We are currently extending our services to our customers. As part of this process we felt we should acquire the ability to take payment by credit card and to offer online purchasing and invoice payment. We talked to our bank about this. The first hurdle was that our online turnover would likely be too small to justify a merchant account. Second was they would charge us very high charges for the service. The final nail in this particular coffin was the complexity of the online solution to incorporate into our site. So we looked at Paypal’s Website Payments Pro at paypal.com.
The first step was to ring them, we used the contact number and almost immediately got through to a charming chap called Chris who spent considerable time going through the options with us. Although the costs were still high enough to make an impact on our margins they were considerable less than the bank’s offering. Basically we have to pay £20.00 per month for the service (an extra £20.00 if we want to be able to set up recurring payments) and £0.20 for each transaction plus 3.4% commission. We decided to go with the basic coffering and have just completed the process. I did get into a muddle with this at one point and this was due to the fact that I hadn’t properly read the e-mails the process had generated. I did try and use the help desk at this point and found myself going round in circles, a frequent experience with help lines for large organisations. However, that aside the subsequent support from Chris and PayPal has been exemplary. Even to the extent that last night I put a call through to him at 16:55 and got his voice mail and as it wasn’t urgent didn’t leave a message. At 09:00 this morning he called me back as he had noticed the missed call. I went through what I wanted and he promised to organise a call back to me from their developer support department. At 10:45 they did.
It’s this commitment to good service that counts, especially in today’s world of fast communication. We shall stick with PayPal. We will be an insignificant a part of their sales turnover but they make us feel we count.
So customers note, we can now take payment by credit card over the phone and in the near future we shall have online payment services too.
Using Paypal
We are currently extending our services to our customers. As part of this process we felt we should acquire the ability to take payment by credit card and to offer online purchasing and invoice payment. We talked to our bank about this. The first hurdle was that our online turnover would likely be too small to justify a merchant account. Second was they would charge us very high charges for the service. The final nail in this particular coffin was the complexity of the online solution to incorporate into our site. So we looked at Paypal’s Website Payments Pro at paypal.com.
The first step was to ring them, we used the contact number and almost immediately got through to a charming chap called Chris who spent considerable time going through the options with us. Although the costs were still high enough to make an impact on our margins they were considerable less than the bank’s offering. Basically we have to pay £20.00 per month for the service (an extra £20.00 if we want to be able to set up recurring payments) and £0.20 for each transaction plus 3.4% commission. We decided to go with the basic coffering and have just completed the process. I did get into a muddle with this at one point and this was due to the fact that I hadn’t properly read the e-mails the process had generated. I did try and use the help desk at this point and found myself going round in circles, a frequent experience with help lines for large organisations. However, that aside the subsequent support from Chris and PayPal has been exemplary. Even to the extent that last night I put a call through to him at 16:55 and got his voice mail and as it wasn’t urgent didn’t leave a message. At 09:00 this morning he called me back as he had noticed the missed call. I went through what I wanted and he promised to organise a call back to me from their developer support department. At 10:45 they did.
It’s this commitment to good service that counts, especially in today’s world of fast communication. We shall stick with PayPal. We will be an insignificant a part of their sales turnover but they make us feel we count.
So customers note, we can now take payment by credit card over the phone and in the near future we shall have online payment services too.