.

I just started using Quickbooks and I have not been taking credit cards but I am looking really hard at their service. From what I understand their service is very cost efffective and also automatically plugs the info into your Quickbooks too, for a nice time savings.

Del Scrivner
Owner/Operator
Cowboy's Carpet Care

We have two credit card machines for sale, Nurit 2085 for $125 each. e-mail me if your interested raymoody@charter.net

I take ALL the cards - even american express, sure it costs more, but the customers are happy that I take cards, esp. amex (flyer miles!) It seperates me from the rest of the cleaners who think that the $1.50 charge for amex is too much, but forget that most of the high end customers use amex...Thats who I target (residentially, anyways)

I never forget buying an item from a small local shop...the guy told me "if you use your amex card , I have to charge you 2% more" (or something like that)...I did purchase the item w/ amex, but do you think I would ever go there again? NO WAY!

Joe

Charging more when they use a credit card is against the law in Canada.
what you can do is charge less when they use cash.

Here's a simple and inexpensive alternative that I ran across a few years ago for our carpet cleaning business. Note: This is not the program we use for our supply business. But it works really well for a carpet cleaning business that dos not take credit cards all that often (like in our commercial carpet cleaning business).

Discover/Novus offers what they call a "seasonal account". That means that even if you don't have a single transactions in a month they won't close your account or charge your account. It's a great program for less frequent credit card processing.

We purchased a reconditioned terminal
Omni-3200 $300 (this was the only out of pocket expense)

So our only cost for anything was a one time $300 charge for the reconditioned terminal machine. That's it!

No setup or application fee
No monthly minimum
No monthly fee
No contract
No cancellation fee

The transaction rates are very reasonable, but of course, these will vary according to an individual's business needs.

Oh, and that does not limit you to just taking Discover. You can take ALL cards through the Discover program.

If you're interested call
Discover/NOVUS Business Services
800-347-7996


By the way. Here's a link to an article I wrote for Cleanfax on this topic last year...

http://www.cleanfax.com/ENewsArticle.asp?ArticleID=448









Rick Gelinas
rick@excellent-supply.com

We take all the cards, too. Just like Joe said all the high end customers want to use the AMEX.

Also, I have been with Discover for years and there credit card program with the no fees, no monthly charges, nothing if you don't use it is great. We bought our machine also. Great plan. We knew our local rep. and have not found anyone that could beat their program today.

Kevin Pearson