Hockeyplayer

who cares about the policies? they attacked the person. How do you know they attacked him? It only says they chased down the guy. I can just imagine the tackle. out of control rent-a-cop bouncer. they should have just called the police if they wanted to accuse the guy of credit card theft. Keep imaging things. Nowhere in the article does it say anything about anyone attacking him... That's not to say that I hope they didn't attack him. Thieves are just about the lowest level on the chain next to pond scum and child molesters.

who cares about the policies? they attacked the person. How do you know they attacked him? It only says they chased down the guy.

Re: no cash and murder. I got held up at gunpoint on Sunset and Laurel Ave one night (next to Greenblatt's). I had just gotten out of a club nearby, only had $3 cash on me. I was unarmed, these guys looked like amateurs so I just said "Hey guys, I have only have three bucks in my wallet, just take it." I hand dumb$hits my wallet, they grab the cash, and hand me back my $550 Louis Vuitton wallet. Gues they didn't spend much time browsing www.purseforum.com On another note, I feel much better now that I have adjusted my tinfoil hat. I am quite content with having a few thousand bucks sitting idly by, not earning me interest. Kinda like I don't mind storing gallons of water in case of a big earthquake. There are other things out there besides black helicoptors and .gov to fear.

Source?

That's BS. Anyone willing to pony up the yearly fee (and meet their requirements) can get one. We constantly keep declining Amex's invitation to get a business black card. Back to the original post: Do not apply until a couple months after you pay off the original CO amount.

But that cash couldn't get you into Monday, could it? Apparently sunday was spent in the underground, which explains the cash Just playin' with ya hp... My alcohol-fueled Sunday was pretty wild. Maybe it's the booze making me say such crazy stuff about cash and the day of the week...

I wonder what George and Hege would have done in that case? Maybe they could have done like that cartoon character in Popeye and given the restuarant owner an IOU... "I'll gladly pay you for three hamburgers tomorrow, for one today." Cash is a tool, just like credit cards. I agree that i9/10 times it is much better to charge stuff than to pay cash, but to rely exclusively on credit cards is asinine. Always keep a little of that subprime cash around, as insurance if nothing else.

Eh, it's monday, did you sleep through sunday?

Cash is only subprime until phonelines and the power goes out. Holler your mantra all you want, when the SHTF your credit cards will be completely useless,and you will be begging a friend or family to borrow cash. Despite what you all think, cash is still king! (It's a Sunday morning and I am bored, okay? )

My wife had a wedding where the husband's late wife had passed away from cancer 6 months earlier. To make matters even weirder, the family of the wife that had passed away a few months earlier came to the wedding of the groom and his new spouse. Both the groom and the "new" wife have several teenage kids with their former spouses. I try not to judge, but I found the whole situation a bit bizarre.

The way you are making excuses for fat people who drink too much, don't exercise and don't eat right scares me more than any perceived government intrusion. I am all for this. The obesity problem in this country is out of control. Why should business owners suffer financially because someone cannot put down the bucket of KFC? Then again, business owners could just not hire people who are overweight, less productive due to being smokers, etc.. Good luck trying to prove discrimination when there are several qualified candidates for a position.

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Good points, OC. If I may add to a few of your excellent points... Lease vs own: I own all of my terminals. I got great deals on them. Once I even got two brand new ones for dirt cheap, from a guy who never even opened his store. Before I purchased them, I called up my processor to see if the terminals were compatible with their system. When they said yes, I danced a jig. They even gave me free paper. Leases stink! You end up paying a fortune for a terminal that should costs between $130-$300, and you end up with nothing. If your processor says they cannot sell you a terminal and that you must lease from them, find another processor immediately. Same thing if they say they will not reprrogram an existing terminal you already have (provided that it is supported and compatible with their gateway. Reseller vs Bank: If you go directly to the bank or processor and leave out the ISO, you can usually save quite a bit in fees. Not necessarily. People with Bofa and WellsFargo (just a couple examples...) get slammed big time. If you try to go direct, some of the larger banks will not even give you the time of day unless you process $150k+ per month... Banks often work on a 60+ basis points profit for small merchants, once you get past their deceiving 3-tier rates. My company tends to write folks up at less than half that. Basically, you have to keep in mind that going direct CAN be a way to save money, but you certainly can find rates just as (or more) competitive with ISOs. Just to give you an idea, we switched a very large clothing company (rhymes with Ned Party) from direct to ISO. b]Chargeback fees:[/b] If a merchant has sucessful chargebacks, the fees can add up. This is charged by the processor and the fees vary greatly. There are some processors who charge $40 per charge back. There is one where 5 chargebacks/month are free. Each one after that is $5. Wow, $40 for a chargeback is crazy! Anyone offering 4 free chargebacks to merchants a month is either: a) making it up with higher processing costs or offering it as a courtesy to customers who never get chargebacks. Also, it comes down to the processing volume of the mechant. We usually charge $10 per occurence. Many merchants do not realize that by shopping around and comparing services and fees they can really save some money each month. No doubt. The problem is that so few merchants are educated on interchange and rates. They see a qualified rate of 1.5%, yet they neglect to notice on their bill that all the transactions are falling into mid and non-qual and their effective rate is over 3%! To add insult to injury, that qualified rate of 1.5% still robs the merchant, since the Visa interchange on debit cards is 1.03% Figure you have a decent deal at 30 basis points above cost, and you are effectively paying 1.33%, cheaper than the best qualified rate. Every year I attend a banking conference in Dallas for ISOs of Paymentech. We do a "peer pulse" which measures what independent sales organizations feel comfortable in, and what they need more education on. For the past three years, the number #1 answer on what most ISOs needed education on was Interchange rates!!!! It's pretty amazing that even the people selling the service do not truly understand interchange rates. A good example of this would be a merchant who has a bunch of transactions falling into EIRF, and the processor/ISO not notifying them to make the changes to eliminate the downgrade (punch in last 4-digits, data rate i to II by entering cvv2, avs, etc.) I plan on starting a thread on how to save merchants $$$, hopefully I'll get around to it later today. When it comes to CC processing, education is key, and most people simply do not know enough about the industry to not get screwed over.

How exactly is it not responsible to use a card for under a $1? Merchants lose a lot of money for signature transactions under $1.00 Even if their fee is $0.75 on a $1 sale, they are coming out with 25 cents. If you didn't shop there and spend money, they come out with 0 cents. Yeah, that 25 cents is all profit cause all merchandise sold is free and doesn't cost the owner anything.

Visa and MC have an interchange category for small ticket purchases. (I believe under $15?) 1.xx% and $0.04 instead of 10 or 15 cents per transaction. Obviously this is before the ISO/MSP takes their cut. One of my customers is a fairly successful video store who has under a three-tier rate and not receiving the small ticket interchange category. He ended up saving a fortune when switching to a true interchange platform. Most modern pos terminals (Hypercom, Ingenico, Verifone) can process transactions under $1 without a problem, at least with Chase Paymentech and Wells Fargo, I cannot comment on every specific processor/bank. And getting back to the chargeback discussion: Yes, merchants are responsible for capturing a legible signature, but crap happens. Customers walk out in their signed receipts, merchants ship to a different address for billing since it a PO, etc. I have to constantly go over this kind of stuff with merchants and insist that: a) They verify that the signature is pretty much exact (even though many folks don't sign their slips like the back of their card) If they are Moto, always ship to the billing address, no exceptions. Personally, I would be embarrassed to charge something for 50 cents, considering I always have at least that much change in my car. Even though you can, doesn't mean you should...