GenCon 2005 Booth and Credit Cards

[Luke]

I don' t have a merchant account. I'm not setting up a merchant account. Hell, Ke20 doesn't even have a merchant account. From what I remember, they're expensive.

We can use paypal's credit card processing service. prolly more expensive per unit, but cheaper for us in the long run.

End of story. No merchant account.

No merchant account means no swipey cool stuff. Oh well. We rock it new school and do it through the laptops.

Greg, you'll be bringing your drycell, right?

As far as I know, there is no wireless network in the convention hall. Which is why we need a cellular modem or a bluetooth enabled phone with a data transfer plan. We used this latter option at Origins and it worked fine.

I'm going to go to sprint today and get a new phone and plan.

What I need now, is someone to set up the Forge CC website. We need a shopping cart that lists all the products and is compliant with paypal's Website Payments Pro. While I can do this myself, I'm not the best programmer in the world. So if someone else wanted to volunteer a few hours to help out, I'd really appreciate it.

Since I got the ball rolling on this, I'll act as the bank. I'll pay out all CC transactions post con.

Total cost for this set up: ~$20 for the business data plan + $20 for the Paypal service. Divide that by 20 companies... and it's $2 each for set up fees. I'll collect at the con. ;)


-L

[Andrew Morris]

Don't forget that you need someone to volunteer their phone for the duration, though, unless you go with another method.

[Luke]

Don't forget that you need someone to volunteer their phone for the duration, though, unless you go with another method.

I quail at the state of reading comprehension.

I'm going to go to sprint today and get a new phone and plan.

Yup. I did.

[Ron Edwards]

Excellent! As I understand it, Luke is now looking for someone to help with the programming for the Forge CC website. Step up, someone, probably through private communication.

This thread is probably due for closure about now.

Best,
Ron

[LordSmerf]

I'll be bringing my Toshiba.  It's a Windows machine, so if we need such a thing for any reason that might be useful.  It'll run about 2.5 hours with a wireless connection.

Thomas

[btrc]

In the interest of cheap and convenient, I noticed the following splash screen when logging onto PayPal today:

Use PayPal to Accept Offline Payments—Free!
Here's great news for your online business:

We've created Virtual Terminal, a feature that lets you easily use PayPal to accept payments for phone, fax, mail and in-person orders

With Virtual Terminal, you can use PayPal to accept payments

   * by phone
   * by fax
   * at your store
   * anywhere you deal with customers

Act now and save: sign up for Virtual Terminal now, and use it for free until October 31, 2005. After that date, Virtual Terminal costs only $20.00 USD per month, and it's included free upon approval of your application for Website Payments Pro.

I'm guessing it still requires wireless access, but it looks like it might handle the ccard transactions and it's free until October, more than enough for our needs.

Greg
BTRC

[Ron Edwards]

Hi folks,

There's been a lot of good input on this thread, but just in case anyone needs to be reminded, unless one of the primary folks besides me (Greg, Vincent, Paul, Luke) makes a decision about the credit card processing and organizes what to do, it's not gonna happen. I really hope no one is assuming that if everyone just tosses in all the information, that somehow I will step up, decide what to do, and take care of all the details.

Best,
Ron

[Luke]

Hi Ron,

Don't you worry your little head! Clinton, Keith and I have this under control. Hopefully, I'm going to have a prototype set up by next weekend and I'll be able to test it out at a local con (dexcon).

if anything goes wrong, or we need additional help, I'll let you know.

thanks!
-Luke

[btrc]

The way I see it at this point, we can probably use the PayPal virtual terminal as a way to process payments (I'll look into it), but it is still going to require internet access. My laptop has wireless, and I'm sure someone else is bringing one with it, but I'm knee-jerk opposed to paying an outrageous fee for 4 days of wireless access through geofern or whatever.

So, I guess the question people should chime in with answers on are:
1) Does anyone have a cc merchant account? If so, we can do phone authorizations of cc's or use a ka-chunk machine.
2) Does anyone have a wireless phone plan with data access? If so, and we can get a wired or bluetooth connection to a laptop, we can run a PayPal terminal for payments.
3) Does anyone have a high-powered 802.11 transmitter/receiver and/or good external antenna for their laptop. If so, we may be able to stretch wireless range to one of the adjacent hotels that has free wireless for their guests and get online that way, and run a PayPal terminal.

If no positive results show up on this thread from these questions, then we have no cc or online payment option for the show. If one or more positive results show, then those replying will need to arrange things with me/each other and we'll post the results here.

As a side note, I will be bringing the car battery/inverter setup again, and that had enough juice to run a laptop and the cash register, and we can probably add another laptop for credit cards if it is left in sleep mode when not in use.

Greg

[Jasper the Mimbo]

Aren't you all just the cutest bunch of problem solvers!

Hi guys, i'm back from my extended vacation from the internet and really looking forward to seeing everyone in august.

So, it sounds like you guys have it pretty much covered, but I figured I'd toss my two cents in anyway.

Having grown up with parents that do the convention/exibit hall thing as thier main sourse of income I've learned a few things.

1) the setup you describe is good, but unreliable. If at all possible, go with a hard line over wireless.
2) Have a back up. My folks standard practice is to have two phone plans from different carriers. If one fails, the other may still be able to get through. In addition, the card imprinter Ron described is far and away the most reliable transaction device out there, and it is often much faster, but the best part is the fact that it leaves you with a hard copy of a signed reciept. Oh, and not everyone needs a seperate merchant account, you need one. All it takes is someone to write down the name of the company that the money for a transaction goes to and the amount. When the smoke clears and every one has recovered from the Con whoever is playing accountant electronicly transfers the funds from the merchant acount to the respective companies. Like a little forge booth Co-op.

The main problems become human error, solved easily by competent people. To make things even easier, write the name of the company on the hard copy reciept from the imprinter, just in cast of clerical error. Everyone knows who sold what to who and the amount, everyone gets paid.

So there you go. Hope it helps.

[Lisa Padol]

If all of this clicks, and credit cards are a go, folks may want to consider uping the amount of product they bring. I don't know how to calculate "sales I would have made", but I'm hearing confirmation that they were out there.

(Me, I have to buy at least: 4 copies of PTA 2nd ed, and, if it's out, at least one copy of DotV 2nd ed, ditto Mountain Witch.)

-Lisa Padol

[Jasper the Mimbo]

A merchant account through Costco is cheap (24.95 a month), Costco subcontracts to a group called Nova Information Systems, who's rates and percentages are very reasonable. If anyone is a Costco member, they can set up a Merchant Services account with minimal difficulty.

If anyone is interested in the credit card swiper rout, my advice would be to set up the merchant Account through Costco under a Forge Booth over-company. Used credit card swipers can go as low as $200 on E-bay. The main cost would be the afore mentioned phone line charge to the convention center. I forget the price, but I think it was around $400. So, the total for having a swiper sounds like it could be as low as $620, devided by the number of companies at the booth (19 by my count of Ron's list) comes out to about 33 bucks a company. Fairly reasonable, if my info is correct. The main variable is the price of the swiper.

Problems with this plan are: who gets to keep the swiper when this is all over? Also, each reciept is going to have to have the name of the company the money goes to written on it, so that the money can be devided up properly in the end.

So there's all the information I've managed to come up with. Hope it helps.

[Luke]

Success! I'm posting from my G4 12" laptop connected to the internet via my LG-325 Bluetooth Mobile.

The connection is kind of spotty -- it only lasts a few minutes before it drops -- but it works, and works rather quickly. And the phone just auto-redials, so barely notice most drops.

Clinton and Keith have volunteered to set up the storefront. If we keep it nice and spare, it should load reasonably reliably. Paypal shouldn't be too much trouble either -- their site is slow as it is, but reliable.

Even better? The total wireless charges should be about $40 to $60 for the weekend. I'll let you know if there are any other charges that come up as I experiment.

But it looks like we should be able to get away with this option -- I had fine reception in the dealer's room last year.

Greg, the real issue will be power -- i'll need about 4 hours of power from the drycell for the laptop and the mobile. Think it'll work?

Rawk!
-Luke

[btrc]

Yeah, the inverter & battery will be there and capable, though it only has two power outlets. We may need a plug multiplier to have more than two things going at once. Though since everything but the cash register is battery powered, stuff can always run off its own charge while something else is charging.

Greg

[M Jason Parent]

Hey guys,

Here's another solution, which is very low-tech and inelegant, but perhaps suitable as a fallback plan if the whole wireless thing doesn't work out.

We get one of those slidey-things that process credit cards, and have ONE company be the receiver of all those funds. Then that company pays off the other companies at the end of the con.

Problem #1: accounting; basically this means a whole new headache for the troubled people who have to work the cash register already.

Problem #2: ripoff; the company who's serving as recipient stands to lose money because there's no way to check whether the card is any good through this method.

As I say, it's a backup suggestion.

Best,
Ron

If you are using the classic credit card impression system, you can ALSO use a laptop with wireless connection to check each card during processing. That said, I'm not exactly sure of the specifics, but I know that some publishers were doing this at GenCon last year (actually - they weren't quite - they were running the impressions, then confirming the cards after the fact during their breaks at the free internet kiosks).