I had my first Craft Fair booth yesterday, and everything went well except for getting my credit card reader to work. I have a brand new Etsy reader and a brand new chip-enabled Square reader. I was able to get the Etsy reader to read a card swipe ONE time, and never again. I ended up manually keying in the credit card number (and paying the higher fee for manual entry). More than half of my sales were by credit card.
Thinking I had a defective reader, I swapped to my brand new Square reader. My phone wouldn't even connect with the reader. Talk about frustrating when you have a customer standing there while you fumble with your @#$%^ card reader! I tried my wife's phone and had the same results as far as not recognizing either reader.
I had tried both readers at home prior to the show and both performed flawlessly. At the show with my Etsy reader I could do a practice swipe and it would say "Perfect Swipe", but when I did an actual sale it wouldn't read squat. Later I couldn't get it to even do a practice swipe. I tried rebooting my phone multiple times, unplug/replug the reader, tried it with and without WiFi (the venue had free public WiFi), made sure the volume was turned all the way down, nothing. Back home after the show both readers worked great. AAHH!!
I have a bigger Craft Fair in a month and I can't afford to waste time on a reader that won't work reliably. What do the rest of you guys use? Do I need to look into a dedicated credit card machine instead of my cell phone card reader? What models are best? Does iPhone work better with readers than Android?
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