Joe Fusco Asked:
I am going to start soon raising my preauth to $8.00, now at only 1 nights rental. I also want to put some games in. I would like to set the preauth for games higher but I don't see a way. I can't see a $50.00 game going out on an $8.00 preauth.
Mike
Is there a way to talk to DVDnow about changing the preauth by slot like you can for rental and purchase price?
Hi Mike,
Customizing a pre-auth for per slot is not available.
Operators can use the Customize Price Data feature to set higher or lower rental rates for days of the week or for specific slots.
This is one way to set a higher pre-auth fee. However, the limitation is with the pre-auth setting. Whatever pre-auth method you choose to use will be used for all card swipes. If you select full then all rentals are pre-auth for the full sale value.
One idea that we have been working on – when the membership program is launched we plan to include a feature in which members who have a perfect track record – with no declines – will automatically be changed from Full auth to partial. New customers or non-members would be subject to full auths. There are no estimated release dates available for this.
I hope this helps.
Mark Rudolph
Operations Manager | DVDNow Kiosks, Inc.
6 comments:
Rich has left a new comment on your post "Miscellaneous Questions (anything you can think of...":
Pre-Authorization
When we first installed our kiosks we had a $1.99 pre-authorization. Soon we discovered that our CC charges were out of control. Here’s why …
When a customer swipes their card you are charged $.08 ($.05 from First data and $.03 from Merchant Services). This is just the gateway fees. Let’s say you’re charging $1.99 for the first night and $.99 additional. The customer keeps the movie for two days. When returned the kiosk has to get another authorization because the total charges ($2.98) exceed the original pre-auth ($1.99) so you are charged another $.08. In an effort to reduce our CC charges we increased the pre-auth to $5. We feared going higher thinking we would lose renters.
But after suffering over $1200 in losses in one year (most of which came from a kiosk we have placed in a low income neighborhood) we increased our pre-authorization from $5 to $15. The other thing we saw was that declined transactions usually came in 3’s (e.g. customer/thief rents 3 movies and does not return them; when you try to collect there’s no money or CC account is closed).
The only change we’ve noticed so far is no more declined transactions :-). Our rental counts look about the same. I should also note that when we changed the pre-auth we also changed the max DVD out from 3 to 2. And changed the convert to sale from 10 days to 7 days.
Rich
Hey Mike,
Can you start a new topic about what other kiosk owners due when a customer gets a scratched or broken dvd. Right now I contact my customer and apologize for the promblem and give them a FNF rental. I would just like to what all the other owners do and if there is just a better way to handle those issues.
I forgot to add to the post I just sent in, is there a way to catch scratched or broken DVD's before they go out? Thanks.
Kyle B.
cajundvd.com
This came from a reliable source on our DVDKiosks. This is very important FOLKS when you decide to drop your PreAuth. I bumped mine up to $7.00 because most charges are less than $7.00.
Hi Mike,
Currently, the payment gateway companies don't charge for preauth, they only charge for a captured transaction. So the kiosk would post a new SALE transaction if the capture amount is higher than the preauth amount and leave the previous preauth open. The previous preauth doesn't gets saved to be re-used again because by the time the capture amount is higher than the preauth amount, some days have passed (preauth only has a few weeks of life span).
You might ask, why don't we capture the preauth then issue another transaction for the price difference. The answer is that it is done to save owner's transactions fees. It is a balance we try to keep so the customers don't get overly frustrated and the owners don't pay too much for transaction fees.
I just raised my preauth on Friday to $7.00. Does anyone know what the codes mean in the UPG report area under generate all transactions? In the message column I have the number 8 and 1 come up. I also see some people being declined from the start, not making the $7.00 preauth.
Joe,
I have not seen this in YourPay, but I think I know the issue. I think the “8” and the “1” are like the “Call for Referral” messages we sometimes get from Your Pay. When I worked in retail in high school and after college and swiped people’s credit cards sometimes I got those messages. If there was an issue with someone’s card, I would get an 8 or a 1 message on the terminal screen. They meant different things, but I was supposed to call in to find out if the card was good or not. I’m sure this is the same thing. If the technology was down, I supposed these codes could have been generated.
Michelle Weiland
Financial Analyst
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