Tuesday Random Thoughts

**A thing that has reared it's ugly head for me is a saying I have been hearing a great deal.
Yesterday I had too many customers call us and say "you people" to me.
I had a man call and after I said hello and how may I help you he said the following:
Hey do you people do this?
Do you people come to my city?

I had a lot of those "you people" over the last month.
Is it just me or do you say that when you call someone for service?
I wouldn't think of saying that when I called a person to come fix my fireplace, "Hey do you people fix fireplaces?
First of all I called a company who's website says they do.
Second of all it's rude to me to say, "you people"

I ask everyone who calls where they heard of us.
I do this for marketing reasons.What advertising is paying off?
Was it a referral? (we have a referral program for vendors as well as customers)
So when all of the people yesterday told me they were on our website I really wondered why they would ask if "you people" do this when they just saw that we did.
It just bugs me! Just add it to my ever growing list of pet peeves.

**Rick's daughter got engaged this weekend.
Yikes a wedding! I am trying not to think about it.
Hopefully it's a very long engagement.

**Aside from the too few quips from Ricky Gervais the Golden Globes were a snooze fest.
I want more snarky Ricky and less what are you wearing?  Less of the winners thanking their God and their kids. It's a professional environment. Thank your personal family and your personal God alone or at home. At work thank those that helped you achieve this win. End of story - go sit down.

**I must say the childish head bands of the beautiful Michelle Williams and Charlize Theron were horrific as well as the Golden Globes. Seriously they looked like those head bands they put on babies. What the hell were they thinking? Someone told them this was hip and they just did it? No, no, no.

**We pay an enormous amount of money monthly to take credit cards.
It works like this if you aren't aware.
The bank charges an activation fee.
They also charge a monthly fee just to be able to offer credit cards to our customers.
They charge fees for each credit card you use.
They vary. If the card gets you points it takes more money from me.
If a card is a debit card there is a different fee. Then there are all the fees the credit card company charges the bank that I pay. American Express is outrageous. If the bill is $500 American Express gets almost $100. So we dropped Amex.  It's illegal to charge more if you take a credit card so can't make up that money just because I let you use your card.
And if you get points on your American Express I barely get my money for the damn job.
We are billed at the end of each month for this service of taking credit cards.
It can vary from $300 a month to 4 times that amount.
The more our customers use credit cards the more they take from us. I hate it.
I prefer customers give us checks but we can't say that of course.
It is a necessary evil. The worst part?
When a customer uses a credit card we don't get the money for a couple of days either. 
It goes from the card service to the bank and then to us.
A great day is only waiting 24 hours for the money.
Amex took up to 5 days. The others were usually up to 48 hrs and we got our money.

But now there is something new to replace that old banking system.
Oh how I am loving this so far.
I was watching a special that Larry King had on CNN with a group of celebrities over dinner and they all just talked about different topics. The man who invented Twitter was talking about his newest thing called The Square.  You put this little square on your IPhone or Android phone or your IPad. You can swipe credit cards and link it to your bank and no fees except one. The Square is small and fits in the middle of your palm small.

I got online immediately to check this out. It seemed too good to be true.
I continued to do research for a week.
While I still believed it had to be too good to be true but I had to try.
I signed the company up and we received the Square.
There is no activation fee, there is no monthly fee, there are no special fees from the banks or from the card companies. One fee of 2.75% of each sale. That is all we pay.
While that seems high when some of mine were 1.35 and more by the time you add up all the other fees it wasn't higher at all. It was all an illusion.
Trust me we did the math every which way we could.

I have spent the last month going over the numbers. It is working!
I get the money in 24 hrs.
They tell you 24 - 48 hrs to protect themselves I suppose.
They take the money from you off the deposit immediately.
I like that because there is no surprise at the end of the month of what your fee will be debited from your account. That is wonderful!
This is a huge savings every month from our bottom line.

Before we got this when a customer wanted to use a credit card they would give it to Rick.
He would call the office. I would input this into the computer and it would send them an email confirmation receipt. Rick would also give them an invoice as well.
We have now eliminated the need for Rick or a technician to call the office.

This tiny little thing attaches to Rick's phone.
When he is done with a job he can now take their card, swipe it in his phone and a receipt is sent to their email and he's done.
Saves time and money!!

When they sell stock I will be running to invest in this puppy.
You should too.
We have told several contractors who have all signed up.
That means we have all left banks.
No one is crying here about that!