Today’s world involves paying for so many purchases with credit cards. We go out to eat and we pay with a credit or debit card. We go online and pay bills, we purchase gifts, we buy many many items of everything we can think of with credit cards. Often, people justify credit payments because of accumulating miles to fly with, and who can blame them, free is always good. I know I probably purchase 70% of everything with a debit card.
We at McFall Masonry and Construction have accepted credit cards for several years now, perhaps about 10 years. In the beginning paying with credit cards was so frequent that probably 50% of customers were paying for our services through credit card, 10 years ago this was fairly new, it was convenient. When the economy crunch hit back in about 2008, almost all customers stopped paying by credit card and went back with pay by check. Probably around 2011 this began to swing back to many customers paying by credit card, but here it is with 2016 right around the corner, and we have never reached the high volume of customers paying by credit card as they did before. I would estimate that only about 10% pay by credit card, some of this may be security concerns, I would like to blog on this a bit.
At McFall Masonry and Construction we approach every project with integrity and concern to complete a project in a timely manner and great workmanship. Unfortunately a few, and it is a very few, but there are some unscrupulous people out there who intentionally hire us and then turn around and request a charge-back so they get the project completed for free. This causes a lot of headaches for us, we can usually prove a nice job completed, but the credit card companies love to side with the customer because they don’t want to lose the customer and they will threaten to cancel there card if they do not get the charge back. It is truly a headache and I’ve talked with many other contractors who are in the same situation.
Another problem is that as a contractor we often receive credit card information through a text or email and it is becoming more common to get hacked, we literally can’t find the money or the customer is getting double charged.
McFall Masonry and Construction has made the decision to discontinue the use of credit cards until further notice. We are sorry if this creates inconvenience with any potential customers. On the upside, you’ll save about 7% off the cost of the project. Whenever a customer pays by credit card, we have to charge an extra 7% because this is our total charges on us for using credit cards, these costs are worked into all merchandise and food that we buy so we do not see it. Sometimes you may pay a bill and an extra cost is tagged onto the bill, this is that extra cost I’m speaking off.
Remember, call McFall Masonry and Construction for all your home improvement needs.