Nov
02
2012
November 2nd, 2012 by Mike Spence

Do you have a wireless internet connection for customers?  If so, you should look at our integrated solution through WEBbeams.

WEBbeams allows you to make your store safe and secure by supplying a managed solution for your internet access.  Some quick 100% true stories of situations where WEBbeams would have saved our customers time and money:

  • Campers and table hogs:  We had a customer that found out people were sitting in their parking lot, drinking Starbucks coffee, and surfing the internet.
  • Illegal downloads & pirating:  A store that had their internet shut off by the ISP (internet service provider) for THREE days because someone downloaded illegal content.
  • Modem resets due to bandwidth:  One of our customers was having some sever lag when trying to run credit cards.  This was tracked down to an employee watching streaming video for hours at a time online.
  • Stop hackers from accessing your POS:  A store that had continual DoS (Denial of Service) attacks on their firewalled router.  This caused a number of internet connectivity issues.

So give us a call and see how we can help you MANAGE your WiFi more effectively!

 


Posted in POS Features Tagged with:

Apr
12
2012
April 12th, 2012 by Mike Spence

Here is a real life reason why having an open WiFi connection can be a bad idea.

Recently a customer called in and explained that their credit card system was down.   That’s pretty serious and we wanted to make sure we get them up and running as soon as possible.  Our support guys started checking the usual suspects and discovered that the store could load a web page and could even log our technician in over the internet.    We checked our credit card settings and the services that are running there and everything looked great.

They then decided to troubleshoot by bypassing SP-1 and running the card directly in the processors software.  The card still did not go through.  The next step was contacting the merchant services company that they use.  It turns out that they are one of our preferred providers so we had an easy time of eliminating that as an trouble spot.  That usually leaves an internet connection as a problem but we already confirmed that the computer was connected (heck, we were logged in remotely!).

Finally after running some more tests, we discovered that this had nothing to do with the computers, our software or the merchant services at all.  It was the ISP (internet service provider) that deliberately blocked this type of internet traffic!

You see, at the store,  there was an open WiFi connection for customers.  This was simply enabled by turning on WiFi on the router.  There was virtually no security activated at the router side.   Because of this, someone using that connection was downloading things that the ISP flagged.  The ISP started turning off activity from certain ports.  That stopped the activity from the downloads but also from the credit card interface.

If you use WiFi, have a company like www.webbeams.com set it up for you so it can be secure!

 

Posted in Technology Tagged with: ,

Sep
15
2011
September 15th, 2011 by Mike Spence

More on the on-going fight between coffee shop owners and people that want to camp in the store working on laptops etc.  This news  Grid Lock: Starbucks Covers Electrical Outlets to Curb Laptop Lingerers – TIME NewsFeed illustrates the frustration.

The issue is not that people want to hang out in the store, it’s that the customer doesn’t continue to buy product while sitting there.   Heck, I’m guessing that you want people in your store – the catch is you also want them buying product!

The best way I’ve seen to approach this without a confrontation is to use a product like WEBbeams. WEBbeams helps eliminate the whole issue by requiring a login code to access the WiFi connection.

When the customer orders product, SP-1 prints a unique, one time code.  That code is then used by the customer to log on to the WiFi system in the store.  The great thing is that the code can be for a limited amount of time.   So, if you have campers that want to sit, surf the web and stay all day, they will be forced to buy more product.

Give us a call to learn more about WEBbeams and SelbySoft!

Mike.

Posted in Hardware, Order Entry, POS Features Tagged with: , ,