| Peer review: Merchants pay fees for sales that use plastic
A You have heard correctly: Merchants pay fees when you use your plastic for purchases. Those charges are called "interchange fees," although there may be some fees with other names built in as well. The system is fairly complicated, but the fact is that if you spend $100 using plastic when shopping, the merchant likely will see only $98 or $99 of it. Credit-card and debit signature transactions typically cost merchants between 1 percent and 2 percent of the purchase amount in fees, depending on the type of card and the banks involved. Debit transactions using a PIN cost the merchants much less, around 0.2 to 0.5 percent. These fees are divided among the bank that issued the card, the credit-card network (Visa, MasterCard, etc.), and the merchant's account provider. Some have called those fees an implicit tax, because merchants pass the costs on to customers in the form of higher prices.
AllState merchant Service, LLC. www.allstatevmc.com 866.541.8472 ...
We will begin training and hiring for the Brooklyn New York AllState Merchant Service (AMS) February 15th, 2008. In 2008 we intend to hire a minimum of 400 new account managers which will build relationships, grow their customer base and will provide proper customized vehicles for merchants which accept or want to accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, debit cards, electronic checks etc' We are committed to reliability, customer service and assure each merchant of a dedicated account representative for quality account management. AMS also offers a variety of credit card processing terminals, pos systems, web based processing systems for retail, mail/ phone order, internet based, and home based and service related industries. AllState Merchant Service, LLC. guarantees customer satisfaction and discounted rates.
Jeff Ackerman: Customer is always right ... sometimes
My first real introduction (outside of my stellar careers at Jack In The Box and Yummers Roast Beef in San Francisco) to customer service was an eye-opener.
Literally, as in eyeballs opening and closing.
Maybe 28 years ago or so I was working at a newspaper and was in charge of paper boys and girls. In those days, it was OK to hire kids to deliver papers because they hadn't yet been indoctrinated to the notion that the country owed them a living, and their parents actually thought it would be great if the kids paid for their own bicycles, Barbies and baseball cards.
The horror of it all.
One afternoon, a lady called the office to say that one of our paperboys had hit her in the eye with a newspaper, and if I didn't get out to her house "right this minute," she was going to sue me every which way but Sunday, or something like that.
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