In a previous post I wrote about issues a client, Botanas had with their MSP. Well COVID-19 caused a mistake to be made. You can read that blog here: http://theweeklygeek.com/2020/05/04/pay-for-manages-services-dont-get-support/
As a restaurant and needing to stay in business, move the produce she purchased before the mandatory (and in my opinion illegal) shutdown the owner wanted to offer online order and drive up pickup.
They do not have a normal drive through window.
She (the owner) called me and since her menu was on her website and up to date, I suggested that she simply put on her website and in social media something to the effect “call in your order and pickup your meal”. She also called the salesman for the MSP, who sold her a whole new point of sale that had an app. If course the system was “free” if she switched credit card services.
Oh, the big scam.
I have been in this industry since 1984 and dealt with credit card services since the early 2000’s. Each and every one is a POS, and I don’t mean Point-of-sale. They all lie cheat and steal. If you represent a card company shut up, I can prove it and you know it.
She signed a contract and now gets to transfer her whole database, meal preparation and setup to a new system, that is in the cloud, and cost $35 a month and the credit card fees are averaging 3.3%.
Am I bitter to the sales slime, you bet. You see, When I had set her up with Dinerware, I also set her up with Mercury for processing her cards. They were American owned and had American tech support. Later they were sold to Vantiv who had foreign support and who slipped in additional quarterly fees for “compliance”. Then Worldpay bought Vantiv and “required” a monthly “Omnishield” fee of $24.98. Each time I fought for her and kept rates low. Her February and March 2020 statement averaged 2.1% for all fees and charges.
The sales slime in Kansas City told her she was averaging 3.3%, while simple math would have shown otherwise. Oh, and the mandatory fees, “they are not responsible” or “able to control” what “Visa and Mastercard require”, which is a total LIE. They are tack on fees to rape the client even more.
She had to manually put her menu into a new system, depend on the “cloud” which is down an average of 14 days a year in Branson, and pay thousands of dollars a year more in credit card fees, all because she called a salesman and listened to him instead of the tech company that has literally bent over backwards to make sure Botana’s had the absolute best of what they NEEDED, not what we could sell her.
Proof? They wanted guest and private wi-fi so they could use tablets. The manufacturer we (Ward Computers) had used in the past, changed their business model from a buy it and “own it” to a buy it and “pay a monthly fee”. As a result, we (Ward Computers) were already in search of a new hardware provider. We went with UniFi.
Well it turns out the “reps” at UniFi lied to me about what was needed. After we bought their hardware and spent 25 ½ hours trying to configure and get things to work.
As a result, I pulled the UniFi hardware and installed SonicWall hardware, which worked the way it was supposed to.
Since UniFi lied to me, and stalled for months, I was unable to return the hardware. So, what did I do? We ate the cost of the hardware and the cost of labor (25 ½ hours). That is right, we did not screw Botana’s because of someone else’s lie, we took the hit. That is what customer service and Ward Computers is about.
And that is why I am so angry about the Sales slime and new point of sale.
Until we meet again, have a virus free week.