Here's what's funny, one of those friends told me I should open a merchant account with Intuit. That's funny because, as I mentioned briefly in yesterday's post, I have an Intuit merchant account. It works great! For some mad reason I made the decision to move away from it!
Thank you also to the kinds folks who emailed me privately offering their sympathies. Clearly folks are interested, and lots of family law lawyers are still mystified by the idea of receiving credit card payments, so here is my daily update.
I also want to thank Larry Port, the CEO of Rocket Matter. He reached out, apologized profusely for all the problems, and promised they would be fixed. How many of you have ever received a personal reach out from the Big Boss at a software company? Not too many, I am sure. Now I am thinking Bill Gates is going to get in touch about my Windows issues. Anyway, I appreciate Larry's reassurances, and I believe him. In fact, if you make it to the end of this post, you will see that things may be improving. In the meantime our travails do give me a divine comedy of content here!
When I arrived at the office today I found some emails from Forte. Yesterday I explained that I had never heard of Forte, but they apparently have something to do with TouchSuite? The emails requested that I log into my virtual terminal and complete its setup. I did not know what a virtual terminal was? I did not know I had a virtual terminal? I did not know that I have a Forte account? Why did I not know? Because no one from TouchSuite has ever educated me to any of these facts.
Anyway, I followed the links to setup my Forte something or other. Of course, the links did not work. So I called Forte customer service. After being on hold for 20 minutes I finally got a human being. In the spirit of full disclosure she was very, very nice, and very, very helpful. We solved the log in problem by clearing the cache on my browser, and got the accounts set up.
I then asked her what Forte was (probably should have asked that question first)? She explained to me that Forte was my merchant service provider. That's interesting. I thought TouchSuite was my merchant service provider? No, she explained, TouchSuite is just a sales company; they sold our service to you. Hmmnn. How do you like them apples....
Anyway, she also explained that we had just set up a virtual terminal so that I could process client payments via Forte's website. Cool I thought, then I look at the details on the screen and saw that it was for echecks, but not credit cards.
I asked her
"How do I process credit cards?
She politely told me "You can't. Your account is not set up for credit cards."
"How can I add credit cards" I asked?
"You have to call TouchSuite."
Aargh. Not the answer I wanted. Anyway, back to our conversation:
"While I have you on the line, I am curious how much in dollar amounts can I run each transaction for?"
"$7000" she answered.
"$7,000? When I had my initial conversation with TouchSuite weeks ago I told them my ordinary minimum transaction would be $10,000 and that some transactions could run as high as $30,0000 to $50,000!"
Be reminded the women I am talking is an absolute saint. Very patient and very helpful (thank God).
"I am sorry Mr. Harding, if you want to run more than $7,000 we are going to have to send you an application to see if we can get your limit increased, or you might want to call TouchSuite. Here is the name of your sales rep at TouchSuite that we have listed for your account . . . ."
"Thank you" I said, "I will give TouchSuite a call."
Next I called TouchSuite, ran through the phone tree and as usual got a voicemail box. I left her a message. In all the times that I have called TouchSuite no human being has ever answered the phone.
Next I called RocketMatter to talk the to service rep who has been assigned to me to try and solve this disaster. Got his voicemail and left a message.
So, where are we? (1) I can now apparently process echecks by logging into my Forte account. (2) I cannot process echecks through my Rocket Matter time and billing. (2) I cannot accept credit card payments period. (3) Whether it would be an echeck or a credit card, it can only be for $7,000 when my ordinary minimum transaction is $10,000. (4) As usual no one is answering the phone at TouchSuite. (5) Waiting for a call back from Rocket Matter. (6) Bills are supposed to go out tomorrow, but there is no way for the clients to pay them.
Rocket Matter to the rescue! There is a guy at Rocket Matter support by the name of Michael. Love the guy. Drinks the same happy/helpful juice that is poured into the cups of all the support folks at RM. He knows his stuff, and when he doesn't know something he goes to working figuring it out. I whined and moaned. Michael listened. Then he came up with solutions.
We think Forte is only responsible for processing echecks. Michael and I did a test. I billed myself a dollar, and then paid for it with an echeck. We have to wait a couple days for the check to post. If it does, we are as good as gold on the echeck side.
We think TouchSuite actually does run the credit card side of things, and is not in fact just a sales force for Forte. I met with a client today who is a sales director for one of the world's biggest credit card procssing companies. She agrees with Michael on this point, and that TouchSuite is actually, and Forte is not actually, processing the credit cards. Michael is going to reach out to TouchSuite to confirm. Assuming this is all accurate, we will then be good as gold on the credit card side!
So, things are looking up! I can tell you this, once we do get the system working as designed it will be BRILLIANT! It will be a huge, huge, huge step up from Abacus Accounting. I really am quite excited!
Please visit hardinglaw.com for more information about Harding & Associates Family Law
#RocketMatter #TouchSuite #merchantaccount #creditcards #Harding&AssociatesFamilyLaw #californiafamilylaw #divorce #family law #superlawyers #americanacademyofmatrimoniallawyers #Pleasantondivorce #AlamedaCountyDivorce #ContraCostaCountyDivorce #lawyers
No comments:
Post a Comment