[College of ACES] [University of Illinois] [Illinois CES]

Re: Credit Cards

arborist@gilroy.com
Fri, 21 Aug 1998 01:41:10 -0500


I don't necessarily approve of the entire credit card
industry as it stands. The percentages charged are
really what used to be called "usery" (negatively not
literally) in court cases against loan sharks.
However, we do offer the use of credit cards to our customers.

CardService International is the company we use.
800-456-5989

It is expensive for a small company, they charge
you to receive payment, it costs for the equipment,
and, of course, it costs the customer to use the cards. I
figure they make about 25% on each purchase. Not to mention
the fact that it takes up to 3 days before the $$ hits your
account. That's 3 days they have the $$ when neither you or
your customer has it. That adds up to billions per year,
at least millions, for them.
We got signed up to use them because a company we work for
wants to pay using a corporate card. The maintenance
superintendant authorized the initial payment to sign up,
about $ 400. The equipment costs about $3,500 in payments
of $ 75 per month. (that's throught the finance co.
to which we make payment for the equipment.) The monthly
service to the cardservice co is $ 35 + what they call
a "discount" ( if that's not Orwellian double speak, I don't
know what is) of .029% which is what they charge me from
each transaction (example $ 950. sale they charge me 28.41)
it is a tax deduction and not a significant amount of money.

We average about $ 2000 worth of sales each month by credit.
We only run 1 full time crew. A lot of customers find it
convenient and since we needed it for this situation it has
been an over all good thing.