TIP JAR

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Did I Just Wash Abraham Lincoln’s Bed?

Wesley and I are in Maryland again raising money for the development of Our Little Coffee House.  We do this by cleaning and staging estates.  We’re currently staying on the Potomac River working in a 7,000 sf home in Bryan’s Road, MD.  If you want to keep up with our whereabouts while we raise capital, check out the estate site.

This is our view from the estate window, looking across to Virginia.

The master bedroom has two very beautiful (but not matching) beds.  There is a whole lot of history in this home, but I must say the piece of history that strikes me the most is the smaller of the two beds.   Did Lincoln sleep in this bed?

There is a little bit of history written, along with a black and white photograph, of the bed, but who knows if it’s true? 

The writing under the photo above reads:

“The home of Judge David Wills, first citizen of Gettysburg, where Lincoln was a guest the night before he made his famed address on Nov. 19, 1863, is shown in the inset below.  According to Wills’ daughter, the President spent that evening working on his speech in the guest room, a few feet from the big rosewood bed shown at top, where he slept.”  As published in the Philadelphia, February 12, 1937.

Any way, I washed the bed, getting it ready for an estate sale.  If it’s true that he slept here, I think I just washed Lincoln’s DNA off the bed.  Perhaps I should save the cleaning rag?  LOL

It isn’t really his bed.  It was in the home of Judge Wills and Lincoln may have been a guest the night before, and may have wrote his famous speech (a.k.a The Gettysburg Address).  So, to be fair in this article, a better title may have been “Did I just wash a bed that Abraham Lincoln slept in?”

For now, it’s the bed of me and my husband, as this is the headboard of the bed we are sleeping on while we set up this estate.  This estate has items from the Civil War, WWI, WWII and so many other things I’ve never seen before.

Raising capital for the coffee house is hard work, but also fun.  I miss the coffee house and can’t wait to get back to start the parking lot, but for now, we are also enjoying our trip.


Lesson Learned-Do Your Homework

I turned the Groupon issue over to my bank today.   Perhaps their investigation will get Groupon to release the information they won’t give me.

In hindsight, my husband and I did not research Groupon reviews concerning credit card processing.   We should have gone with a local bank where we can walk in and speak with the people face to face.   Our own bank does not process credit cards for merchants but we should have did some checking around Clinton and Oak Ridge to see if any of the banks processed cards.

We also made a spur of the moment decision based on Groupon’s percentage rate, which beats the normal rates.

As entrepreneurs, we should have been more careful when making a decision that gives someone access to our bank account.  There are three things I think Groupon could do to improve their credit card processing services.

1.  Have a written agreement.

2.  Change the way amounts are entered into their system.  That is, have a template that automatically puts the decimal point in when keying in a credit card sales.  I can see they must make a lot of money from the mistakes of their customers. 

3.  Don’t play games with their customers.  “I’m not going to tell you the name of the employee that shut down your account.”

And there are things we can do to improve our business skills.

1.  Research a company before deciding to do business with them.

2.  Get things in writing.

3.  Listen to the advice of fellow entrepreneurs who warned us not go with Groupon.  I regret ignoring the advice another coffee shop owner gave me.  I truly regret it.  I wanted to advertise and save money.  In the end, it cost us a great deal.

On a happy note, our bank refunded us $70 today.   We have still lost $70 but at least it is not $140. 


Groupon Refused To Give Me Info

As per my bank request to first try to resolve this with Groupon before the bank is involved, I once again tried to contact Groupon.

I called their Groupon Merchant Services number: 888-514-4644 and initially spoke with Pat Richardson.   He wouldn’t transfer me to the legal department.  Instead someone else picked up the call.

Matt Owens took over the conversation.

I told him we were told we did not owe Groupon money and that our account was closed because I asked them to close it.   I asked him to look at the notes on our account.  He said there were no notes.  I said “How convenient.”

He asked me for the name of the person I talked to.  I didn’t know the name.  So, Matt went on to place the blame on me, with his “Let me ask you a question.” routine.

I tried to continually steer him back to the issue at hand, which is, one of their employees told me we did not owe any money, and they shut our account down.  I also told him I didn’t think Groupon would let their employees go around shutting down merchant accounts without there being a record of it.

He said he knows who shut it down.

I reminded him he said there were no notes on my account. 

I asked him for the name of the person that shut down my account.  He said no.

Just that.  A simple no.

I asked him why he wouldn’t give me the name since that person is the one that said we didn’t owe Groupon any money and that person is the one that shut down our account.

He said no again.  He will not give me the name.

I asked why.  He said he has to protect his employee.

Really?  What about your customer Groupon?   I know you are reading these blog posts because my tracker says you are.  What about your customers?

So, Groupon gets access to our bank account without giving us the information we need for our bank to investigate.   I guess now I have done what my bank wants and I’ll turn it over to them and perhaps my bank can get the name from Groupon.


Groupon Hit Our Account Again!

I went to the bank today to deposit money to cover what Groupon had done to our account, only to find out they did it again.  This time, it was even after they closed our account and told us we didn’t owe them anything.

I find it interesting that they stated we didn’t owe them any money, yet, they accessed our bank through some kind of auto bot for the fourth time for money we didn’t owe them!

Right now, our bank told us we have to give Groupon a chance to make this right and give us back all the fees before the bank can get involved.  So far they have cost us $140, and that may seem a small amount to established businesses, but it was enough to shut down our coffee house.  We got an advance on a contract we’re going to be working on in order to cover the Groupon incidents.

Merchants beware.  Please.  Groupon has very poor, deceptive business practices if you allow them to process your credit cards.

I’ll make an update as I learn more about how to handle this.  In the meantime, we have closed down Our Little Coffee House because this has overdrawn our account and we can’t recover fast enough without going to Maryland to try to raise more money.

While we are there, we’re going to stay for as long as there is work and perhaps we will raise enough to put in get the parking lot put in and get the coffee bar re-wired.

We are learning it’s not worth it to accept credit cards.  There is another thing that hurts us as well.  You know those cash back credit cards we accept?   You don’t pay for that cash back.  We do.   We are hit up for a higher percentage so people can get cash back.

Honestly, it just might be we end up a cash and check type of business.  We have yet to find any integrity in credit card companies.

I’m hoping there are other businesses fighting this, but perhaps Groupon is too new to the credit card processing services that complaints have not surfaced yet.  Maybe ours is the first complaint.

If something is too good to be true, it probably is.

 


Groupon Credit Card Processing Warning

I suppose this post is partly rant and partly a warning to other merchants, but nonetheless, it is necessary since Groupon DOES NOT warn you of their fees and business practices in advance.

We are a very small, start up coffee house that was getting hit hard with fees from another credit card processing company.    The other company was also charging $35+ per month, even if we don’t process any cards that month.  So, when Groupon announced to us that they can process our credit cards for us at 1.88% with no monthly fees, how can we not switch to them?

We didn’t sign anything nor did we get training.  We were given access to the merchant control panel and off we went with processing cards for our coffee house.

One VERY IMPORTANT thing they neglected to tell us if we make a mistake, we will be charged a fee for it.

Here is a mistake other business owners and cashiers may make, like we did, and it was very costly!  So much so that we shut down our Groupon account.  We are not in a financial position to afford these mistakes, but perhaps our experience will help others to be very careful.

When your cashier rings up an amount, and it’s the wrong amount, you will still be charged for that amount even if you rapidly click the refund button.  Groupon’s control panel is very easy to use, and if you make a mistake, it’s very simple to undo the mistake, but Groupon does not warn you there will be a charge for your mistake.

Here are two actual mistakes we made.

Amount to ring up $3.00

Amount entered $300 (didn’t put in the decimal point)

Groupon fees:  They charged us for both fees.

Amount to ring up $10.50

Amount entered $1050 (again, didn’t put in the decimal point)

Groupon fees:  OY!   Let me just say this again….OY!

Now, here is where I draw the line on anyone having access to our checking account, which is another reason I switched to Groupon.   Our previous credit card processing company had unmonitored access to our bank account.  They were taking money out and putting money in and collecting fees and we never knew when they were going to access our account.  I don’t like that because it’s hard to keep up with them depositing money, and THEN taking their fees out before we even know how much will be withdrawn.

Groupon sales person assured us they NEVER take money out of our account.  All fees, according to them, are removed on their end, before any money is deposited into our bank account.  I specifically asked them about this, because of the previous company.  Again, I was reassured Groupon would never be taking money out of our bank account and would only put money in after they held back any fees we owed them.

Today was a heart breaking day for us because Groupon people lied.   We had no idea they were trying to access our bank account to take money out.  That thought never crossed our minds.

We had just withdrawn the little bit of money we had in our account so we could buy inventory.

Groupon hit our bank account THREE TIMES trying to withdraw money.  Not once were we given a courtesy call.  We have been charged $105 in overdraft fees.

When I called Groupon today to ask why they were taking money out of our bank account, they said it was because of the two fees I outlined above when the decimal point was not put in.  I reminded him that we were told Groupon doesn’t withdraw money and the fees are to be taken out of our credit card processing amount.  He didn’t care.

There was enough money in our Groupon account for them to have deducted the fees.  Instead of doing that, they accessed out bank account without telling us.  Not once.  Not twice.  No phone call. 

I closed down our Groupon account.  The sales person didn’t even attempt to work with us.  I told him this cost us a lot of overdraft fees and they told me they would never be taking money out of our account.  What do I call this?  I call this a lie.  I call it deceptive business practices.  I call it wrong. 

It is hard enough to be a start up company without credit card messes.  It’s hard enough to try to start a business without a bank loan.   Every time we think we are getting ahead, something happens to set us back.

We will climb out of this, but we now have a horrible negative balance in our checking account and we have to start over.

Honestly, I don’t think anyone should have access to your bank account, ever. 

And one more thing which is a huge mistake on my part.  Since there is no contract with Groupon, that means nothing is in writing.  I trusted them when they said they would never take money out of our account.   I’m such a sucker.  I should have got that in writing.

We just can’t take credit cards right now.  The lessons in business management can be very painful when you make a mistake and this has been a huge mistake but we’ll keep moving forward.

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Update to this post:

After further researching of Groupon credit card practices, I discovered something today on Cardfellow’s site.  Groupon is not a credit card processing company.  They use Global Payment and just run our credit cards through THEIR credit card processing company.

And what previous company did we use before we switched to Groupon, you ask?

Global Payment.

Looks like we jumped out of the frying pan and into the kettle.