I'd say ask your bank, not the internet.
{Preface: I've gotten some pretty good advice here on a variety of things before, so I thought I'd see if anyone had any experiences with this before I talked to a bank or financing company.
It goes without saying that you noticed the above first sentence of the thread and I'm just unnecessarily pointing it out.
Of course I'm gonna go for a bank or something, but I'm after practical personal experiences of users. All companies will tell you is how good THEIR product is, but then all you've got is 6 or 7 companies/banks all saying how awesome they are. You can't have 6 people in first place, but that's what they're effectively claiming. No matter if they intend to do that or not, they are. So, I'm looking for people who have used these things.
I can talk to the phone company about getting a phone or something, but I'm also gonna talk to people and see how they feel about AT&T or whoever they use before I do.
Well, maybe in the future you can ask for a deposit up front? End of a case, they get paid back what's left, or have to meet what exceeds?
And they prolly should have covered credit cards by now, they've been around since the 30's or 50's, I forget which. We only digitalized them recently.
Also, I have to ask, are cheques an option here? That just seems like a logical choice if you need things to be separated. Not sure how many people carry around cheque books anymore, mother and rent not withstanding.
Yeah, that's true and valid. That's called a retainer or specifically a "deposit retainer." I deposit that in an escrow account called an IOLTA for client funds. For each hour I put in, my hourly rate is deducted out of the account and it becomes mine. It works in theory, but in reality, that only works for people who have the money upfront to give to you upfront. The thing about a credit card is, their bank or VISA or whoever, is lending them the money.
Eh, Its possible that stuff has been around a while, but they've only been in widespread use fairly recently. Technically before credit cards, you had lines of credit, but whatever. Most things specifically involving a computer are not covered by legal ethics. The only possible exception is advertising, but I recently heard a State Supreme Court Justice in Columbus call the internet the "wild west, and thank God I won't be alive to tackle that mess."
Checks are certainly an option as long as they clear but again the central issue isn't method of payment transfer per se. It's what you do with people who don't have the cash.
The thing about a Credit Card is, that's not really their money. It's the bank's money that they promise to give back to the bank with interest later. <--- This is financing, and that really helps when I'm asking someone to pull $2000 out of thin air, which is actually an incredibly cheap amount for a lawyer's services, but to the average person, that's a whole lot. I'm aware of this.
Short, simple, fact of the matter is many clients just don't have a couple grand to pay me or anyone else, because the economy sucks terribly and they're just hanging on, if that. Surprise! Your kid just got charged with theft from some store or got busted with pot. $2K or $3K to try to defend him or her. And, that's cheaper than many lawyers around here will charge too.... Most parents I've seen don't really have that laying around to write a check for. With a Credit Card, they don't have to have it, they just have to have a high enough credit limit and hopefully be able to pay the credit card off at some point.
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Topic: Accepting Credit/Debt Cards. (Read 1385 times)