What would happen in this situation?
I go into a little coffee shop and get a cup of coffee. It’s $.95 and all I have is a $100.00 bill. They have the change, but don’t want to except the $100 for some reason or another. It says right on the bill that this is legal tender. Can they do that? Could they demand their coffee back? What if I already drank it? What if they didn’t have change for the $100?
A purchase is not a debt.
Stores have a right to put limits on the types of payments they revceive. Plenty of stores won’t accept bills greater that $20s.
Legal tender means the government backs the bill. It has nothing to do with anyone being required to accept it.
Can they do that?
Sure. While there are laws pertaining to discriminating against customers just because they’re black, or female, etc., there’s no law against refusing to do business with someone because you don’t like his face, or don’t care to apply your entire day’s change to one transaction.
Could they demand their coffee back?
Sure. They don’t have to sell you the coffee, and they sure as hell don’t have to give it to you.
What if I already drank it?
Then they probably wouldn’t really want it back.
Actually, you would still owe payment.
What if they didn’t have change for the $100?
I’m sure they’d let you pay with the hundred if you were willing to forego the change.
This comes down to a practical matter. What if you wanted to pay for a five cent piece of gum with a one thousand dollar bill? Suppose someone owed you a dollar and offered a hundred and insisted that you give him change. Do you think you should be forced to either make change or forgive the debt?
Lots of places don’t accept large bills as a matter of policy. Hardly anyone with limited change is going to screw up their ability to accomodate the next twenty customers with fives or tens in order to accomodate one customer with a hundred for a lousy $1 sale. If they did, they’d be in the position of having to refuse those folks’ legal tender for lack of proper change.
Try a bank, or a business that does enough dollar volume to break the bill.
I drive a taxi, and occasionally run into tourists who have (or say they only have) $100 bills. If it’s the first 8-10 hours of my shift, or if we are in an area that is remotely non-well-lit, I can’t/won’t make change.
If they say it upfront, I’ll stop at a 7-11, cut the meter and let them break it. If they wait till we get there, the meter keeps running as we drive back to the 7-11; I have had people end up adding $15 to their fare because we had to drive all over looking for ATM’s or whatever. If there is no 7-11, you have no credit cards or checkbook/photo ID and we’re talking about a serious fare ($15/$20 or more), I will drive you to the police station and have you arrested for failure to pay. No shit.
If it’s $5, what the hell am I gonna do? It’s not worth my time. I’d say it’s the same with a cup of coffee. If you just walk out and refuse to pay, what are they gonna do, tackle you? You could break your arm, sue them, and come out 9,999,999.05 ahead on the exchange. They can call a cop, but you're gone, and are they gonna fill out a statement, etc. etc. over .95?
Oops…
Said 7-11; but most of them won’t take big bills after a certain hour. Late at night Denny’s or Waffle Houses can sometimes be talked into doing it.
I hopped in a cab once, the cabbie drove to me my destination.
The fare?
$22.
I handed him a 50.
“Sorry mate, can’t change that”.
Wtf?
He couldn’t give change for a 50 on a 22 dollar bill.
furt, I don’t know what the law is, but what is to stop a corrupt cabbie refusing to accept anything but exact change? And when the client can’t comply, drive them to the nearest 7-11 and then charge them for that journey?
On whom does the legal obligation fall to be able to complete the transaction?
And that, my friends, is what happens when you type your username in to the subject line.
Anyone ever read Mark Twain’s story, *The Million Pound Note]/i]? Interesting how different he thought things would work out in England than in the U.S. …
If you were one of my first fares, I’d have said the same thing. I start the shift with about $20-25 in change. I can’t break a $50 until I’ve had a couple of fares.
The other issue here is safety. It ain’t a safe job, and a lot of guys, as policy, don’t like to pull out their roll and say “Yeah, I can break a hundred, seeing as how I have $200 in small unmarked bills here in my hand. Say, is that a gun?”
Hell, I’ve had other hacks refuse to make change for me becaus they disn’t want to show the roll. It’s paranoia, but you get the idea.
There are plenty of stores and small businesses that won’t take “large bills;” I am a small business. IANAL, but I imagine the operative priciple here is somthing like “reasonable expectation.” If a resaturant doesn’t have a sign on the outside saying “no checks accepted,” can you eat the meal and then say you have no cash? No; it is not a resonable expectation that they take checks. It is not a reasonable expectation that a cabbie always has change for large bills. Otherwise what’s to stop a corrupt customer from trying to screw me? I’ve had any number of people try exactly that kind of crap. (Or they don’t have enough; after I threaten the cops they find ten more bucks).
The rule is real simple: say you only have a 50 when you get in, and we can go from there. Everything’s negotiable. Wait until we arrive, and we’re gonna have problems.
I thought legal tender means it must be accepted as payment of debt. So if I go to a restaurant and finish a meal, but have not yet paid for it, that’s not debt? Is there another term for this situation?
Beastal, I couldn’t find anything online but at least in Houston, there are regulations to prevent the sort of scan you suggest from taking place. There were notices posted on the taxi that said if you need to break a large bill, the taxi would have to take you to a place where you could do so and couldn’t charge more than a certain amount like $1.50 as long as you advised the driver up front that you would need change. Also I think some places require the driver to be able to make change for a $20. I don’t recall the exact wording as it’s been a few months since I was in a cab and I used a credit card. Now if you did not advise the driver at the start of the trip that you would need to make change then it’s your problem.
Orlando city code (55:31(5)) requires that drivers provide “a reasonable amount of change” with no specific dollar amount.
The people refusing $100 bills may be foreigners, who have learned the hard way about the value of US currency.
Round the world many people, including banks, are reluctant to accept US $100 bills, except for someone they know and can trace. The reason is that so many $100 bills are forged. For some reason, the US has not chosen to include serious anti-forgery protection into its money.
Recently there was a serious scandal in Pakistan. It was discovered that people had been paying bribes to senior officials with forged US bills. Shocking behaviour indeed.
Many international bankers believe the five hundred euro note will replace the $100 bill as the currency of choice among bribers, drug smugglers and other people who carry bags of unmarked notes. It will need less volume for the same value, and will be much harder to forge.
Yes! It’s true!
In a complete reversal of events, the cabbie actually drove the destination to me!
: looks around :
What?
: looks around again :
Ok! Ok! It was typo! HAPPY?!?
Thanks, breaknrun
That’s a pretty useless code then, no?
Where do people get these $100’s from anyway? Seems like all I ever see are the $20’s the ATM spits out.
The tellers at my neighborhood bank are always glad to give me $100 bills when I make a withdrawl.
Part of the problem for the proliferation of $100 bills is that the US government no longer prints larger denominations. AFAIK, $500, $1000, etc. bills are either not available or not widely distributed. This was done as a move to make transferring large amounts of money more difficult – stuffing five $10,000 bills in your pocket is a lot easier than stuffing five hundred $100 bills.
As for the question of cashiers not accepting certain types of currency, I believe some outlets currently refuse to take the Sachwain(sp?) one-dollar gold coin.
I’ve actually received $100’s when I withdrew $1000 from a machine once. I was at a Citibank.
boy, do i love nevada! nothin’ but hundreds flyin’ around!
some dork won’t take it? easy! drop it on the blackjack table. dealer gives you 4 $25 chips. toss one out in the circle (2 or 3 if ya got balls!). look at your cards, but don’t hit that 13, let the chump dealer hit her 6 up and bust! BANG! YOU WIN! dealer pays you, you grab your free drink, head to the cashier and give them your chips and tell em you want twentys. stuff the 6 twentys in your pocket, pay for the coffee (yeah, like you even still want it! you just got a free drink!) with the fiver and walk away happy!
really, it happens like this all the time!
Gatopescado- New mouthpiece for the Nevada Tourism Council
Beastal
I see from your profile you’re from Melbourne. Next time you’re in a Melbourne taxi look at the signs that are stuck on the dash in the front passenger seat or on the door panels inside in the back seat. All of them have a line which the Victorian Taxi Directorate requires them to display that says something like “If you require more than $20 change please inform your driver before commencing your journey”.
The driver was quite within his rights. If you require more than $20 change you’re supposed to tell him before you start so he can decide whether or not he wants to take the fare. If you don’t tell him then you’re at fault.