>Dear All,
>
>I am more than a little dismayed at the recent grumbling
>concerning Paypal by a number of people. Your experiences
>may be true and your preferences I respect but I have seen a
>dramatic downturn in sales as a result of these messages.
...............
>I have spent a lot of time (and my own money) to bring products
>and enhancements to an obsolete platform. There are more in the
>works. Do I have your support?
>
>My choice of Paypal was done to streamline the process for you and me.
>It gives us both a record of the transaction and I don't have to
>keep making deposits in the bank. Now any number of on-line services
>provide this and more but this is the one I have chosen.
..................
>REMEMBER: A move back to the archaic days of send check/clear check/ship
>product/
>enter information manually, will add time to the process.
>
>David Humphreys
David,
I am truly dismayed to hear that all the of threads on this topic have
slowed sales of your fine products. Truthfully, folks, David is a small
retailer and has very limited options. If he were to accept credit
cards, he could do so with either large fees (~12% of each sale) from a
third party provider (i.e. Kagi) and pass the costs on to you, or he can
use PayPal which is inexpensive and widely available to all. Other
services have a limited user base or will not work for non-US payments.
A regular merchant account, as NuShield has, costs a minimum of $25 in
discount fees (translates to $1000/mo break even in sales @ 2.5% discount
fee) plus $30 in other monthly fees plus a sign up fee (typically
$150-300) plus annual fees ($100 or so) plus hooking his website to a
shoping cart. There are integrated solutions such as Amazon or Yahoo but
these are not very cost effective for a small merchant with occasional
sales. David has provided a product and service that normally would cost
many thousands to have done by a professional circuit board designer
shop. His creativity in design of the serial board dongle destroyer is
nothing short of miraculous in its simplicity of installation and use.
Be careful about criticizing his need for a reasonable solution to a
thorny problem. When we started NuShield, it was near impossible to
accept overseas payments until we signed up with Kagi so that credit
cards could be accepted. David can do the same, but his costs would
increase. There is little risk to the purchaser of a product using
PayPal, and you can use an echeck to pay them if you don't want them to
access a credit card. David will get a notice that the echeck is pending
and when it clears a second notice is sent.
David, in my experience you can accept both PayPal and mailed checks/MO's
without too much grief. 85-90% of orders will use credit cards, despite
the comments on this list. The rest should not cause too much hassle for
you, so maybe accepting everything is the best solution.
My two cents....
Mark Ross
markr13_at_comcast.net
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