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shopify pinwheelpay and crying
Jul. 28th, 2021 09:37 amI’m an extremely patient and tenacious person. I don’t mind putting in a lot of hard work, even if it’s tedious and neverending.
But POS systems, banks, and payment processors are wearing me down to the point where, after reading an email from one of them today, I actually broke down and cried. If you’ve been following me for any length of time, I really don’t cry often or easily.
It takes A LOT to push me.
I’ve spent the last three and a half years trying to set up a POS system and online store system that work with each other, are convenient for my customers and my family (who work with me at the shop but aren’t tech savvy), and that doesn’t cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The old system from Intuit worked great and could handle all the in-store stuff we needed, but Intuit is stuck in the dark ages and only in the last year have started to offer contactless payments, and they have no online store options, no way of connecting their system to any online stores either.
So I’ve made workarounds.
It’s taken a lot of time, a lot of patience, and I’ve been doing this while also running the business.
I’ve recreated our entire inventory system three times for POS systems and four times for online store systems in the last 3 years. This isn’t a small job, and each system didn’t support the other for proprietary reasons, so no easy way to transfer thousands of products.
The workaround I’ve come up with is to use Intuit POS in the store, Shopify online store, Wegbility to do a really shitty job of syncing online purchases and inventory with Intuit (it’s $100 a month and I can’t let it do anything automatically because it sucks so bad), and until recently I’ve used Shopify’s payment processors.
In my original post above, I complain about how a few weeks ago Shopify informed me they don’t like the fact I’m selling C/B/D and lid/ocaine products because it’s “high risk.” So they suggested several third party payment processors.
I did my research and went with a place called PinwheelPay, which charges way more than a regular payment processor, but I had no choice because Shopify was going to cut off my credit card processing in 6 days.
A few days ago PinwheelPay informed me they don’t like that I sell tattoo needles.
Even though when I first talked to them on the phone I told them I sell tattoo, piercing, and medical supplies along with body jewelry, and topical C/B/D and lido/caine products. I don’t sell injectables or ingestables, but they still call the tattoo needles injectables.
I emailed them yesterday to ask for some time to change my online store to comply with their demands, but today they emailed me and said no, they would be cutting me off immediately.
A few weeks ago I made a second online store. It’s expensive between monthly fees and everything, but I need to be able to sell all my products. It’s going to be a joke to have customers use two sites, but what else can I do?
But the site hasn’t had enough time to get an established SEO status. It’s only a few weeks old. It need at least 3 months.
So if I don’t do anything, my customers can’t buy anything online. If I take down my needles, they can buy the creams and that’s it, and I lose out on the majority of what I sell online. If I take down the creams, I’m losing out on $12k-$20k in cream sales a month.
The stupidest part of this whole thing is that Shopify doesn’t give a shit about the needles or medical supplies.
It’s the “high risk” payment processor that doesn’t like them! They’ll let me sell the creams, but heaven forbid I sell needles and medical supplies!
If I take down the creams, I can go back to Shopify payments, but I lose out on about $20k in sales a month from the creams until the new site gets better SEO status, which will end up being 3 or more months, so that’s at least $60k.
It’s probably going to slow down sales even after that because my established site has been there for years and is very popular. Sites under 1 year old don’t inspire confidence in customers.
I’m so frustrated and tired of everyone and everything working against me, everything being hard, and no one actually listening and telling me what I need to know even when I ask detailed questions.
I’m tired of places saying they can help me because they want my business but ultimately not listening to what I actually need and dumping me after I’ve put in days, weeks, months of work for absolutely nothing.
And I’m so fucking tired of big business getting away with whatever they want while small and medium business owners have to put up with this utter bullshit that slowly breaks us.
A great-sounding solution would be to sell, right? Yeah, but I can’t sell a business that doesn’t have a working payment system. I have to fix this before I sell or do anything else.
But POS systems, banks, and payment processors are wearing me down to the point where, after reading an email from one of them today, I actually broke down and cried. If you’ve been following me for any length of time, I really don’t cry often or easily.
It takes A LOT to push me.
I’ve spent the last three and a half years trying to set up a POS system and online store system that work with each other, are convenient for my customers and my family (who work with me at the shop but aren’t tech savvy), and that doesn’t cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The old system from Intuit worked great and could handle all the in-store stuff we needed, but Intuit is stuck in the dark ages and only in the last year have started to offer contactless payments, and they have no online store options, no way of connecting their system to any online stores either.
So I’ve made workarounds.
It’s taken a lot of time, a lot of patience, and I’ve been doing this while also running the business.
I’ve recreated our entire inventory system three times for POS systems and four times for online store systems in the last 3 years. This isn’t a small job, and each system didn’t support the other for proprietary reasons, so no easy way to transfer thousands of products.
The workaround I’ve come up with is to use Intuit POS in the store, Shopify online store, Wegbility to do a really shitty job of syncing online purchases and inventory with Intuit (it’s $100 a month and I can’t let it do anything automatically because it sucks so bad), and until recently I’ve used Shopify’s payment processors.
In my original post above, I complain about how a few weeks ago Shopify informed me they don’t like the fact I’m selling C/B/D and lid/ocaine products because it’s “high risk.” So they suggested several third party payment processors.
I did my research and went with a place called PinwheelPay, which charges way more than a regular payment processor, but I had no choice because Shopify was going to cut off my credit card processing in 6 days.
A few days ago PinwheelPay informed me they don’t like that I sell tattoo needles.
Even though when I first talked to them on the phone I told them I sell tattoo, piercing, and medical supplies along with body jewelry, and topical C/B/D and lido/caine products. I don’t sell injectables or ingestables, but they still call the tattoo needles injectables.
I emailed them yesterday to ask for some time to change my online store to comply with their demands, but today they emailed me and said no, they would be cutting me off immediately.
A few weeks ago I made a second online store. It’s expensive between monthly fees and everything, but I need to be able to sell all my products. It’s going to be a joke to have customers use two sites, but what else can I do?
But the site hasn’t had enough time to get an established SEO status. It’s only a few weeks old. It need at least 3 months.
So if I don’t do anything, my customers can’t buy anything online. If I take down my needles, they can buy the creams and that’s it, and I lose out on the majority of what I sell online. If I take down the creams, I’m losing out on $12k-$20k in cream sales a month.
The stupidest part of this whole thing is that Shopify doesn’t give a shit about the needles or medical supplies.
It’s the “high risk” payment processor that doesn’t like them! They’ll let me sell the creams, but heaven forbid I sell needles and medical supplies!
If I take down the creams, I can go back to Shopify payments, but I lose out on about $20k in sales a month from the creams until the new site gets better SEO status, which will end up being 3 or more months, so that’s at least $60k.
It’s probably going to slow down sales even after that because my established site has been there for years and is very popular. Sites under 1 year old don’t inspire confidence in customers.
I’m so frustrated and tired of everyone and everything working against me, everything being hard, and no one actually listening and telling me what I need to know even when I ask detailed questions.
I’m tired of places saying they can help me because they want my business but ultimately not listening to what I actually need and dumping me after I’ve put in days, weeks, months of work for absolutely nothing.
And I’m so fucking tired of big business getting away with whatever they want while small and medium business owners have to put up with this utter bullshit that slowly breaks us.
A great-sounding solution would be to sell, right? Yeah, but I can’t sell a business that doesn’t have a working payment system. I have to fix this before I sell or do anything else.