Yeah I mean, if I wanted to. iPhone and iPad keep me in touch during all that. Which is why LTE going all the way to Leesburg was necessary for me to stick with AT&T.

It'd be an hour and a half to drive it I estimate. So it's an hour longer because I don't drive (boring story), but... I can get my reading in, I can keep up with email, I can do things. It's not dead time staring at the car in front of me on 66 and 267.

yeah i'd easily take the extra for being able to make use of the time

damn 5 hours of commuting a day even just twice a week is totally insane to me.

I'm sure there is a salary number where I would consider it but the lower limit is probably 80-100% more than my current salary.

I commute 5min by car and consider it borderline too far.

I posted this same question in BFI general thread but I'd like to ask you guys too.

Are there any issues with automatically billing a business customer each month by credit card when the amount is somewhat significant, like in the range of $1500-$3000 (aside from needing a high enough limit)?

Are businesses likely to balk at auto monthly CC billing if the amount is in this range?

Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated.

That'll vary. Some will have company cards that can just take that. Some will need some sort of signing authority involved for an amount that high, and automatic won't work.

:S Just got an email from a startup I've talked to before. The email shamelessly is inviting me to a private online group whose purpose is to upvote each others startup submissions on HN and reddit to get traffic/exposure.

I'm not going to of course, but it sucks people do this.

Pretty sure if you out them on the Scirra blog you'll make it to the top of the page again

this doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

I dunno, it seems kinda icky to me. I mean, the whole point of that process is to let the ones that can survive public scrutiny rise to the top. These guys are deliberately thwarting the core of the process to gain an advantage they don't deserve.

To be fair, I have spent the last week focusing almost entirely on SEO/marketing, so perhaps I'm a little more annoyed at them because of that.

yeah i mean it's not stellar behavior, but personally i just take it for granted that stuff like this goes on. and there's nothing that can be done to stop it.... so.

True enough.

CC companies are highly protective of their customers. I know of several situations where the customer disputed the charges over what are, IMO, silly issues that all parties should recognize. The customers always wins in these situations. This kind of customer gets black-listed, but this can be, and usually is, an expensive mistake.

I work in B2B, and CC orders are a touchy issue. I most certainly wouldn't do auto-payment as it is diametrically opposed to what I currently know about B2B dynamics.

Also, and this is may sound weird to you: fall in love with Net Terms. You'll get tons of requests for this, and yeah, it is the difference between sale and no sale more often than not.

(Disclosure: Not a GURU on this)

This is not always true in my personal experience. I got screwed once when it was my word against the merchant's in a case where I had legitimately been screwed by them.
EDIT: actually, this could have been a BofA debit/credit card used as a debit, so that might make a difference

I think business CC and personal CC are two different ballgames. You say "I" as a "person" not as a business. But yeah, banks suck and this is, in part, why so many businesses demand Net30. The story is considerably more complicated, but from my own dealings with customers and with buying from businesses, everyone offers or demands Net30.

At least at the company I work for, there are very strict guidelines is how payments are accepted because it is very easy to get screwed by a merchant. One of the hiccups is something about how long it takes for a CC to process. I think it takes about 2 weeks for the CC to process, so you can use your imagination on how this can be precarious. There is an industry company that offers outstanding credit information services, so it makes it much easier to see who you may or may not want to deal with. Even a company with questionable credit isn't a good deal because of the time delay in CC acceptance and actual payment. This is, sadly, a great way to lose a customer as well. Having bad company credit is also a quick way to go out of business.

With all that said, credit works on the assumption that people are honest and fair, and the good news is that 99% of those you deal with are honest and fair, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't CYA.

A good accountant or lawyer is in order for dealing with payment issues like this.

(Disclosure: Not a GURU, please speak with a pro)

Thanks for the responses guys. I've been researching it, and if there is a clearly favorable strategy to be had, it isn't obvious to me.

Part of me wants to take the stance that, as a web business, paperless automation is the way to go. But as daveT pointed out, this is at tension with B&M preference for old fashioned (and annoyingly inefficient) manual billing.

I doubt that I'll actually do it, but I'm considering just saying **** it, and only accepting credit card payment with recurring billing for enterprise level customers the same way I would for a 10 employee mom and pop store.

I mean, the entire point of building a web-based business is that you can operate with high efficiency and eliminate the costs associated with traditional functions like mailing out invoices.

I should point out, my concern is entirely about creating the most attractive offering to potential customers. Specifically, whether it would be a barrier, or even just off putting, to use auto recurring CC billing as the method of payment for access to a SAAS app.

As far as executing the actual payments through whatever channel, navigating regs, etc., I'm not worried about that stuff.

Sorry to keep posting, but I should have explained my last point.

If a problem is of the sort that you can hire some dime-a-dozen lawyer to look up the statute and find an answer, there's no difficult decision there and there's no risk to your business.

But when there's no clear answer, and the possible consequences include failing to attract business, the decision becomes another thing entirely.

Most attractive offer?
Net60 with a 10k cap.

Yes, not doing Net is a barrier. Yes, doing recurring CC + on-time only payment is a barrier, IMO.

Yes, Mom + Pop + 10-employee type will ask for Net, and they will bitch and moan about not having it the most.

In general, Net is needed because you sell to Employee X, and Employee X gets the approval to buy, and now Employee X has to send that over to their favorite bean counter who in turn sends it to the check writer who in turn has to wait until his or her outbox gets large enough that they can mail the check via bulk-rate. Actually, everyone waits until their outbox gets large enough for bulk-rate.

The CC story is just about the same except now the customer wants the product in-hand before they commit the funds. This is partly where the CC processing from Visa / Mastercard comes in: it is easier for them to simply not pay the merchant than it is for them to go after the merchant.

But now suppose Employee X does give you CC approval, but still there is the process of sending it over the bean counter who does all the legal mumbo-jumbo they do, blah blah blah...

Letting anyone have free reign over CC payments is a probable disaster. I can guarantee that even if Mom or Pop isn't busy, they don't want to talk to you because they want to appear busy. Sure, they stamp the approval, but then someone else is going to call you for payment, and one of the first questions out of their mouth will be "Do you do Net terms?"

The point is that it is very difficult for companies to simply send off money because every dollar has to be tracked and counted. If you request a company to just pay up on the spot, you're inconveniencing their internal processes that they depend on for day-to-day operations and to protect their assets from employee errors, fraud, and legal mumbo jumbo. On-time CC is logistically more tolerable with Mom + Pop but a huge no no with Big Cheese. Regardless, Mom + Pop won't like it.

Yeah... they'll do without Net, but if you have any competition that offers Net, that is a huge reason, even if it's not totally logical and your competitors are worse than you, for your customers to go to someone else.

I know I keep on saying I'm not a GURU and now I'm spouting off all this. It's very easy to forget that, despite the digital world around us, we still have humans to deal with. Sort of like that saying about how machines were supposed to take paper away but now we have more paper than ever before.

That's all I have to say on this. Hopefully its food for thought.

Thanks a lot man. For real. Also, I think perhaps you're more of a guru on the topic than you may be aware of.

libgdx actually seems to work pretty well so far. although it works for a regular java app and for android but for the html5 thing not so much.

I guess I'll tell you how the company I worked for does it (quit today), which will be called The Place:

The Place doesn't offer net terms on the first transaction. This is common with many companies I've dealt with on behalf of The Place. There are exceptions to the rule, ie, the company asking for net terms is too big to decline, but as a general rule, companies I would contact in purchasing the Latest and Greatest would not offer terms on the first transaction. However, every single one promised to consider terms at a later date, usually after x orders. I don't doubt for one minute that if the company reneged on terms, The Place would have done business elsewhere.

Now I have to "handle the exceptions:"

- One company did offer terms on the first transaction. This was a very large company, so for them to process credit terms was fairly fast.

- The Place would most certainly deal with a company that didn't offer terms if and only if there was absolutely zero other companies that offered the needed product. This is a rare situation. I did deal with one company that literally is the only company in America that offered the needed product, but they offered terms anyways.

I was being sly when I said Net60 with a $10k cap. This is pretty unreasonable. The Place had an upper limit of how much they offered in terms, so for example, the upper cap would be $X and if the order went over there would be a combination of pre-paid and Net30. These numbers were getting rather large and so non-payment would wipe out the profit for quite a few other orders.

Anyways, that's literally my entire knowledge scope on this issue outside of a few things that are common sense. I hope this offers a different perspective on B2B transactions, and you can gather how I feel about CC transactions. If I did B2B, I would assume that all my prospective customers love Net30 at least. To be sure, I worked in a strange industry, so this stuff could well be nullified, but I seriously doubt, with the ubiquity of the word, that it is. I've called companies along the full spectrum of industries over the past year, and it pretty much always went: "When do I pay?" Ans: "You're on Net30" with no further explanation.

Maybe you're right that this is all a throw-back to the good ol' days of handshaking and back-patting, but if that's what it takes to juice a client, hell, why not, right?

Hearing a real world version is very helpful. That's really what I've been looking for.

Sorry to hear things didn't work out for you there. What's the plan now?

Not a problem... It's an interesting situation that probably looks far more intimidating in writing than it is in real life. The implementation details is where I'm fuzzy.

Probably smoke pot, play guitar, and sleep under a bridge.

Really? A thumbs up to end this thread for 2 whole days?