You all know from my rant a few weeks back that one of my big pet peeves in business is when a merchant makes it difficult to pay them.

As small business owners we recognize the need to make the payment process easy, and being able to accept many forms of payment is critical. That usually means not only accepting cash and cheques, but credit cards from your customers as well. Finding the right credit card terminal to accept credit can be a daunting task, especially since that process usually falls outside our areas of expertise. There seems to be an endless myriad of plans, programs, and processing solutions, and picking the right one is like a crap shoot for most of us. In our euphoria to give the customer what they want, it is common for small business owners to jump at the first deal we see to get …