Payment Gateway

I set up my florist website 3 years ago, at start I did not use any payment gateway. After a while, when there were more and more inquiry from overseas, me and my IT partner decided to set up a payment gateway. Initially, we planned to go for paypal, but found it was too expenssive for beginner like us. So we went for a local assembly payment gateway - ipay**. The cost is quite cheap, only RM500++ for set up fee and RM68 for monthly fee. Both of us were the first timer for e-business, thus we did not take services and reliability as our consideration.

No doubt, by setting up payment gateway, our e-business has boosted up a lot, but we start meet difficulty handling with ipay**. Firstly, their responce are quite slow. Sometimes they only responce to the possibility of fraud payment after our delivery. That makes us have no choice, but to ask them to proceed with the payment which we being forced to take risk by our own.

Secondly, their customer service is not very well, as they only contact us via email and fax, they would not call you when there is any dispute. The worst thing is they give you deadline to responce to them, if not they will deduct money from your account. As a result, we as the customer have to follow up closely with them to avoid our money being deducted, they would not call you. I wonder maybe the phone call is too expenssive for them, even though it is only local call! LOL!

Well, you pay for a cheap service fee, and you get a cheap service. It is fair and that is how I console myself when I get frustrated by ipay**. :P
Is there any cheaper payment gateway in Malaysia?

East meet west

Finally, I have my X'mas mix with CNY window display done today. I remain the bear hand bouquet in cone shape ( like a X'mas tree), soft toys and snow sprays on the glass, but replace the X'mas tree with some CNY theme artificial and dry flowers arrangement.

I get my inspiration for my main theme decoration from a display in an art gallery in Salzburg, Austria. The materials are available here, glass vase, feathers, rattan ball, dry yanagi and dry palm leaves. I love the combinations and the use of orange and red color. Due to the limited space, I only make one instead of 3 decorations. I need to allocate other more commercialize items for the window display, though this might affect the overall appearence. I try to find balance between art and commercial, by hoping this can attract more people to come.

Which one now?

Christmas is on next Thursday, while Chinese New Year is coming soon in end of January. I had my Christmas window decoration a month ago. I decorate with bears, a small chrismas tree and some christmas theme artificial flowers arrangement. To make it more attractive, I hang some gold colour christmast ornaments and spray some snow on the window glass.

It's only 9 days to go for Christmas, but the radio start to broadcast some cny songs these few days. This really makes me eager to change my window decoration. I cannot stop of thinking for some ideas for cny. I wish I can change it by tomorrow, but christmas has not past, oh... what should I do now?

Anyway, there are only 6 weeks to go for cny, so maybe I can change the decoration a bit by a bit first. Maybe a vase of artificial flowers arrangement with red peonys and white vase. Red and white are christmas theme color, while peonys are popular during cny. Peony is a symbol of prosperity and happiness for Chinese.