08/16/2026
Last major update on the booking system.
The price increase was part of it. Square has already been giving me problems, and I'm just not paying substantially more for something I'm already having issues with.
But that really just gave me the push to do something I've been wanting to do anyway.
I don't like where we're headed with all the tracking and data collection. Everything wants an account, everything gets logged, everything gets connected to everything else, and most of us really have no idea where all that information ends up or how long it sits there.
And for what? You're just trying to make a reflexology appointment. What are these companies doing with that data we hand them? Whatever it's going for isn't in our best interest.
So I figured if I'm going to change systems, I'm going to do it the way I want to do it.
I've logged most of my weekend building this thing, moving everything over, tightening it down, testing it, tweaking it, and trying to get it just right. A lot of that work was specifically about privacy. I could have taken the easy route and just switched to another big booking platform, but I wanted more control over what happens with my customers' information.
The new booking system is running on a private server in Germany. I picked Germany on purpose because they have much stronger privacy protections around this stuff. I've also gone through and cut down what the server keeps. Logs are only kept for 14 days, backups for 7 days, the administrative side is locked down, and old appointment and customer information isn't going to just sit there forever because somebody might want it someday.
I'm also getting rid of the requirement to put a credit card in just to make an appointment, that hurts my end a little bit but the trade off is worth it.
That's another piece of information that doesn't need to be tied to your name, phone number, email, appointment history and everything else. Payment can happen separately when you come in. I don't need all of that connected together just because it's convenient for a piece of software.
Basically, I'm trying to collect less information, keep it for less time, and stop connecting things together that don't need to be connected.
Will there be a little inconvenience here and there? Probably, but it is what it is. I'm okay with that tradeoff.
I really have gone above and beyond on this one because I think my customers' privacy is worth the extra work.
I'm just not comfortable with where all of this invasive tech is headed. As a business owner, I can't control what everybody else does, but I can control a little bit of what happens with the information people give me.
And I'm definitely not paying more money to a service that pushes us further in the direction I don't like while, at the same time, doing a worse job at what I'm paying them to do than I can do myself.
This was my out, so I'm taking the offramp. We have a choice, I don't want to support the data harvesting. I've done my level best to prevent as much of it as possible.
The new booking system is for appointments October 1 and later. Until then, the current Wellsboro and New Holland booking links are still available. Everything is still located at www.slipperyelmreflexology.com
