I’ll echo what Joey P said. If our POS system goes down (as it did yesterday–Black Freakin’ Friday), we can tally sales by hand, write sales on a notepad, and run credit cards on the standalone terminal. If the standalone terminal (or the phone line it’s connected to) drops, we still have that old knuckle-buster. We can take those cards no matter what.
And, jtgain, if you don’t see the issue, let me try to explain it in very simple terms:
Credit card companies charge merchants $X + Y% per sale. Just to keep numbers round, let’s call it 25 cents plus 2 percent. That’s pretty close for us. On a $100 sale, we’re paying $2.25. That’s a manageable cost of doing business. On a $1 sale, we’re paying $0.27. That probably eliminates our profit. On a $0.50 sale, we’re paying $0.26 - over half the retail price of the item - and we’re losing money.
Do you really have a huge problem with stores saying, “we’d rather not give our products away for free, or–worse yet–lose money on the transaction”?
Would you rather we raised the price of every item in the store by a quarter just so that once a day or once a week, you could stop by and put $0.87 on your card?
Not that this has anything to do with the argument at hand, just a funny story about an employee of mine that isn’t entirely great with her finances. A few months ago I noticed that she had, well, ALOT of lighters. When I asked her why she had so many she told me that the place that she get’s her cigarettes from has a minimum purchase for credit cards. Ummm, so? Well, whenever she stopped for cigarettes (which was probably daily) she’d buy a lighter too so that she would be above the minimum. At first I told her to call the number on the back of her card, but rethinking it, and realizing it probably wouldn’t make any difference, I gave her another option…Buy two packs at a time (or go somewhere else).
This is why the credit card companies don’t actually enforce this part of their contract – or they do it very selectively. They know that if they do, these stores will more likely than not just stop accepting credit cards altogether. Which is worse for everyone.
“Back in the day”, when I worked in a service station, all cc transactions everywhere were imprinted on one of those knuckle busters. We didn’t call them that though, because you soon learned how to use one without hurting yourself. And the credit slip hard copies went to corporate for payment to the owner. Giving cash for a transaction was a Great Big No No. Some card holders get around that by charging someone elses gas and getting cash that way. No problem there, but they did think they were being pretty clever.
Most people, by fsr, paid cash. Except at Chevron stations, the rich people’s dealers.
I was there when “self serve” began.
Shit, I’m old.
That’s a good idea but tbh it has only happened once in many years of having the system, although had it happened during our busy season it would have been a disaster so I might look into it, thanks.
You could probably pick one up on eBay for not to much. And like I said, our processor gave us the carbon slips for free. It’s nice to know it’s there when we need it, just make sure you write down the other info you need when you key in a card. On our old machine we needed the CVV code, on our new machine it asks for their address (numerical portion) and zip code. So whenever we have to imprint them, I have my cashiers get all three of those things AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, make sure they check to see that the CC number is legible as the ker-chunker tends to make a mess of it and/or get itself on an angle and you lose part of the number.
I had to kerchunk in the middle of the night in 30 degree weather. And rain. And I didn’t have a store full of munchies. Sniff.
“It’s my party and
I’ll cry if I want to.
Cry if I want to, cry if I want to.
You would cry too,
if it happened to you.”
Was she related to Al?
BTW; We did have a minimum cc charge.
Except your profit/loss is aggregated. You may lose the money by allowing a charge for .50, but you’re still profiting mightily by selling that $100 item to someone who wouldn’t (couldn’t) buy it with cash, and also by gaining a reputation as a customer-friendly enterprise who will take credit cards no matter what. at that point, the fact that you’re forced to swallow “once a day or once a week” someone “stop[ping] by and put[ting] $0.87 on your card” isn’t such a big deal.
think of taking credit cards on small sales in the same fashion as a loss leader.
But most dudes are not just being mean, they just don;t happen to have an cash on hand. If you force your customer elsewhere to buy that $1.00 item, then you have lost a customer.
This is why asking nice is a Good Thing, making it a rule costs business in the long run, and thus is a Bad Thing.
I mean, just by figuring what your paying your clerk to even take cash and give change for that $1.00 item you’re losing money too. Would you even say no to cash sales under a dollar then?
I went to that bakery yesterday that doesn’t accept any plastic. The line was out the door, so I’ll try again today. They have a good product, and don’t need to play games, I guess. Funny, though, it’s just bread.
If you’re ever in the neighborhood; Acme Bread
I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t do “loss leaders.” I have never liked doing them.
By your logic, I could just halve the price on a bunch of my stock and double the price on the rest. I’d make LOTS more money, right? Actually, no. I’d lose every time I sold a cheap item, and people would go elsewhere for the expensive ones. In my store, $100.00 sales are as rare as $2.00 sales.
No, I haven’t. We used to have a minimum policy, and there were plenty of people who understood and kept coming back. I’ve recently dropped the policy simply because the high school kids that frequent my store don’t seem to carry cash at ALL any more (except the ones that work in jobs where they get tips). Since the only things in my store that sell for less than a few bucks are used books, I don’t actually lose money on the transactions.
Not really, because (a) I figure the cost of the clerk as a fixed cost–I pay the same whether they do one transaction per hour or fifty and (b) a cash transaction for a single cheap item takes virtually no time at all.
