Tony

Its revolutionary for our industry. Its very likely that we are the only chain doing this but I cant be certain. It is a money maker!

uts-sj

Wow! I'm really blown away. If your system is really getting new card numbers automatically after a cancelled card without any customer input, then you really need to get back into the software business and not just for tanning. Wow!

Tony

well its a great feature but its not enough to drive me back into the tanning software business.
Having 80 salons largely on EFT is the driving force behind us making such a large IT investment.
It pays good dividends to have your own IT department assuming of course you know how do design
software and systems pertinent to indoor tanning!

Tony

Not only is there no customer input there is no employee input. Its 100% automated. We get the new card number sometimes before we even get a decline so we never know the card went bad!

mmurra

Tony PLEASE make this system available to our industry! Mark

Tony

i would say its 50/50 mark! :) Got to build another 125 stores as my first priority :)

Black Sun

It would seem to me, VERY ILLEGAL, to obtain a credit card# without the CC holders knowledge or approval.

Obviously, not familiar with this "revolutionary software', but I would imagine between federal and state consumer protection laws, this is a BIG NO-NO and by doing so, you are opening the door to some legal problems. I know, I for one would sue any business or individual that obtains such personal info without approval

uts-sj

I think the fine line is between agreeing to auto payments versus agree to a card number.

Most membership agreements state you pay X, you get X. The agreement doesn't mention anything about you will be charged with this card number.

Just the other day, a client comes in to update their card and he says he was surprised it didn't go through cause all his other auto payments went through. And the card number and expiration were different. I didn't ask what companies he was talking about but it's obvious this is going on in other places, just not tanning, unfortunately.

And it's clear to me that you have to have this technology in order for a membership-only salon to work. Otherwise, you are dealing with declines at a high rate. The Target fallout is continuing to this day. Ive never had so many declines and that event happened Dec 1. People are getting new cards issued now in April, months later. Unless you are prepared, that kind of delay in payments can hurt operations.

concept999

The auto-update feature is something that's approved by both Visa and MC, as Tony mentioned. The problem is finding a merchant processor that offers it. We use First Data, and, when I initially asked my rep about it, she had no clue what I was talking about. I continued prodding her, and she finally got an answer from another department that, while First Data does offer it, the division I use apparently does not.

http://www.cybersource.com/products_...count_updater/

Tony

Black Sun

Why would you rush to judgement like Peach and make such an obnoxious statement of illegality?
Why would it even cross your mind that i would do it if it where illegal? Why would you not just
assume that my software is "revolutionary"???? This is really saddening and pathetic how you guys
attack someone that is doing something really cool and at one time was thinking about sharing it with
other salons?

I can't and won't guess your motives like Peach does to me. But I have to ask you WHY? WHY the pessimism?
Why the doubt? Why attack it/me rather then HOPE its true and that one day it might be available to you?
WHY BLACK SUN WHY?

And for the record my decline rate is single digit :)