Tips: Refunds, Chargebacks, Complaints, Contract clauses - Page 2

I would never be able to get the client signature on delivery, since i pretty much do only wedding cakes and the bride is never around when I deliver...

I don't have a smartphone either, so i don't know if this would work for me. My phone is a dumphone.

Another option with Google Checkout is to integrate it into your web site so customers can pay online with their credit card.
https://support.google.com/checkout/sell/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=38882&topic=2450413&ctx=topic

Adding "Buy Now" buttons to your web site is pretty simple, but for custom orders you may need to have your web developer make some modifications to the checkout code, as in the link below:
https://developers.google.com/checkout/articles/Allowing_Buyers_To_Specify_Price_Product_Name_Description_Quantity

Once you have a Google Checkout button integrated into your web site you could have them pay the deposit immediately by navigating to your site on their phone.

No, the tap reader for GW plugs into a point of sale machine, like you'd have at a grocery store or gas station - something that goes with a cash register. So, not helpful to (most) any of us. I wanted to post the link because *ahem* someone would have pointed out that it exists if I said there was no POS available. I don;t know if y'all have seen them - they are popping up all over the bay area. You know, home of Google

There are several free or low-cost POS services out there, Square jjust happens to be taking the world by storm because the reader is free, the transaction fees are pretty low and they don't require you to have a merchant account.

I think the biggest point that we need to understand is there are 2 different ways to process credit cards - the first, banks like Wells Fargo. My understanding is they that do POS processing and require you to have and maintain a full merchant account with them to be able to process payments. You rent a POS machine from a leasing company and pay a service to open the secure portal between your store and your bank, but your bank does the actual card processing and the sale is deposited straight into your FDIC insured bank account - no 3rd party. This is the best option for business because if a customer complains and wants their money back, unless they claim fraud there is no refund that the bank forces. But this is very expensive and unless you are a large company, not worth the cost to do business. Not to mention how hard it is to fit a cash register in your purse

The 2nd option, what most of us use, are 3rd party private companies that offer low-cost credit card card processing. Paypal, Google and Square (to name a few). They not only do the POS, they do the processing as well. Then deposit the money into your bank account. They make up their own rules about how to deal with customers and merchants because they can. I love Google today, but at any time they can change their terms of service and be more like Paypal. That would be a tragedy! I do hope they jump into the dongle game, that would make life SUPER handy for me!

So if your only option to accept credit cards in person is Google Wallet, and the customer does not have the Google Wallet app on a compatible phone or a paypass-enabled Citi Mastercard, does that mean they can only pay by cash or check?

In response to an earlier post about passing on card fees to customers, you can now do so. There was a huge settlement last month with the card companies and most merchants, and the payment card networks agreed to this change. Prior to the settlement, it was a seldom enforced rule, especially for smaller merchants. Visa and MC simply did not have the bandwidth to enforce it.

Also, my understanding is that for GW to be accepted at the POS, the merchant must accept pay pass already, which means the merchant is already set up to accept card payments. GW is not like Square for merchants, it is not a workaround to signing up directly to accept card payments, it just allows merchants to accept mobile payments in addition to plastic. Its target merchant base are high volume merchants like Starbucks or fast food stores where speedy checkouts mean more sales. it does not make sense for most cake businesses that I read about on this site to invest in it, at least not right now. I'd wait to see if it gets adopted by the larger merchants first.

From the cardholders perspective, GW appeals to them because they can upload all of their plastic credit and debit cards onto their mobile phone. I believe due to exclusivity arrangements with Google's launch partners and the need to get arrangements in place with other issuers, GW launched with Citi MC and a preloaded prepaid card, but I believe users could add their other cards.

So yesterday i got a call from a Step-MOB who had booked the previous day with me. Due to a blowup between the bride and her father at dinner that nght he had decided to pull all funding from her wedding until further notice, so they wanted to cancel the cake. Since it was only one day and it was for next June that was no big deal, but this thread reminded me to run the charge for the tasting and fees before the refund, hahaha!

Interesting thread....
FromScratch: my experience with Google Wallet was awful, I mean awful!! It took over a month to get payments deposited to my checking account. And no, I did nothing wrong; filled out nothing wrong. They did. They set up my account wrong. I was trying to replace using PayPal (which I only use for invoicing) and it was a nightmare. I also don't like not being able to actually talk to a human being. There are no phone numbers for Google Wallet or Google Merchant operations. I've used PayPal for almost 15 years with no problem. None. Zero. Just thought it would be cool to have payments go directly into the business checking account, so I tried Google Wallet.

I have a storefront so I invested in Intuit POS (Quickbooks). However, there is an additional charge for invoicing and I was not willing to pay it; which is why I still invoice through PayPal.

CostumeCzar: I get signatures for all deliveries, including wedding cakes. On my contract there is a place for the name of the person who will accept delivery of the cake. Sometimes it is the bride or member of her family; the wedding planner, the venue event manager, etc. But someone signs for the delivery. I've been doing this for over 15 years with no problem. The person is not addressing cake design, etc. just that the cake was delivered and set up and was standing when they saw it (lol)--and I take pictures to prove it.

Our experiences are all different. I think this was an excellent thread idea. Wow...and so far, no fighting!!

Ddiva, I wouldnt be able to get signatures for everything here...I wish I could but people either don't want to sign or there's nobody there. I have delived SO MANY cakes to places where there is literally NOBODY there, it's ridiculous. Or the only people there are temp serving staff, that kind of thing. If I do get the person in cahrge they dont want to sign for anything that they didnt order...I just put in my contract that I take photos as proof of delivery, but that wouldn't be enough for some of these services.