Technology gone bad…

Being able to take credit cards at a festival where there’s no phone line available is very convenient. It’s a great feature for those of us who vend away from our stores. I spent the weekend selling yarn, patterns, knitting needles, etc at the Southern Adirondack Fiber Festival and ran a number of credit cards through the machine. It did its thing and spit out receipts as usual. Once I got home, I plugged into the phone line and tried to upload the transactions for approval. Nothing. No records. No transactions. And the credit card folks haven’t a clue. As luck would have it, the new regs insist that receipts only print out the last four digits of credit cards, so I don’t have the data necessary to reload the transactions. Fortunately, I asked for phone numbers and will be able to call each purchaser. Inconvenient for me and for them. Technology is great when it works, but it’s good to have a backup plan (paper) when it doesn’t!