How important is honesty in business today?

Legitimate new business owner, soon to dropship, but question to any distributors in which dawned on me today?

• I just recently established my business, obtaining all the required documentation and credentials to do legitimate business. I am just getting started so I have very limited capital (just over $2500, but will spend some of them for my website I am getting graphically designed, and SEO friendly) to work with. My actual credit is bad after a huge mess a couple of years back with an X-fiance who took me for a ride : ( So I have begun the first stages of interaction with legitimate wholesale distributors to set-up retail accounts to sell their products. I am also working with some of them who agreed to dropship for me. I have marketing and sales plans and everything I can possibly think of to get my business going. But then it dawned on me today, with no credit, and having to find and institute a merchant credit account (which i hear is hard for home businesses), I have a problem that totally slipped my mind when setting up my business plan. First problem is finding a merchant account. My second big problem is if I do they only deposit once a week. How can I expect my customers to wait a week for my merchant account to deposit their funds in my bank account before I can order their product, and then they have to wait the time it takes my manufacturers/ distributors to ship them the product. We're talking 2 weeks there. They would just find another seller. Then I thought maybe I can see if merchant accounts can split the payment, net profit to me and cost to distributor. But what if there is a chargeback so I knew that would not work. Maybe I could have the distributor take the payments and they deposit the net sales into my bank account. For one thing why would they go through so much trouble for a new retailer, that would look pretty bad on me to even ask as they would have to incure the CC companies charges on my sales which would be out of the question. Not to mention chargebacks. It would not work for me. It would seem a simple enough thought to say why not just pay for it out of my own capital in my bank account as I would get the money plus net sales deposited within a week from merchant account (my first thought when this all dawned on me). Then I realized that the demand of too many products at once (which could easily happen in one day) could end up exceeding my current capital in my bank account and then I end up screwed looking bad on both sides. Paypal holds your money for 21 days to make sure there are no chargebacks so that would not work. No distributor would even think of extending a line of credit this early in business. Does anyone have any idea first to the thought of getting a merchant account, and secondly to the dilemma in accepting the payment and paying distributor for shipment of goods? Sorry I wrote a book, and thank you for any and all feedback.

• Answer:

  Like I said before, There is a forum I found on the internet that is free, and helps with Ebay, PayPal, business and the law. Just post any question, the experts will answer it if it has not already been answered! The forum has a lot of expert advice on it. http://www.modeeworld.com/forums I found advice there about how to avoid EBAY suspensions, get past PayPal limitations, also lots of detailed help on creating your own business, getting past trademark violations, VERO and lots more. Plus general advice on how best to sell on EBAY, what sells the best, how to get the best price for your product, really everything related to EBAY and internet business. Also advice about how EBAY really works and how PayPal really works. The inside scoop. Beautiful forum. I was made a moderator of the forum and I love it!