mayalaen

Addicts are drawn to tattoo artists because tattoo artists treat people like human beings even when others won’t (a lot of them are recovered addicts themselves), and they also don’t have qualms about buying stuff off them if it’s decent.

I just gotta be careful because some of them like to dump their entire backpack of loot onto the table in the lobby, and it’s usually dirty, so most of them in the area know they can only pull one or two things out at a time, show it off, and put it back, not dump all their inventory.

Yesterday an addict came up to Ash, one of my artists, with a canvas bag and in an over-the-top secretive way leaned in and slowly pulled a bottle of Tide partway out of the bag.

“This sells for $20 but I’ll let you have it for $10.″

It was so over the top secretive that Ash had to work very hard not to laugh. He didn’t want to insult the guy, but it was like the dude was trying to do a super secret drug deal, worried there were cops watching from the corner or something. For a bottle of Tide.

Ash didn’t want it so he politely said he wasn’t interested.

“Oh is it because you a Gain man?” was the response

Ash lost his cool and ended up laughing so hard he doubled over.

He gave the guy a $20, took the Tide, let him have one of his cigarettes, and stood outside chatting with the guy while they smoked.

It feels like my job has become nothing but tending to willfully ignorant people.

I sell numbing cream online.

There are instructions:

on the product page in the description section
on the product page in the form of detailed pictures alongside the product pic
on the blog
on the return policy page right after I explain we can’t take returns on opened skin cream
on the shipping page
on the checkout page
included in the shipment
on the box

And yet I still get people complaining that the products don’t work and they’d like a return label and a refund.

All of them, in their complaints, somehow reveal they haven’t read the instructions or used it properly by the little things they say.

The most recent? “It didn’t work. It just made my skin shiny so I washed it off.”

So ya obviously 1) didn’t put enough on 2) rubbed it in when you’re not supposed to 3) didn’t cover it with plastic wrap and 4) didn’t leave it on for 45 minutes.

I know this because it doesn’t make your skin shiny unless you rub it in. It also soaks into the skin within about 3-5 minutes, so it’s no longer shiny. This means she didn’t even wait 3 minutes before declaring it didn’t work when it takes 45 minutes to penetrate the top layers of skin and start working on the nerves.

Now I have to deal with a bitchy person who is gonna scream at me for being an asshole because I won’t let her return it even though it says everywhere listed above that we don’t take returns on opened skin products and she used it wrong.

I miss being in the shop where I could help people face-to-face and they don’t reduce themselves to internet trolls because they don’t have the internet to hide behind.

I sell hundreds of tubes a month, and for the most part people read the instructions, but I wonder how soon I’m going to lose it and just start sending people a pop-up kids book that shows them how to use it and they have to use a code at the end of the book to get the box open before they can use the product.

I get that I have an advantage having grown up in a cult/commune, having had a father who was a used car salesman and later a self-employed flooring installer, and a mother who taught me from a very young age how to really think about and use words carefully.

But damn the quality of sales pitches in the last few years is SO BAD.

Like are you even trying?!

Or has the general public changed so much in the last 2 years that these pitches work? Y’all falling for this? Am I out of touch?

I’m the type of person who will be so impressed by a really good sales pitch that I might consider switching to you just because you’re such a good rep that you make the company look good, especially if the service/product is good.

But if you suck at sales pitches or you pull a stupid sad puppy routine or you’re so badly prepared that you’re more interested in playing with your phone? I’m not even going to consider the company you rep because they hire people like you so they must suck.

This last guy messaged me on my website, sent a paragraph about who he reps and that he’d like me to use his company’s service.

I said thank you but no.

He replied with, “But I didn’t even get to explain?”
So I texted back, “You’re with ____.com, you’d like me to become a customer, but I’ve looked into it before, and I’m not interested, but thank you.”

He replied, “But I can get you 66% off? I can’t sell to you over chat. I need to email. Give me your email address. I guess you don’t want to save money but ok :(”

66% off isn’t even the going rate for the company he reps. And I get 72%-86% off for the same service because I’ve signed up directly with a provider instead of a middleman.

Maybe it’s because companies are hiring over the phone because of Co/vid and taking anybody who will work cheap? Not bothering to train?

I’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.

Almost everyone has heard of creating a problem and then charging money for the solution to that problem.

But lemme tell you about an even sneakier thing!

Creating the ILLUSION of a problem and then charging money for the solution to that illusion.

I own a business that sells products locally, and we also have an online store. Despite the industry we sell to (tattoo and piercing artists), our customers either pay cash or have surprisingly good credit, meaning even though we pay a high percentage for credit card transactions when we first sign up with a credit card processing company, they always quickly lower it because we’re so low-risk they want to reward us for staying with them.

Square lowered our rate three times in the first year we used them and promised to lower it again the next year. Customers with good credit AND I’m very careful about checking for fraud with every purchase that goes through my online store, and I flag anything I’m suspicious about. Only one fraud transaction slipped by me in 1-1/2 years.

So Square lowered our rate three times, but that was right before they dropped us after labeling us as being high-risk because of our products, namely topical pain relievers with lido/caine and C/B/D. Nothing ingestable.

Shopify gladly processed credit cards for us for over 2 years, lowering our rate twice until they decided to pay more attention to what we were selling.

They recently informed us we needed a third party high-risk management company to assist us, and we needed to do this within 7 days or they would pull our products from our online store. Not only that, they also started to hold our money.

I’ve dealt with merchant accounts for years. I know how they play. I know how they try to nickle and dime small and medium business owners to death. And I also know how much risk is involved for a credit card processing company.

Which is to say ZERO. NO risk.

Even if I were to sell g/uns, ill/egal substances, or even bo/dy par/ts, the credit card processor goes into it with no legal risk whatsoever because they only provide a service. You sign documents when you first create an account with them that says this, and I’ve looked into it to verify. No one can touch them.

Yet C/B/D, h/emp, lido/caine, g/uns, medical supplies, and a ton of other items have been labeled “high risk” by credit card processors, and they refuse to handle it, insisting you MUST run it through a third party.

It’s a huge issue with e/cig, c/b/d/, and ed/ibles online store owners. They’re all very frustrated by this.

The third party charges (in general) 1.9% plus a monthly fee between $5-$299, the credit card company itself charges 1%, and the company that provides your website also charges 1%. That’s standard, though it can fluctuate some depending on the companies you use.

It might not seem like much, but when you’re used to paying a flat 1.4%-1.6% for credit card processing, it’s a smack in the face.

Oh, and you might think this covers chargebacks, fraud, and other issues, but it doesn’t.

As a business owner, you’re still responsible for those things yourself, and with no questions asked and no appeal process, that money can be taken directly from your bank account at any time. There’s no such thing as insurance for stuff like this.

It also doesn’t cover cash back awards. Credit card companies split those with us as a business 50/50.

So if you want to support your local businesses, please don’t use reward cards when shopping there. Use it at Wal/mart -- they can afford it. If possible, use cash for local businesses. Even G/oogle Pay and A/pple Pay ding us!

Back to the subject: With no risk for the credit card companies no matter what I sell, they still label us as high risk because of the products, so they’ve created the illusion of a problem.

BUUUUUT they’ve also charged money for the solution!

And that’s not all.

I recently went through the whole process of signing up with a third party so I could continue to sell on Shopify. By the time I was done reading all the fine print, I realized Authorize.net owned the third party company.

Authorize.net is what Shopify uses as their credit card processing company, as many businesses online do.

My credit card processing is still going through the SAME company as before, but now I’m paying a much higher percentage.

There’s nothing any of us can do about it. A lot of shop owners have complained and tried to work around it, but there’s nothing we can do.

Major credit card companies and banks have decided this high risk thing is a thing and we NEED third party processing to be able to sell our products.

It’s yet another way to screw over small and medium business while big businesses STILL get away with tax breaks they don’t deserve, loopholes, and lots of other things we have no hope of taking advantage of.

BTW if anyone reading this sees a mistake or misunderstanding on my part or knows of a way around this, PLEASE message me!!

So I’ve told y’all before how tattoo artists are totally head-over-heels in love with stickers, right?

This morning I found out that several artists who regularly buy from us online have become loyal customers because we send stickers with every order.

I mean they like us for other reasons too, but when you do a side-by-side comparison and prices are the same, products are the same, and service the same with a couple other supply places online, the deciding factor for a number of artists was the fact that we send random stickers and nobody else does.

Which I think is adorable!

In fact one guy admitted that he paid more for a certain product we carry (I don’t have a distributorship with that particular manufacturer so I can’t offer big sales when other places can) ONLY BECAUSE he wanted some stickers 🤣

They claim that the stickers along with great service, great prices, and a wide variety of supplies has made some very loyal customers, which I think is awesome.

How many companies can say they have an edge in their industry because they give out random stickers that the owner finds and hands out because she loves stickers herself?!!?!

I have a chat feature on my shop’s online store. It’s great for helping customers and answering their questions -- it’s linked to an app on my phone so I can talk with customers 24/7.

A guy messaged me this morning to ask if he could pick up his stuff at 10:30am on Wednesday even though we open at 11am. He was really nice about it!

I said I’d make arrangements for it and I texted Charlie and Marissa. Marissa was like sure we’re in there by 10:15am cleaning and prepping anyway, but Charlie went off on this rant about how we have to have our own lives and we can’t cater to customers’ every whim

and it’s like dude. We’re in the service/retail industry. And we’re running our own business without help from anyone else.

It sucks but YES you do have to cater to every customer. That’s why our shop is getting all the customers and every other tattoo supply shop in the metro area is losing customers.

Is it THAT hard to open the door to a customer and hand him his stuff at 10:30am when you’re already there cleaning and prepping to open? The customer is ordering today, so they don’t even have to let him inside on Wednesday if they don’t want to.

Besides that, when I used to go into the shop every day, I was there from 10am to 8:30pm because our hours were 11am-8pm (there’s a lot of morning cleaning involved -- even before the pan/demic).

The hours are now 11am-5pm and Charlie complains ALL the time about how long he has to work there. Funny given that one of the reasons he thought the shop was a great idea in the first place was that we were open longer than other places -- artists constantly complained they couldn’t buy supplies after 5pm anywhere.

When we first opened years ago the hours were 9am-10pm Tuesday-Saturday and 11am-5pm Sunday and Monday.

He should be glad I’m not insisting they go back to those hours 🤣

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mayalaen

January 2025

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Walking Corpse

Entries tagged with this is my life

tide

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salespeople need help

shopify pinwheelpay and crying

create the ILLUSION of a problem

tattoo artists + stickers = 💕

(no subject)

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January 2025

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