My bad experience starting my business

[coffee]

Iam starting this thread in hopes it helps anyone else just starting a business. Keep in mind that I dont have alot of business experience and most of my experience is on hardware. So, I learned the hard way on alot of financial things. Feel free to add to this post your experiences starting out. Mine might be hard to beat?

I was working part time for a francise company that did what I wanted to do. I had alot clients myself on the side and I discussed that with my PT employer and they said it would not be a problem. So, Working for them I learned alot about advertising and such and I soon had about 2K to invest in my beginning business!

My first step was getting listed in the Yellow Pages. I talked extensively to them and even hammered out a ad that I wanted posted. We agreed on a price and I signed off on the proof for the ad. This was about 2 months before printing. I was very excited! Next I realized that credit card acceptance would be needed.

I spent a month researching (duh!) the best way and finally signed up for the credit card program. Got some nice stickers and a hand-press (didn't need it but they sent it). My idea was that I just need to login to a site and run cards. This seemed to be a right move as I had gone to the bank and opened a business checking account so I can process checks. My credit card expenses would be directly taken from the account which I thought was normal business. But then the pain started!

The phone books came out and I was not in them!! I called YP and they basically dropped the ball and never followed thru. They basically said "Sorry" and left it at that. I had no idea I had to sign a contract and they never mentioned it. I really felt betrayed. But it gets even worse!

So now I have very little advertising. Then the bank called about a month later and said that I was overdrawn on my business account! I thought "How can this be?". Evidently I was dinged 185 dollars because I needed to submit to a check for security in the way I process payments. This was from some organization (pnc, pic , cant remember now). Also, I found alot of charges for gateway expenses, other monthly charges. On top of all that I had the overdraw fees on the account too!!

In the end I never did get a customer that paid by credit card. They normally paid cash or check.

To top this all off with frosting, My boss called me and said that my pay check is going to run quite a bit short because some companies are not paying their bill! At that point I felt like I would end up working for McDonald's!. "Want fries with that?".

Who doesn't pay their bills? Homeland Security, C-Plus (we where a third party for their out of area clients).

Whats the moral of the story? I guess it would be "Do not give up!". I will backup, Regroup, and get thru this mess.

Can you beat that? Thats my "Tale of Woe"

 

[Xander]

Are you on commission with your job? Your boss' customers not paying their bill is not your problem; it's his. Unless you're on commission (and even then) he should be paying you as his first expense.


I've been working out of my home the entire time. I might have averaged one credit card a month, if that. For those, I just use Paypal. (I then use Paypal for my occasional online purchases like Vistaprint and gadgets)

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

I've been working out of my home the entire time. I might have averaged one credit card a month, if that. For those, I just use Paypal. (I then use Paypal for my occasional online purchases like Vistaprint and gadgets)

I do the same, but would say that I get even fewer credit cards so the Paypal cut doesn't bother me.

 

[callthatgirl]

LOL--you're lucky. I've had way more drama than that in the past six months and I am in the 5th year.

But that sucks though, sorry you got the screw job from the bank. Those F'ers never care "why" you overdrew, you did and pay up sucka!

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

For what it's worth I find that Credit Unions are better to work with.

 

[Mushin]

Coffee,

First and foremost hang in there and learn from tehse situations. Although you were delt these cards early on it is good to know that challeges will make you better in the long term.

Take from this the fact that all contracts and orders should be fully examined to protect yourself and to also make sure you are able to follow through on any items that you may be required to. Essentially... take nothing for granted and follow up on everything... and follow up often.

 

[NerdHouse]

Look into Squareup if you have a smart phone such as an Android or iPhone. There are no hidden fees. It's great. I love it.

 

[coffee]

Are you on commission with your job? Your boss' customers not paying their bill is not your problem; it's his. Unless you're on commission (and even then) he should be paying you as his first expense.


I've been working out of my home the entire time. I might have averaged one credit card a month, if that. For those, I just use Paypal. (I then use Paypal for my occasional online purchases like Vistaprint and gadgets)

When I hired in the agreement was that I would get paid when the paid work order was turned in. Its never been a real problem until we started some 3rd party repairs and the government. The owners of the francise are very good people and have treated me excellent but they are getting stiffed just like me. We are going to sue the one company but you can not sue the government I guess.

As for the paypal deal with credit cards Ill have to look at that. I do have a paypal account but dont understand how to take credit cards thru it yet. Perhaps you can enlighten me?

Thanks for your reply,

 

[coffee]

Coffee,

First and foremost hang in there and learn from these situations. Although you were dealt these cards early on it is good to know that challenges will make you better in the long term.

Take from this the fact that all contracts and orders should be fully examined to protect yourself and to also make sure you are able to follow through on any items that you may be required to. Essentially... take nothing for granted and follow up on everything... and follow up often.

I want to thank you very much for your encouragement. Learning from the ground up is really hard and depressing at times. I got pretty busy yesterday and will concentrate on getting the credit card problem taken care of today. I will also regroup for the yellow pages account again.

Thanks once again for the encouragement!

 

[coffee]

Look into Squareup if you have a smart phone such as an Android or iPhone. There are no hidden fees. It's great. I love it.

Wish I had either. But I cannot afford them at this time. I have a stupid phone right now that just takes calls and text messages. But when I do - I will!

Thank you!

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

Wish I had either. But I cannot afford them at this time. I have a stupid phone right now that just takes calls and text messages. But when I do - I will!

Thank you!

LOL, that made my day, makes me think of the Windows Mobile based phone I had that was a supposed smart phone. I cussed it daily and called it my stupid phone.

 

[coffee]

I want to add to my story and my attempts to stop the credit card acceptance company.

I called the company (www.charge.com) and talked to one of their "representatives" and he said that he could not help me and that I needed to go to www.charge.com/support to get it cancelled. I went to the site and noticed that there is no published link for "support". Most websites that offer something usually have them. A red flag went up! I typed in the link manually and it brought me to a online fill in form in order to contact them. I filled it in and immediately called my bank (chase) to speak to them about this problem.

According to the rep at chase they cannot do anything to help me. Since I gave permission to the charge.com to access my account they cannot stop them. They also would do nothing about the overdraft charges.

I did recieve an email telling me someone would be contacting me from charge.com sometime today. However, I have my doubts.

So now I cannot seem to reach anyone at charge.com to talk to them and the bank will not help me at all.

Currently, Iam being charged 44.95 a month from this charge.com and also an additional 19.95 for a PCI fee.

Im in deep dodo here.

©Charge.com Payment Solutions, Inc., 2011.
Charge.com Payment Solutions, Inc. is a registered ISO/MSP of Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., Walnut Creek, CA.

My advice is to stay away from www.charge.com!!

 

[maclaptech]

I'm sorry you are going through this. Not sure if this is going to make you feel better or worse but once you get into this business, you will face lot more issues that what you have faced already.

You just deal with them and either give up or keep going... I would say keep going but that is all depends on how dedicated you are and how badly you want to make it work.

Few years back, I worked with my uncle and I started his online business for him selling video security systems. He only sold to government and big companies before that. I singed up with a merchant account company and setup the shopping cart and also charged customers on phone. 6 months later we hear from our so called accountant that there is something wrong and none of the charges had gone through in those months. This was over $40,000 in products we had shipped and never got paid for.

The idiot accountants (two of them) never caught this issue until it was too late. So we had to call and beg our merchant account provide to release those credit card numbers so that we could run them again (they don't release them after certain amount of time). We recovered around $30,000 of it and I had to pay $6,000 out of pocket since I was the one that was responsible for starting the online business. The idiot accountants didn't have to pay anything since they were not actual employees. They were contractors.

 

[Xander]

As for the paypal deal with credit cards Ill have to look at that. I do have a paypal account but dont understand how to take credit cards thru it yet. Perhaps you can enlighten me?

While there are probably other ways to do it, I used Paypal's options to create a PAY NOW button for my website (top of PCF1X.com for example). The customer fills in the amount, clicks Update and then, on the right side, clicks where they want to continue without having a Paypal account.

 

[TechLady]

Same thing here, I use Paypal on the rare occasion the customer wants to use credit card--99% of the time it is check or cash. I never bothered with a business account at a bank, because they wanted thousands of dollars in it to start off, which I never had. I just use a credit union. They don't charge for ANYTHING, not even overdrafts. Honestly, I have no idea why people deal with banks at all. All they do is rip you off.

As far as the Yellow Pages, don't let them talk you into a huge ad. A lot of people are using the internet now instead of phone books!

 

[coffee]

You just deal with them and either give up or keep going... I would say keep going but that is all depends on how dedicated you are and how badly you want to make it work.

Thank you for your post. Im going to keep going! After all this mess is cleaned up Im going to close my accounts at chase and move to a credit Union like TechLady suggests.

I will also look into paypal a bit more and STUDY the option

Thanks again

 

[Tony_Scarpelli]

I want to add to my story and my attempts to stop the credit card acceptance company.

I called the company (www.charge.com) and talked to one of their "representatives" and he said that he could not help me and that I needed to go to www.charge.com/support to get it cancelled. I went to the site and noticed that there is no published link for "support". Most websites that offer something usually have them. A red flag went up! I typed in the link manually and it brought me to a online fill in form in order to contact them. I filled it in and immediately called my bank (chase) to speak to them about this problem.

According to the rep at chase they cannot do anything to help me. Since I gave permission to the charge.com to access my account they cannot stop them. They also would do nothing about the overdraft charges.

I did recieve an email telling me someone would be contacting me from charge.com sometime today. However, I have my doubts.

So now I cannot seem to reach anyone at charge.com to talk to them and the bank will not help me at all.

Currently, Iam being charged 44.95 a month from this charge.com and also an additional 19.95 for a PCI fee.

Im in deep dodo here.

©Charge.com Payment Solutions, Inc., 2011.
Charge.com Payment Solutions, Inc. is a registered ISO/MSP of Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., Walnut Creek, CA.

My advice is to stay away from www.charge.com!!

I had a similar situation with a contract I signed for employees to use a local gym membership. It was $29 per month per employee. within 90 days 15% of the equipment in the gym was not working. I couldn't stop payment so I closed the bank account. Sent notice to the gym why I canceled the agreement for their default.

I agree a credit union might be a better choice. Don't worry about accepting Visa until you get repeated calls for same.

I think I pay $19 per month visa and 1.75% of processed charges and 26 cents per charge. I do about 60% of my business with visa/mc so I'd be out of business without them. You got to search for a good visa processing company. Sounds like you found a dog.

Setup a paypal account. I find that many people have paypal already.

BTW- who is the franchise you work for, if you rather not post publicly, please send me a PM.

 

[coffee]

Is victory near??

Friday charge.com decided to call me. How nice. I got some rep on the phone and explained things to him and it was kinda down hill from there. I have to admit I got kinda upset with him and he finally said "You have to understand, I just work here".

Whats kinda funny is that this is the same day I filed a BBB complaint about the company. But, I dont think filing had anything to do with them calling me. I think my number just came up thats all. But it is kinda ironic.

Well, They called at 4:30 in the afternoon and told me that they would email the "paperwork" to me to close the account and a copy of the contract I signed. Reason I wanted a copy is that I didnt remember reading anything about this PCI deal about security. I told them that I wanted to continue our conversation on monday then as I had asked to speak to his manager.

"Will I win in this epic confrontation? I dont know but I can say I think I have graduated from Business 101 !!

I dont see any email from them yet. I think I see how this is going to go.

 

[Tony_Scarpelli]

If it makes you feel any better, I bought a $355 card reader that calls the company to process the visa. I later found it on ebay new for about 195 less than I paid.

So maybe they just have to screw you one way or another.

I refused to take CC's for years but then I finally took them about 3 years ago and now I think I probably average $7-10k per month on visa/mc. I think with the recession of 2008, I might have lost so much business that it would have been difficult for me to remain in business as most of my customers seem not to be able to pay a $200 bill out of checking or cash.

 

[coffee]

You know I run into that with parts sometimes. I buy one for 200 and then find it alot cheaper at someplace else. So I know how you feel there. Im afraid though this experience with CCs is gonna be an expensive one. Its been suggested by others to go thru paypal for the credit cards. I will look into that and hopefully I get back on track and quit bleeding money!

Thanks for your post,