Mikester

Sorry I missed Monday…was too beat Sunday evening to work my little typin’ fingers.

Anyway, judging by the response to this post, most comic shops do carry credit cards (with one or two minor exceptions). That’s good to know, though I’ll tell you, over the weekend I had several more “do you take cards?” inquiries. Maybe I need to start asking these folks if they’d been to comic shops that didn’t sometime recently…or maybe they hadn’t been in a comic shop in 30 years. Who knows?

Walaka asks:

“On a related note, aren’t most of them debit cards now, or are folks actually putting comics on credit?”

It’s a pretty good mix of both, I think…people paying for their comics directly out of their checking account, or (hopefully) paying off their credit cards at the end of the month. I think it leans heavier towards debit cards, if I think about it.

That Augie De Blieck Jr. character wonders:

“There used to be a law against minimum credit card purchases. Not sure if that was a state or federal law, but it seems to have slipped away over the years. Either it changes, or so many businesses started to ignore it that it wouldn’t matter.”

There wasn’t a law as such, I think*, though the merchant agreements from the various cards prohibited setting minimum purchases. Though, as is implied in your statement, enforcement was a little lax. And eventually, a law was passed allowing minimum purchase limited, so long as it wasn’t more than $10, and as long as it was applied solely to credit cards. You still can’t put minimum purchase limits on debit cards. Here’s one place where the law is discussed.

*A CAVEAT: I could have sworn California did have some kind of law on the books preventing minimum credit card purchases at one point, but my brief Googling about didn’t turn it up. Though it doesn’t matter now, as per above.

Jim Kosmicki relates:

“…Saw a note taped near the cashbox/register stating that there would be no more loans made from the cash register.”

EGADS. I’m assuming that was for the employees. Just trying to picture customers walking in and asking “hey, can I borrow five bucks? I’ll pay you back next week!”

Will H queries:

“But who still takes checks?”

I do! Well, mostly it’s just from one fellow, and it’s a guy I’ve had as a customer for 20+ years, so I figure his checks are probably okay. Aside from him, I’ve probably only had…two or three other people write checks to me? Not a common payment method nowadays, though as I related to someone on the Twitters the other day, as a business owner I still write a few checks, for rent and utilities and such.

This reminds me of a customer we had at my previous place of employment who always paid with a check. That wasn’t unusual, except the only personal information he had on his check was his name. No phone number, no address, no driver’s license number, nuthin’. And he invariably made purchases in the hundreds of dollars, breaking a thousand bucks at least once in my memory. The first time I dealt with him at the register, I was about to get his ID and my old boss waved it off, saying “he’s fine, don’t worry about it,” implying a relationship that preexisted my employment. And sure enough, for the rest of the years I was there, and with all the checks the guy wrote us, every single one was good. Plus, in later years I got to tell other employees “yeah, his check’s good, don’t sweat it” and have them give me the same look I probably gave Ralph all those years ago.

Former Employee Nathan tells us:

“I *do* get asked pretty often ‘Do you accept cards?,’ but that’s very likely a regional tic, as [San Francisco] has a rather large number of cash-only restaurants and specialty retail stores.”

Huh, that’s a good point, given your location. I’m pretty sure that’s not what’s going on here, unless the bar down the road is cash only and I’m getting lots of traffic from there.

Brad smashes Big Brother with:

“Sure, but do you take Apple Pay?”

I’ll trade comics for iPhones and iPads, sure.

So a question that’s popped up from new patrons to my store with surprising frequency over the past few weeks is “do you take credit cards?” Now, maybe it’s just a strange question to me from my particular position, in that I see that the majority of my business is done via credit and debit cards. For a lot of people, it’s just more convenient to have their spending cash accessed that way rather than making sure they have actual folding money on them.

Anyway, I thought it was odd, since, well, wouldn’t it make things that much more difficult in a retail setting by not offering credit card processing? Over the years I would dread any time there was some kind of glitch in the credit card machine, requiring resetting or, God help us, downloading a program update on its .003 baud modem, forcing us to delay or even turn away credit sales for a time. And that was just for a few minutes…I couldn’t imagine not having a card machine in the store at all, given the large percentage of customers who pay with cards aaaaand that’s pretty much it.

I wondered about this on the Twitters, and a few folks responded back, with one letting me know he was in a comic shop that didn’t take cards just within the last month, and another saying that the only places he encounters no-CCs-a’tall are some cash-only eateries and, yes, comic shops. (And blogging brother Tim brought up the point that we’re lucky we’re not all still using cash boxes instead of registers…which reminded me of Marvel’s early 1980s program of actually assisting comic shops with purchases of registers, but that’s a story for another time, I think.)

I mean, I suppose I can see the upsides to not taking credit cards: getting your cash immediately instead of waiting for a day or two to deposit; no fees; no worries about your credit card machine going kaput and taking that financial hit until you get it fixed; electromagnetic waves from the CC machine leeching away your precious humours, and so on. But considering that lots of people depend on using their cards for transactions, the advantages of not accepting cards is far outweighed by the inconvenience for customers.

This could be a regional thing, too…dependence on cards may just be greater in my general area, but in other parts of the country maybe most people still just prefer cash transactions. Or maybe the comic shop is small, with a limited clientele and smaller transactions and folks just find it easier to deal with cash instead of credit, and can’t afford taking any kind of hit from the fees. Or maybe the owner didn’t want to jump through the hoops to apply (or couldn’t jump through the hoops) to get approval for a credit card machine…it was bit of an annoying process to get one for myself, involving several phone calls and the occasional warning that they might not want to give me a machine. I even had someone from that bank send out an inspector to confirm I actually was a physical store.

There are also little card readers that plug into smart phones and iPads and whathaveyou, so there are still options if you can’t get a dedicated machine put into your shop.

As I’m sure some of you know, I’ve been at this comic retail thing for a long time, so I do remember a point at my previous place of employment when we also didn’t have a credit card machine. But, dependence on cards for transactions wasn’t quite at the level that it is today, so I don’t think it hurt us too badly…or maybe it did; it’s not like anyone was going to shout “WHAT? You don’t take CREDIT CARDS? I’m taking my $10,000 credit limit elsewhere!” as they stomped out the door. But the time did come when we had the machine put in, and…well, I’d like to say “suddenly people started spending a lot more money at the shop, so convenience for the customer does improve sales!” but I honestly don’t remember any specific alterations in buying habits at the time. Just, as time went on, cash and check transactions gradually dropped as credit card sales gradually rose and, like I said earlier, the majority of sales nowadays, at least around here, are via card.

I do remember telling a customer at the other shop way back when that we were going to get a credit card machine put in, and the customer basically harumphed at me and declared “that’ll be the day when I buy comic books with a credit card!” …Pretty sure that day came for him sooner than he expected.

A little survey, if you don’t mind: don’t mention store names or locations, other than maybe a state — don’t get people mad at your pal Mike for no reason! — but let me know in the comments if your local shop accepts credit cards. And again, this isn’t me trying to be a jerk about it…it may seem strange to me to not have a CC machine, but what may be right for me in my particular circumstance may not be right for someone else, so I’m curious as to how other stores are handling things.

I wanted to thank you folks for helping out Fred with his GoFundMe campaign…especially one of you who made an especially generous contribution. Most kind of all of you. If anyone still has a spare dollar or two to pass his way, please do so if you can.

In other news…perhaps you’ve heard that the San Diego Comic Con is goin’ on at the moment. You know, that place where half the folks are all “gah, it’s not about comics any more!” and the other half are all “man, too many new comic book series are being announced!” and the other, other half are dressed as, I don’t know, “Steampunk Firefly” or something. But the one thing I was worried about was that, given my store’s relative proximity to the proceedings, I was wondering if business was going to take a hit this week. Sometimes at the previous place of employment things would take a little dip from the regulars who headed to the show, but then we’d have folks traveling through town on their way to the ‘con who would stop by and do a little shopping, and that would make up for it.

So far, I’m doing okay…in fact, business is up a little over previous weeks, so maybe I worried about nothing. And I say “maybe” because I still have Friday, Saturday, and Sunday ahead. Let’s see how things go…but just in case, do you want to look at my eBay auctions, perhaps?

I’ve been keeping tabs on some of the stuff that’s going on down there, and yeah, there’s the typical Batman movie news, and a whole bunch of Vertigo titles headed our way, and, um, Bill Murray, apparently, but the only news worth reading is, of course, Jim Starlin doing a new Dreadstar comic. No publisher as yet, but with the possibility of a TV show, hopefully it won’t be too difficult to find someone to handle it.

I have been asked quite a bit if I was heading down to San Diego myself, and sadly, that’s not going to happen this year either. Previous years the Comic Con always seemed to come at a time that was inconvenient for me to go, and this year is no different…particularly if I’m there, no one will be at the shop to run it, and your pal Mike makes no coin of the realm in the process. Maybe next year, if I can find a sucker employee by then, I’ll make the trip. I’d better get my Slave Leia costume ready, just in case.