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Lets compare the 5 year costs of this “FREE” system to my Microworks by Prism System. I have 6 stations, printers, routers, ect that cost me just over $17,000. First year of tech support was free, so I have 4 years at $900 bringing the cost paid to Microworks in the nearly 5 years to about $21,000. Now I was responsible for the hardware after the manufacturers warranty was up and I have had to replace 3 of my ELO touchscreens at a little less than $1000 total, so we’ll say the total cost has been $22,000. To duplicate the same 6 station system at $60 per month per station will cost $360 per month. 5 years of these payments will be $21,600, so the amount paid for hardware and software is nearly identical. The difference in cost is going to be credit card processing. I am free to process with whomever I want, and I shop this around looking for the cheapest vendor. I process around $60,000 a month in credit cards and and an increase from the 2.5% that my processing currently costs me to 3.5% would cost me an extra $36,000 over the 5 year commitment. So now you must consider how aggressive is Harbortouch going to price their credit card processing to their customers that are locked into using them for processing for 5 years? My bet is that it would be cheaper for you to borrow money from your local loan shark and purchase a system outright than to use this “FREE” system.
Interesting about the Harbortouch. Arrow has me locked in with Mercury processing and as far as I’m to understand they are the only ones I can use with their system. The pos terminalI have is an all-in-one with the credit cards and I pay $99/mo for Arrow support. Nothing with Mercury other than the basic cc rates (which are still outrageous).marsdc:
Not sure what you mean by this, but it’s important to realize that credit card rates vary greatly amongst processors and even amongst customers using the same processor. If you are locked in to processing with Mercury, you likely are not getting their best rates. They have zero incentive to offer you their best rates, they will reserve these for getting someone to switch to them or keeping someone from switching away from them. I just moved from a cost plus 10 cents from Worldpay(a decent rate compared to most tiered pricing) to a cost plus 6 cents with Heartland. The 4 cents a transaction saves me over $120 per month from the Worldpay rates and over $500 per month from what I was paying before switching to Worldpay.
Mercury gives POS-system providers kickbacks for exclusive system-wide processing rights… or so the CC salespeople that pester me like to imply.
From the Square site:marsdc:
Mercury gives POS-system providers kickbacks for exclusive system-wide processing rights… or so the CC salespeople that pester me like to imply.
Square is offering small-business owners a flat $275/month processing fee for signing up with them. If you process in one central spot and can find a printer for a smart-device, that might be a decent option: https://squareup.com/pricing/per-month
Edit:
Other options are…
SAIL
PayPal Here
NCR Silver
Revel Systems
OUCH
You should not have to replace anything in 4 years. I won’t bother mentioning what I use for a POS, because most who comment on this board prefer to promote the one they use. However, I will mention, that aside from the cost of equipment (not very much), I only paid a one time $99 license fee for lifetime usage. No monthly maintenance or any other costs. As for equipment, I could easily sub a ‘used’ 10 year old computer if I needed it.
Power Supply Blown - electrical spike Power Supply + Motherboard Blown - big electrical spike Hard Drive Failure - it happens to even the best, like Western Digital Router Blown or confused - electrical spike. look to replace Touch Screen not responding - clean gunk on screen and around edges