thecarcarecenterinc

Just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Paul and I own a general repair shop in a bedroom community west of Nashville, TN. My father started the business in 1989 and retired a few years ago. I am in my 3rd year running the ship. Looking forward to learning some new stuff from you guys!

Welcome Natalie! I'm in the Volunteer state as well. Good luck!

This is definitely something we have dealt with in the past. What we have resorted to doing is employees and those who live in their house get parts at cost plus 10% to cover sales tax and labor is free if they do it after hours. For everyone else (extended family and friends of myself and all employees) it has to be normal pricing. As a result, we rarely have the family/friend issue and few of our family bring their vehicles in. 

I have to agree here. Before I got back into the auto repair world, I was an independent  rep for North American Bancard (I still have a few accounts). The interchange rates for each card are set every year by Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and AMEX and they are non-negotiable. Think of them as fixed costs; just like if every auto repair shop had the exact same costs on every single part. The difference is the mark-up. I think in most cases, the best program is going to be interchange plus where the mark-up is fixed regardless of the card type. Every single card has a different cost and unless the mark-up is fixed, it is easy to hide how much the profit each card makes the CC processing company. The only difference between companies (aside from customer service/support) is who is willing to take less profit to get the account. I have seen several times on here someone mention that their rep or company is a direct processor. There is no such thing. ALL CC processing companies have the same costs and there is NO direct route to Visa/MC/Disc/AMEX. It is the same for all companies. I would encourage everyone to work with someone local that they can trust and build a relationship with. 

On 2/13/2017 at 8:16 AM, jeffg said:

1.44% on all cards seems to good to be true. Many types of cards charge more than that. There are set interchange rates charged by the card companies (visa, mc, etc...) and for many types of cards it is higher than 1.44% (rewards cards, fleet cards, Amex, Disc), some are lower (debit cards and some others). Not sure how anyone could charge 1.44% all in for everything unless you are doing a whole lot more debit cards. We are doing over 10 million a year in credit cards and I have shopped many times over the last 30+ years and never seen anything that is one fixed flat rate. I have seen cost (interchange) plus plans and tiered rate plans (usually with 3-4 different rates on different types of cards). Would be interesting to see how this works.

Like the others who replied, we use a time clock. It is a built in feature of our MaxxTraxx management system. If you have folks who are not clocking in, you've got to hold them accountable. Not easy but it is necessary.