Blue Pay updates

[soapy]

I had a call from Blue Pay yesterday regarding new upgrades that will need to be made to my Etowah Valley SS bay credit card system. It will consist of new computer chips and programming. BP said it will also result in cheaper processing fees. I think all this has to be done by 3/16/15. The new program will also make it possible to use your smart phone as a terminal to process CC similar to Square. Has anyone done their BP system yet? I am still waiting for the chips and program to arrive.

 

[smallwash]

I had a call from Blue Pay yesterday regarding new upgrades that will need to be made to my Etowah Valley SS bay credit card system. It will consist of new computer chips and programming. BP said it will also result in cheaper processing fees. I think all this has to be done by 3/16/15. The new program will also make it possible to use your smart phone as a terminal to process CC similar to Square. Has anyone done their BP system yet? I am still waiting for the chips and program to arrive.

I have etowah valley boxes and CC processing. I changed from BluePlay to TSYS processing. Fees have been 5-5.5% since. TSYS required the updated chips too. I've had no issues with TSYS.

 

[PaulLovesJamie]

My upgrades are in the mail, I expect to install them as soon as they arrive.

 

[soapy]

My chips finally showed up. I tried one location and for some reason it changed my timers from a count up to a count down setup. It took Etowah valley a while to figure out what programming needed to be changed on the timer but I think it is working now. The chips say Tsys on them and the instruction sheet was for Tsys upgrades. The program cards are still Blue pay though. Blue pay said this will gives us better rate now.

 

[soapy]

I have been running with the new program for a week now. It seems that it is processing cards better than before. I think that is because the new setup uses a toll free number that is direct with no hand offs of the line between carriers. For anyone doing this upgrade you will need to program the timers for not only the CC setup but also things like grace time, bonus bucks etc. that will get lost with the chip changes. It will be interesting to see how much the fees drop.

 

[soapy]

I have been on the new Blue pay rate structure for a while and can finally compare the rates to going direct with Tsys. I have Tsys on another system and it typically runs 5.1% to process cards. With the 2 locations I have on the new blue pay system the rates are 10.1 and 9.5 for the 2 locations. I will be switching my 2 account over to the tsys direct system as soon as possible and would advise anyone on Blue pay to do the same.

 

[Eric H]

I updated about 2 weeks ago to the "new improved" Bluepay site....huge mistake. It now takes several days to look at transactions and deposits have several days grouped together instead of daily deposits. Today i found out that all 12 of my timers have gone back to count down, they had been count up when I installed the new chips. The other thing that is bothering me is that I can no longer refund onto the credit card, i can refund CC transactions only by cash or check. I have been in the habit of refunding anyone that calls with a credit card transaction, even if they are only calling to ask about the approval on their account. It doesn't cost me a lot of money and makes them very happy.
I am now waiting for my new programming card to switch over to TSYS. looks like I will behaving about $300 a month.

Soapy, can you tell me how to change my CC back to count up? They are programmed to count up but are counting down for some reason. I have a call into Jim but I know they are very busy right now.

 

[soapy]

Eric, to set up your timer to do count up go into the setup menu then past coin and time and you get CRD1 set it to your preauthorization price for CC. then on CRD2 set it to NONE and then COIN set it to your amount to start which is the same or less than CRD1.

 

[soapy]

I switched everything over from Blue pay to Tsys direct this week. Everything seems to be going well and I should be paying half in CC fees as I was before.

 

[Eric H]

I switched to tsys about 5/14, just after my other post. So far no problems and the "you charged me $15 dollars for my $3.50 carwash!" calls have stopped. I did have to let my Bluepay account continue for a week + just to make sure I got paid for all of the transactions. I called Amanda to ask about closing my account and she asked for the software (chips) back. Luckily Jim had sent me 2 sets of chips so I mailed her back one set.

 

[soapy]

My tsys has only been about 10 days now and I am seeing almost double the usage as I was with blue pay. Now it works like it is supposed to, 1 swipe it reads the card instead of multiple swipes it took with blue pay. Blue pay told me they spent $250 to program the chips and why didn't I give them a chance to prove the new lower cost. I tried it for a month and they were still over 10% processing cost vs. 5% I had on a tsys system at another location. The $250 is about what I will save per month in CC fees by switching.

 

[kentadel]

I discovered my first hiccup in about a year using Tsys. One of my timers suddenly will not shut off (recognize stop) in credit card count up mode, resulting in a max charge for my customers. I called Tsys and they are unable to credit back or cancel the charges. Suggested contacting Quick Pay. I did that and the person I spoke with needed help figuring out what to do, took my info and promised to get back to me with a solution. That hasn't happened yet. I will call Jim at Etowah and see what is up with the card and timer issue, and hope he has an answer on the process of getting a charge refunded.

 

[JMMUSTANG]

I had the same problem last year. It was a bad stop button on the credit card machine.

 

[kentadel]

I have the dial selector. Funny thing is, all the dial selections work correctly and deliver correct product, but the voice/digital display shifts between rapid dry and spot free everywhere on the dial. I have to have a short somewhere. This happened while I was away from the wash Thursday and Friday. My employee did not think it was worth a call since everything still functioned, he thought, not considering count up mode would be a problem. I have a max set at $25 and now have a few of those to refund. Anyone issued a refund using Tsys?

 

[soapy]

April processing cost with Blue pay was 10.1 % and the partial month of May with Tsys processing fees 4.4%.

 

[soapy]

I got my final charge from Blue Pay today. They hit me with a $295 early termination fee. I guess being with them for almost 10 years paying double the normal processing fees was not long enough to avoid the early termination fee. I am very glad to be rid of this company. The reason I was with them so long is that I was locked in due to the equipment I was using.