I am a one guy shop too, and if I total up my support contracts... I got about 5-600 end users out there I support.
I RARELY do the hand-holding type of support, usually only for owners of the companies I deal with. End users who need training GET IT, but not from support personnel. I find out how they learn best (book, video or in person training) and I get it for them, highly encourage the company owners to pay for training (read that as "require"... if a company wont train its employees to do whats required, I don't work with them).
And all my clients are amazed at how little IT problems they actually have. Most of my job is front loaded, when I pick up a new client, getting them set up correctly and redesigning their infrastructure to do what they need it to do. After that its strictly maintenance with lots of planned expenditures. "Hey that server is 6 years old, lets replace it before we are forced to" type stuff.
None of my clients complain about how much they spend on IT, because invariably its less after my first year with them than it was before.
Far from apple faithful here... though I do own a number of their products. Plenty of bad product launches on apples part, and plenty of poor customer experiences.
Apple just seems to have hit on the correct stance to take when it comes to dealing with the media:
Dont say anything unless you will benefit directly.
They avoid all kinds of negative publicity this way.
no, you could just ask for a prepaid instead of a contract... I was in line on I-day 2007 and 3 people ahead of me in line did this with no problems.
The fact that on all aspects of the service plans for the phone, there is a dearth of information and clarity just speaks to how sucky ATT is as a company to deal with tho. You could very well have had a completely different experience at your local ATT store.
Its preferable to buy a piece of crap that does not work worth a shit.
Yes, apple is more expensive. So what? If you cannot afford it, do not buy it.
I am a fan because of the OS, and as a consultant, I often have to deal with both OSes, and apple allows me to run both as well as a multitude of others.
Now I also am not averse to slapping together a white box mac to save a little money on a special project, but I also own about 20K worth of the genuine article for every day use. laptops, desktop (the heavy hitter where dollars are concerned) and my familys computers I bought them.
right. but the true victims of the crime were not the school (govt) but were the other students whos hard work he imugned and devalued. Not the school.
Still I say if he sits in jail for a year, and gets a couple of one on one interviews with the judge and seems to have learned something... let him off with time served and supervised probation.
The problem arises in the margins, particularly the lover end of the spectrum. At lower margins the per-transaction charge (usually between $.20 and $.50 PER TRANSACTION) becomes the overriding factor in the transaction. sometimes becoming more of a cost in teh transaction that the cost of the product.
If the merchant does alot of this business, it becomes a serious problem, where his own personal ethics might interfere with him substantially raising the price of goods across the board (subsidizing these customers who pay for losing transactions).
Their prices are in-line with the other retailers. You would think that their prices would be lower, since they do not have to incur that additional cost of doing business, but they don't.
I avoid them as often as possible, as I like the idea of carrying plastic only, and not risking the loss of Physical currency if my wallet were lost/stolen/ etc..
Sorry for the confusion. BS.
I was consulting for the local McFranchise when the revolution over to CC happenned. They charged lower prices before the CC and raised the food prices directly the amount of the CC transaction fees projected impact to cover it. So EVERYONE pays higher prices so some can have the convenience of using CC. CC charges are just viewed as a cost of doing business and are passed right along to the consumer. We worked for several days at coming up with an amount that was deemed a fair increase to try to balance the two.
Not every mom and pop store is perfect, some make more than others, and some make less or go out of business.
The obvious solution to this is to abolish the per-transaction charge on CC and just make it a flat percentage so that this eliminates this fringe problem.
But CC are unwilling to do this, because it benefits them by getting paid a minimum amount for a transaction.
And there is opposition to structuring the fee to the consumers in the exact same way? Why? Seems to me the bitching should be directed at the credit card companies for this and not the merchant for merely passing along his cost to the consumer transparently, and not asking customers to pay higher costs on other transactions to subsidize the transaction costs of purchases where he loses money by doing the consumer a favor and accepting the card.
Hey lets get the guy spending more per transaction to pay a lil more so the guy spending less can use his card to make the purchase. How the hell does this make sense?
Consumers are there to consume. Retailers are there to profit from providing the consumables. No consumer is obligated to protect the merchant profit, that is the merchants' job. He does that by setting a fair price for his product. He accepts differing forms of payment for his products. If one form of payment costs him more to accept, he simply raises prices ACROSS THE BOARD to compensate. So higher fees just get passed right along to the consumer as a cost of doing business. At the margins, the low end in particular, the high transaction cost of precessing credit cards makes setting this margin of profit problematic. Hence the desire for minimum transaction amounts. If you are upset about the minimum transaction amount for using a particular form of payment, bitch to the payment processor that causes it to be this way, not the merchant who is just the middle man, he is just trying to pass along the cost of doing business in a fair manner, that the CC processors do to him and you want him to eat and take a loss on for your convenience.
If it costs to do something why are you not willing to pay it, but want another person to come out of pocket for?
The whole point of a convenience store is to make money off of your laziness in not wanting to go to walmart to get that candy bar. Convenience stores charge $1 for what walmart sells for $0.33 (hershey chocolate bar). If you are in there in the first place you already agree to be charged for a convenience factor, but bitch about being charged for the convenience of paying by CC? (which costs the merchant even MORE!)
It is NOT "illegal" its against the terms of their contract with the credit card company.
The CC clearinghouse forces these rules on you if you want to accept credit cards.
For small businesses they really create financial havoc.
Why should the business owner lose money on a transaction with you just because you want to pay with a credit card?
And you do not own a business obviously. THERE ARE NO BETTER TERMS. Everybody has that clause. You want the business owner to take it up the ass so you dont have to carry around a few dollars? You want the business owner to lose money on the transactions that are less than $3 or whatever arbitrary amount they set?
Get in touch with reality, I am in business to make money, and if I am not going to make money doing business with you, YOU can go do business somewhere else.
The minimums in the CC acceptance contracts are there for the CC company benefit, so THEY make money on every transaction. NO SLIDING SCALE, they make some base fee plus a percentage on EVERY SINGLE TRANSACTION. How are you upset with the small business owner for protecting his profits and not with the CC clearinghouse for doing WORSE?
get called a hypocrite much?
Slashdot Mirror
hell yeah, I'm a freedom fighter with my bong here!
asshat.
Jealous much?
Thats crazy if I am reading it right. I would be living like a pauper and socking everything away and take that 50% matching.
Meals too wow.
They must be killing it to afford that.
Yeah but how many end users do you support?
I am a one guy shop too, and if I total up my support contracts... I got about 5-600 end users out there I support.
I RARELY do the hand-holding type of support, usually only for owners of the companies I deal with. End users who need training GET IT, but not from support personnel. I find out how they learn best (book, video or in person training) and I get it for them, highly encourage the company owners to pay for training (read that as "require"... if a company wont train its employees to do whats required, I don't work with them).
And all my clients are amazed at how little IT problems they actually have. Most of my job is front loaded, when I pick up a new client, getting them set up correctly and redesigning their infrastructure to do what they need it to do. After that its strictly maintenance with lots of planned expenditures. "Hey that server is 6 years old, lets replace it before we are forced to" type stuff.
None of my clients complain about how much they spend on IT, because invariably its less after my first year with them than it was before.
hush up sonny
years huh?
what os were you downgrading from before?
man that is an OLD chain pull there.
rtfa... its not a battery bank system doofus.
Far from apple faithful here... though I do own a number of their products. Plenty of bad product launches on apples part, and plenty of poor customer experiences.
Apple just seems to have hit on the correct stance to take when it comes to dealing with the media:
Dont say anything unless you will benefit directly.
They avoid all kinds of negative publicity this way.
no, you could just ask for a prepaid instead of a contract... I was in line on I-day 2007 and 3 people ahead of me in line did this with no problems.
The fact that on all aspects of the service plans for the phone, there is a dearth of information and clarity just speaks to how sucky ATT is as a company to deal with tho. You could very well have had a completely different experience at your local ATT store.
in Baton Rouge, La... its just peachy call quality.
Its preferable to buy a piece of crap that does not work worth a shit.
Yes, apple is more expensive. So what? If you cannot afford it, do not buy it.
I am a fan because of the OS, and as a consultant, I often have to deal with both OSes, and apple allows me to run both as well as a multitude of others.
Now I also am not averse to slapping together a white box mac to save a little money on a special project, but I also own about 20K worth of the genuine article for every day use. laptops, desktop (the heavy hitter where dollars are concerned) and my familys computers I bought them.
now you are just talking craziness. Craziness I say.
How could we get by without myspace and lolcats and roflopters and such?
can you imagine all of the people that would still be married if computers hadnt come along and empowered women to find someone they LIKED to screw?
right. but the true victims of the crime were not the school (govt) but were the other students whos hard work he imugned and devalued. Not the school.
Still I say if he sits in jail for a year, and gets a couple of one on one interviews with the judge and seems to have learned something... let him off with time served and supervised probation.
if the little turd pleads ng... bury him.
Sporks and finger food for everyone.
ewwww. That would be some nasty meat. All the caffeine and fatty foods.
It would suck to have those be anyones last words.
"Behold the power of Mathematics!" Pow! Thud.
Joe Bob. get mah shovel.
RIM allows this also.
The problem arises in the margins, particularly the lover end of the spectrum. At lower margins the per-transaction charge (usually between $.20 and $.50 PER TRANSACTION) becomes the overriding factor in the transaction. sometimes becoming more of a cost in teh transaction that the cost of the product.
If the merchant does alot of this business, it becomes a serious problem, where his own personal ethics might interfere with him substantially raising the price of goods across the board (subsidizing these customers who pay for losing transactions).
Not every mom and pop store is perfect, some make more than others, and some make less or go out of business.
The obvious solution to this is to abolish the per-transaction charge on CC and just make it a flat percentage so that this eliminates this fringe problem.
But CC are unwilling to do this, because it benefits them by getting paid a minimum amount for a transaction.
And there is opposition to structuring the fee to the consumers in the exact same way? Why? Seems to me the bitching should be directed at the credit card companies for this and not the merchant for merely passing along his cost to the consumer transparently, and not asking customers to pay higher costs on other transactions to subsidize the transaction costs of purchases where he loses money by doing the consumer a favor and accepting the card.
Hey lets get the guy spending more per transaction to pay a lil more so the guy spending less can use his card to make the purchase. How the hell does this make sense?
Consumers are there to consume. Retailers are there to profit from providing the consumables. No consumer is obligated to protect the merchant profit, that is the merchants' job. He does that by setting a fair price for his product. He accepts differing forms of payment for his products. If one form of payment costs him more to accept, he simply raises prices ACROSS THE BOARD to compensate. So higher fees just get passed right along to the consumer as a cost of doing business. At the margins, the low end in particular, the high transaction cost of precessing credit cards makes setting this margin of profit problematic. Hence the desire for minimum transaction amounts. If you are upset about the minimum transaction amount for using a particular form of payment, bitch to the payment processor that causes it to be this way, not the merchant who is just the middle man, he is just trying to pass along the cost of doing business in a fair manner, that the CC processors do to him and you want him to eat and take a loss on for your convenience. If it costs to do something why are you not willing to pay it, but want another person to come out of pocket for?
The whole point of a convenience store is to make money off of your laziness in not wanting to go to walmart to get that candy bar. Convenience stores charge $1 for what walmart sells for $0.33 (hershey chocolate bar). If you are in there in the first place you already agree to be charged for a convenience factor, but bitch about being charged for the convenience of paying by CC? (which costs the merchant even MORE!)
It is NOT "illegal" its against the terms of their contract with the credit card company. The CC clearinghouse forces these rules on you if you want to accept credit cards. For small businesses they really create financial havoc. Why should the business owner lose money on a transaction with you just because you want to pay with a credit card?
And you do not own a business obviously. THERE ARE NO BETTER TERMS. Everybody has that clause. You want the business owner to take it up the ass so you dont have to carry around a few dollars? You want the business owner to lose money on the transactions that are less than $3 or whatever arbitrary amount they set? Get in touch with reality, I am in business to make money, and if I am not going to make money doing business with you, YOU can go do business somewhere else. The minimums in the CC acceptance contracts are there for the CC company benefit, so THEY make money on every transaction. NO SLIDING SCALE, they make some base fee plus a percentage on EVERY SINGLE TRANSACTION. How are you upset with the small business owner for protecting his profits and not with the CC clearinghouse for doing WORSE? get called a hypocrite much?
Oh the huge-manatee! http://farm1.static.flickr.com/2/1362599_02bcdea730.jpg?v=0