If there is a user named ARCO, I’m sorry, this isn’t about you!
ARCO, our friendly nationwide BP gas peddler! I pit thee for making my life inconvinient at the worst possible moments! I’m getting deja vu, perhaps I’ve pitted ARCO before?
If something annoys me to no end is when merchants lose my business without an obvious reason to do so rather than “That’s how we’ve always done things”. I can’t be the only one! Here is my partial list:
Closing Early. ARCO! You’re a gas station. I expect you to be open past 9PM. Ok, the one in front of my house closes at 10PM, but still, 7/11 manages to stay open overnight and not go out of business! Times I’ve filled up at Shell because of this? Over 50. $ ARCO lost ~ $1000-$2000.
Not taking credit cards. ARCO! Using an ATM card/cash is not always possible or convinient. I know you love your 50 cent ATM fee that you can’t charge onto credit cards, but c’mon, I must’ve done at least 100 fillups at Shell/76/Chevron that is out of my way and more expensive because it’s just easier. $ ARCO lost ~ $2000 - $4000.
Banning my ATM card. ARCO! If I mistype my 11 digit PIN once does not mean my card is invalidated from that location for 24 hours, does it? Well apparently it does.
Happened to me at least 10 times when I was in a hurry. $ ARCO lost ~ $200 - $400.
Renovating and not fixing any of the above problems. ARCO! You just rebuilt the station next to my house from the ground up. You got new electronics, new pumps, new everything. Why must I still walk to the isle to pay? Why can’t I use credit? Why does it still ban my card for one PIN mistake? Why do you still close early? You’re losing me, I’m changing my habits to avoid you. In fact, I go out of my way not to fill up at ARCO now.
Why? How hard/expensive would it be to implement all these changes? Would the 20 cent savings per gallon you get with ARCO suddenly disappear?
I tried writing them an e-mail a long time ago, but there was no address on the website, and the comment submission form was broken and didn’t submit.
Well the branch manager said, when I was opening the account, that it can be anything 4 to 16 digits, but he personally felt that 4 digits was pretty much insecure because people tend to pick PINs they can memorize, and there is only so many 4 digit numbers that are in any way significant to a person(and often can be found inside their wallet). So I picked a number that I can remember, is not found in my wallet and is not too short, which happened to be 11 digits. The only trouble this causes is when traveling internationally or Walgreens!
Yeah, right. Considering the $0.35 per customer they’d lose to credit cards and the 3% or so that the credit card charges, I guarantee you they’d lose money if they started taking credit cards. I’m sure they’re not stupid enough to not do the math.
And is there really anyone who has a credit card but no ATM card?
My ATM card is for withdrawing cash from my bank account. I don’t like punching in my PIN just anywhere. What kind of protection do I get if the ARCO machine decides to charge me an incorrect amount? What if it’s cloned? This is actual money, that, if missing, would put me into an emergency. When I was younger and in High School, my income wasn’t as steady. I could afford my gas on average, but at any isntant when I need it I might not have had the checking account balance to pay for gas. Use credit.
I don’t like debit cards. Mine is for withdrawing money from my bank account. Or if I go to CostCo and don’t have my cheque book. I hate it when cashiers ask, ‘Debit, or credit?’ If it were debit, I’d tell them.
When I started driving ARCO had their own credit cards. Dad gave me one of his. When they discontinued their credit cards, I stopped buying their gas. In 20 years I’d be surprised if I bought gas from them ten times.
I do buy at ARCO occasionally because it’s usually cheaper than the big name brands. But to the best of my recollection, I’ve always paid cash. Usually the Valeo or the off brand places are just as cheap, though, and they take credit cards.
Years ago, though, I always looked for ARCO because they always seemed to be a lot cheaper. Back then they didn’t take ATM cards at all, so I put up with paying cash.
You know I’m fed up with this argument. This is the 21st century last time I checked. People use credit cards for purchases. All you merchants out there - get used to it. If you can’t turn a profit due the service charge of processing credit cards then maybe you shouldn’t be in business.
You certainly won’t get my business.
This also goes for places that have some sort of exclusivity with regards to what cards they take. MC/VISA but no Amex. Or Amex but no MC/VISA. You don’t get my business either.
And while we’re at it - is there anyone in the country that doesn’t know that American Express is a “credit” card and “never” a debit card? So why do so many
clerks mindlessly ask credit or debit when I use it?
If I use my REI Visa for gas, I get a 1% dividend at the end of the year. So at $3/gallon I’m paying $2.97. If I use my Chase (formerly Shell) card, I also get a discount.
They’ve made the business decision that not getting your business is better than paying processing charges. In any century, what types of payment a business chooses to accept is entirely up to them. I can guarantee you that if they start accepting credit cards, their gas won’t be as cheap, so maybe you wouldn’t be going there anyway.
Would it make you feel better or worse to know that their internal business decisions are pretty much as stupid as their customer business decisions? (My company provided service for them for several years, generally over our protests that their decisions were actually self-defeating. Our relationship finally ended when they proposed a data center move that we (with hands-on experience consolidating their data centers, direct knowledge of the software at their central site and intimate knowledge of the center to be moved–we had provided all the maintenance for seven years or so–and personal relationships with the staff of the affected data center), submitted a lower bid for the project than one of the “big” contract programing outfits and were turned down because the VP wanted the project to “look good” to the brass.
The contract personnel marched in with a “you’re so stupid you’re being closed” attitude, leading to 100% non-co-operation with the in-house staff and, last we heard, the not-yet-completed move had already cost more than double the overpriced bid submitted by the big clowns–and ARCO was declaring it a successful project.)