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what happens when you "swipe' in an area that has nearly zero phone service.

Soon, we will be attending a craft show in an area that has virtually no phone service and am pretty sure they will not allow access to their wifi.  It is in a school so there's no debateing

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Super Seller

If there is no Cell or wifi there are 2 options.  

1.  You will not be able to sell via credit card.

2.  If you enable offline mode you can accept swiped payments at your own risk.  once you are back in service area it will upload the transactions and see what is approved and declined.  there is no way to know when you take the payment at the time of sale if it will be approved or declined.  Offline mode is a risk that you have to decide is within your range of acceptable risk.

 

Personally, I would find a way to have Cell or wifi signal.  Either a hotpot from another cell provider or tethering or using the school's wifi.

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Thanks for the input

I'm going to call the person in charge Monday to confirm use or non-use of their wifi.  There again poses a 'problem' in that when I plug in the swipe (on my phone) it turns off my wifi.

Now what  ?  

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Super Seller

what phone are you using?  That should not happen on any phone, plugging in a square reader is the same as plugging in a pair of headphones and has nothing to do with wifi settings on your phone.

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It's a Galaxy S3 and I totally mis-spoke.  I got the swipe in Friday's mail and had never used one before.  Of course I had to familiarize myself with it and in the process I managed to turn off the wifi.  I know this because I just now plugged it in and the wifi remained connected, so I guess anything that happened was my doing.

Out of curiosity, how many cards that you were given for sales were rejected or not approved ?

 I may have to gamble and take cards and complete sales w/o authorization.

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Yor decline rate will totally depend on the area you are in.  I just looked and it was 97 declines out of 5,727 transactions over a 3 month period. 

 

that's pretty good odds but to have a $300 transaction out the door because it got declined later would suck.

 

also, make sure you have the device back online within 72 hours of the first offline transaction.

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you're right, that is darn good odds

i would be suspect if I had a sale that exceeded $100 as my average sale $30 to $70 and not only that, my product is not an easy re-marketable item.  

I just found out from another vendor that attends the same show in question that the school will allow wifi use, just have to ask for login info - so problem solved.

One would think that all of this was for naught but it wasn't  -  I did learn and I certainly appreciate your helpful info.

Thank you

 

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