Well, that's much better!

[herveus]

Today was a long day at Maryland Sheep and Wool. Mind you, I'm not whining.

The weather loomed grey and a bit foggy. It took until about 11:30 before the sun finally started burning through. Once it did, the weather only improved. The afternoon was gorgeous, but not hot, nor too windy.

The demo seemed to go astoundingly well. The location was El Primo. People sprawled out of the tent onto grass and patio around it. Lots and lots of people came, saw, tried, hung out, got to learn all kinds of neat stuff. It was crowded, and in a good way.

Commerce proceeded at a fine pace. We wrote lots of sales slips. There was little in the way of "down time". The only wrinkle was that we had to run the credit card machine in offline mode.

We got home, having picked up the calzones we called ahead for, and got real food in our bellies. The next order of business was to get the credit card transactions uploaded. I called tech support just to make sure I didn't mess anything up. When I started the upload, I was astonished when it *didn't* dial the phone, but simply said "transmitting" and "receiving" and printing out approvals. It was doing something I had *never* seen it do before: uploading via radio. Yes, the radio that "didn't work". I guess someone really lit a fire under the data service provider to get it straightened out. Yay! I also got a couple of nagging little issues squared away with the machine. Right now, it seems to be fully in order. Yay! I say again Yay!

It's now bed time, but I need to cut some more dowels first. Down to the shop with me!

Oh, and sales were quite fine, and our share of them was very nice.

Comments

[nostasia.livejournal.com]

I'm really glad the day went decently for you guys. (And amused at the "non-working" radio credit card machine transmissions.)

[summerrain.livejournal.com]

yes, the credit card sending via the radio that doesn't work... Fantastico!

May your day tomorrow go as smoothly and nicely and may commerce happen that is profitable ...

[pedropadrao.livejournal.com]

Hooray! sister_devora & I saw that you guys were doing fire sale business.

Credit card machines

[weaverrhi.livejournal.com]

I was somewhat astounded at the beginning of the day when the merchants were all using manual imprint machines instead of the "card swiping" variety. It took me a little aback to say the least. The card I use for fiber is much used and much loved, the numbers weren't all that prominent on the card, so when they tried to use the imprint, it wouldn't work. Two merchants happily wrote my number on the form, but one actually refused my purchase (she asked for an alternate card or check, when I said I didn't have anything else with me, she replied "Well, then you'll have to put the fiber back".

Annoyed doesn't come close. It never occurred to me that ya'll would be doing manual transactions. I'll have to get a new card before next year :-)

Re: Credit card machines

[herveus.livejournal.com]

We weren't doing the knuckle buster. We were swiping them with our machine, but not doing the authorization until we got home. It counted as a swiped transaction (knuckle busters get you nicked for a higher percentage).

Sunday was even better, with the machine working fine. Sales were about two-thirds of Saturday, but that seems to be in line with the traffic, and we're not complaining.

[sylvene-fic.livejournal.com]

Glad it all worked out!

~Jade