An Age of Magic

Cheaper credit card processing than from your bank

Most businesses that start out never think of any other option than doing their credit card processing by way of their own bank.

That’s a big mistake as you end up paying for just about everything that’s often free elsewhere. Now, you’d expect to pay for the credit card machine itself obviously (and they’re not cheap) and you’d expect to pay some kind of percentage per transaction too. However, ”obviously” the bank would set up the machine for you, wouldn’t they? Not always: some charge $50 or more to do that. You’d also expect to be able to handle mail order transactions as standard? Nope, the “customer not present” facility is often a chargeable option.

However, a non-bank outfit like authorize.net omits almost all of these charges, and in particular those that you’d be surprised at your bank charging you.

Popularity: 54% [?]

The ways they get you in…

We like to get around the various tourism and business expositions that are held in our region each summer and one thing we particularly like are the free give-aways you get as you walk around the wide range of stalls. Actually they are getting really ambitious with what they give away free to those browsing around…

We have scored free glasses of beer, soft drink and fruit juices at these fairs; then there are other nice things in the form of promotional products such as the usual pens & writing pads – but when we happened upon a dairy company giving away free ice-creams we thought we had really hit the jackpot.

Many of these companies got our contact details so that we could follow-up with some business for them…but they haven’t contacted us since.

So maybe the freebies really were just that…!

Popularity: 36% [?]

Locked or unlocked…?

I was browsing in a phone store the other day and noticed that despite them being well and truly a part of everyday life, cell phones are still pretty darn expensive. I am not a cell phone-owning person myself but I did see one or two models which certainly appealed to me – if for no other reason than aesthetic ones…

Why though do people still pay the high amounts of money for phones with restricted use rather than going for the     unlocked cell phones which allow you to use a SIM card from another carrier – maybe even at a cheaper price…?

Popularity: 37% [?]