a crystals & jewelry adventure

A number of people starting up a jewelry business or other type of small business have asked me about payment processing online. Obviously, if you’re going to sell anything online, you have to have at least one type of payment method. There are several types, and each has its pros and cons, risks and benefits. Sometimes even a lot of small “cons” are less important than one big “pro”, but it’s up to you to decide for what works for you.

Here are some things about my experiences with different sorts of payments over the years I’ve been selling my jewelry and crystals online. My experiences, are, of course, limited to getting money in to my hands here in the US and US bank accounts. Non-US methods may vary widely, including some countries that will only allow one or two methods or only specific processors.

Cash
Pros: Still good anywhere, tv commercials notwithstanding.
Cons: Very risky for people to send in the mail. If it gets lost, there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

PayPal

Pros: Millions of users worldwide, great fraud screening to protect you, easy for the buyer. With a Business account, you can accept MasterCard, Visa, Discover, AmEx, JCB, e-checks, and PayPal balance payments very easily, and if you want, you can use their free shopping cart. You can transfer money into your checking account for free. You can get their free debit card and get your money via ATM instantly, or pay for things right out of you PayPal account. A squillion tools at no extra charge for things like printing packing slips, printing postage, dispute management, etc.
Cons: Some people feel it’s unsafe and won’t use it if you hold hot irons to their feet. My experience is that it’s no less safe than credit cards online because that’s their entire business life, being a secure payment processor so they’re committed to it. Transferring money into your checking account from Paypal takes 3 to 10 actual calendar days. Yes, I know they say 3 to 5 business days, but if there are holidays along the way and weekends, it can be up to 10 calendar days. They will hold your funds if they get a dispute from a customer, although if you can prove you are in the right, although that can be time-consuming, they will give it back. Break their terms and regulations, and like any processor, they will shut your ability down immediately so you can neither process payments and get your funds down immediately.

Accept Credit Cards with Your Own Merchant Account
Pros: You have more control. It builds trust in some customers’ minds. People who won’t use PayPal will often still use credit cards online. With some merchant accounts you can accept credit cards offline by phone or fax or in person, as well as online.
Cons: You take on a lot of risk and expense by handling credit card information yourself. Risk because you are the one in charge and if anything goes wrong, you’re legally liable for the problem. Expense because you not only need the merchant account ($30 to $100+ a month), but you need things to go with it: a gateway solution (in many cases $30 to $100+ a month), a secure site and shopping cart (or a secure shopping cart service) which varies widely, a business checking account to transfer the money into (costs vary widely but are often $.10+ a transaction, which adds up over the months, plus any monthly charges), PCI DSS compliance scans and review (average $319 per year), etc. I calculate that presently it’s costing me $150+ a month to accept credit cards — and that’s even if I were to do no business at all! Also, if you want to be able to accept credit cards by phone, fax, or face to face, there are often additional charges for supplies or fees. They will hold  or pull funds from your day’s processing and/or checking account if they get a dispute from a customer, and you have to go through quite a few hoops to disagree with the dispute and get the money back. They have been heavily favoring customers when it comes to disputes, so it can be a quite difficult and time-consuming to prove anything with them. Break their terms and regulations, and like any processor, they will shut your ability down immediately so you can neither process payments and get your funds down immediately.

Credit Card Acceptance Services (like 2Checkout)
Pros: Less expensive and less risk to accept credit cards than having a merchant account. Often has a secure shopping cart service included in the monthly fees.
Cons: Less control than having a merchant account, which at times can turn into problems for customers with orders. Usually more expensive than PayPal, checks (good ones) or money orders (good ones). Break their terms and regulations, and like any processor, they will shut your ability down immediately so you can neither process payments and get your funds down immediately.

Checks (Mail in Personal or Business)
Pros: Far less expensive to accept than credit cards or PayPal, if the check is good. Provides a payment method for customers who can’t or won’t use online payment methods.
Cons: Takes longer than online payments. Many sales are likely to be lost in between the “I see it, I want it” phase and actually getting a check in the mail. Risky. Can be “rubberized” and bounce up to 2 times each depending on your bank’s handling of them, racking up fees for you of $25 or more per bounce. Basic risk management requires that you hold shipping out the order until the payment clears, which annoys shoppers, and causes you to have more stuff sludging through your order delivery process. Extra labor needed to get them deposited. Delay until they clear to get use of the funds usually.

e-Checks
Pros: No wait time to get the e-check to you. Might be less expensive to accept than credit cards or PayPal if the check is good. Makes an “instant” payment method available to customers who can’t or won’t use other online payment methods.
Cons: Risky. Can be “rubberized” and bounce up to 2 times each depending on your bank’s handling of them, racking up fees for you of $25 or more per bounce. Basic risk management requires that you hold shipping out the order until the payment clears, which annoys shoppers, and causes you to have more stuff sludging through your order delivery process. Break their terms and regulations, and like any processor, they will shut your ability down immediately so you can neither process payments and get your funds down immediately.

Money Orders or Cashier’s Checks
Pros: Provides a payment method for customers who can’t or won’t use other payment methods.
Cons: Slow to get to you, slowing down your whole order delivery process. Extra labor needed to get them deposited. Risky. Yes, I say risky. Money order and cashier check fraud has taken a dramatic increase in the last year or two. Because it’s nearly impossible to keep track of every type of money order or cashier’s check out there, handling them requires calling the bank or service it’s written by and verifying them, or just hoping they’re good. Exceptions to this are US and Canada Postal Money Orders. With both US and Canadian Postal Money orders, you can verify that they are good by knowing and using the anti-fraud methods they provide. Both can be cashed at the US Post Office. However it still takes extra time to handle them and get your funds in hand.

It’s a lot to sort through to determine what payment methods are best for you to accept. I suggest determining for yourself how much risk and how much expense (money and time) you feel comfortable with, and find methods that work within those constraints.

Priority Mail is the default shipping method at CrystalsAndJewelry.com unless you choose Express Mail. Some people have asked why First Class is not an option.  Why? Because First Class is unworkable and ends up being very little savings.

Why is First Class mail unworkable? Because if something is over 12 ounces, the post office will not allow it to be shipped First Class, and it has to go Priority instead anyway.  My shopping cart service, which does many other things that save, chokes on that with First Class mail, so it would have to be calculated manually.  By the time everything is said and done, First Class mail is nearly as expensive as Priority mail anyway.

How can First Class be nearly as expensive? Well, first off, the postal service doesn’t provide free packing, so that cost would have to be added, as bubble envelopes and small first class boxes would have to be kept in stock all the time. The boxes run from $1 to $5 depending on size, and even bubble envelopes in less than quantities of 1000 run 40 cents and up to $2 or so.  Then a handling charge would have to be added in order to cover the time needed to calculate the postage manually  and then charge it to your credit card or get additional PayPal payment manually. The time itself can add up to anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour depending on whether we have to email multiple times, etc. and that can become a very hefty handling charge. So by the the time all of that is added, the savings would come to a maximum of $1-$2. It’s just too complex for too little savings, when most people want the speed of Priority Mail anyway.

The shipping method question basically came down to a choice between raising all prices to cover the additional expenses of First Class mail which effects everyone regardless of shipping type, or just not offer First Class in general.  I chose lower prices for everyone by using Priority Mail as the primary shipping method. In the end, that saves most people more than the max $1 or $2 First Class might save, and gets things to everyone more quickly.

New Easier Blog Set-up! I’ve rearrange some things here at a crystals & jewelry adventure so that they’re easier to find. In particular, I’ve rearranged the metaphysical and crystal healing info into a crystals and metaphysical healing lore section because so many people are looking for specifically that type of information.

New Goodies! There are new Unique Individual Quartz Crystals up at CrystalsAndJewelry.com. Plus there’s new Crystals Formations info for two new types of crystals, plus a couple of new photos in that section.

I’ve also added Security information to the Terms page at CrystalsAndJewelry.com. I know I secure all credit card information and the like, and I’m actually pretty darned fanatical about it. I pay what to me is a great deal of money monthly to ensure that it’s a secure as possible. But I realized I hadn’t been telling anyone about it. Oops! With PCI DSS compliance and other security things being on folks minds, I figured I’d better get to mentioning it! Privacy information is there on the Terms page too.

QUESTION: “I have two beautiful crystals in my kitchen windows. Recently, while I was cleaning them, I noticed that they both have a new ‘picture’ in them. Both of them. In the same spot. It looks like a ladder but makes me think of a pyramid. The colour is white in the way that the ‘lasered glass etchings’ appear to be white. I was wondering if this is a common occurance in crystals because I do have a few and have never experienced anything like it before. I want to know because I put a protection shield up around my house and the very next day I noticed the new ‘ladder’ shape. I’m not a big believer when it comes to coincidence…anywho, Please let me know if this is a regular thing so I can stop fretting over whether the change was caused by myself or by something trying to bust in.”

MY ANSWER: I expect that the sudden “ladders” in your crystals are from being in more sunlight. Sunlight can show up minute water bubbles, air bubbles, or tiny inclusions in stones, and that happens fairly commonly. Essentially, it’s fairy frost showing up, and not a negative sign at all. If you’d looked at the crystals under a microscope before, you’d most likely have seen them there, even though you couldn’t see them with the naked eye. Under the light and heat of the sun, they probably just showed up to your eyes.

My experience with stones having serious negative energy poured at them is that they have either turned very dark from it (similar to the way severe radiation exposure creates deeply black coloring in crystals) or shattered. However, do keep in mind that natural radiation — even the sun has radiation, so it’s not necessarily a bad thing! — and excessive heat can do the same things. And crystals can shatter for other reasons that are less negative to us, like for instance even a great excess of positive energy. Most crystals in a protection shield will hold up well to negative energy, as long as you cleanse and clear them regularly, which it sounds like you’re doing.