Working in the lovely world of retail, here are two arguments I get about a dozen times a shift:
[ol][li]“A $100 bill is valid currency. You can’t refuse it.”[/li][li]“You know, it’s illegal to set a minimum amount for Interac payments” (our minimum is five dollars)[/ol][/li]Both these claims seem wrong to me, and neither law was mentioned in any of of the tedious legal information I had to read when I took this job. But so many customers seem so absolutely sure of these things, that I’m beginning to wonder.
So, dopers, is it illegal to refuse a bill in Canada? And is it illegal to set minimums for Interac purchases?
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Hamish * Working in the lovely world of retail, here are two arguments I get about a dozen times a shift:
[list=1][li]“A $100 bill is valid currency. You can’t refuse it.”[/li][/QUOTE]
While these details are US-specific, I would imagine they also happen to be universal. IANASmartPerson, neither.
Assuming this is a private company, the company can accept or refuse anything it wants. Accept only bottles of imported hefeweisen for payment, refuse any coin dated 1993, whatever.
I believe minimum payments accepted through Interac would be a contract issue with Interac and your company, not a matter of law.
I’m pretty sure that any business in Canada can set any sort of rule that want as far as payment of purchases go. Hell, you could probably require that they pay entirely in nickels, but you wouldn’t get much business and it would be damn inconvienient for everybody when you did.
The thing that may be confusing matters is that legal tender must be accpeted as payment of debts. So if you were, say, the cable company you couldn’t refuse a hundred dollar bill if the guy was trying to pay off his debt to you.
Disclaimer: IANA… whatever would know about these things definitively. I am, as noted, only “pretty sure.”
You are both correct. Companies wil lofetn set a minimum on Interac to defer the per transaction charge they usually abosrb on larger purchases (Usually ¢10 to ¢40 or so).
Another common mistake is that if a store mis-labels a product with the wrong price, they have to give it to you for that price. 99.99% of stores will as a gesture of service, but IIRC they are in no way obligated to sell it at the wrong price. A simple “I’m sorry, sir, there seems to be an error” is sufficient.
Ya another mistake i heard is that if u walk into a store and you see some products on a rack or shelf without any signs or prices then its assumed its for free…my friend said she tried that at some mall in toronto, i highly doubt that some store would just let you do that…
when i worked in a clothing store last year many times the employees forgot to do the weekly price checks, price promos, and so sometimes things were still marked as 25 percent off when the price is back up to the original and we always had to give it to them for the cheaper price…but isn’t there a guideline for this kinda stuff or is it just up to each indiviual store
I’m sure it’s up to each store. If somebody doesn’t price-up a sale item after the sale has ended, and a customer wants to buy it, most stores will sell the item at that price. The loss is far less than pissing off the customer.
But if a big ticket item is listed for $25.00 instead of $2,500 don’t expect to get it for that price.
I’m not sure about Canadian legal tender laws, but the U.S. ones provide that American currency and coins are legal tender, meaning that they must be accepted in payment of a debt when tendered as such, and the refusal to do so effectively voids the debt. (A lawyer can get into more detail on how that works if necessary.)
A retail purchase is an attempt at a contract – if I open a store and put out goods priced at $1.98, I am saying that I offer this merchandise for sale to you at $1.98, and if you choose to buy it, that’s what it will cost you. No debt is incurred – it’s a straight contract, which you accept by handing me $1.98 or a higher sum I can make change to you from – I accept your $2 and give you two cents back, or your $5 and give you $3.02 back. If I choose not to accept some given offer of payment (credit card, personal check, high-denomination bill, etc.) for whatever reasons I may have, that’s your problem – you need to be able to pay me in a medium of exchange that I will accept in order for us to have a retail sales contract working between us.
As for the Interac thing: IIRC, (I’d have to doublecheck with the bank), the providers terms-of-service agreement usually prohibits a store from setting a minimum purchase by Interac. It’s not a law, but is often a contractual stipluation.
In addition to equipment rental, and service fees, the merchant usually has to pay the bank a user fee each time a payment is paid by debit card (and I think that’s on top of the $1.50 they charge you as a “convenience fee”). For the sake of argument, let’s say they have to pay $1.00. For a purchase less than $5 or $10, this totally sucks for the merchant. So you can understand why they’d want to put a minium – if everyone who bought only a coffee paid by debit, the coffeshop would basically be giving the coffee away for free 'cause the price of the coffee wouldn’t cover the user fee for the debit card.
However, as far as the bank is concerned, you’re not allowed to refuse a sale on their behalf. The bank (correctly) sees those “$10 minimum purchase with Interac” as cheating them out of income from user fees they’d otherwise get. Whether the customer pays $100 or $10, either way, they are supposed to get their $1.00 from the merchant, and their $1.50 from the cardholder. Man, it makes you realise how the banks are making off like bandits!
I’m not sure what the actual contracts are like for debit - my company works with a credit card system that works along the the same premise though - we pay a monthly fee for the service and equipment, each transaction costs us an additional 75 cents from the service provider and another 75 cents from the credit card company for each purchase (roughly, the credit card company works on a percentage, I think.) If someone bought a mere $2 worth of stuff, regularly, it would be annoying.
So legally a merchant can set whatever limits they want, but contractually the bank would probably be pissed off.
Legally, no one in Canada has to accept more than 25 pennies at any time as payment for an item.
I have no idea about any of the other issues raised in this forum, but I suspect that NoGoodNamesLeft is incorrect when it comes to paying the lower of two prices on a particular good.
Legally, no one in Canada has to accept ANY pennies as payment for an item in a store.
Polycarp hits the nail on the head; legal tender must be accepted as payment for a debt and refusing to accept it is equivalent to refusing payment at that time (but not necessarily in perpetuity.) But a retail purchase is not technically a “debt” in this sense. If the store refuses to give you the chocolate bar, no debt’s incurred, so you’ve got nothing to complain about.
It would be a different situation if, for instance, you bought a car from someone agreeing to pay them $250 a month for two years. If you showed up on the first of the month with $250 in cash they’d technically have to accept it. (Refusing it would not kill the ENTIRE debt, or even necessarily that month’s payment - no court in Canada will give you a free pass on an entire loan just because of a bitch session over one month’s payment.) Credit card payments, car loans, those are “debts.” A retail purchase is not.
As for the lower price issue, I also don’t think there’s a court in the nation that will force a store to sell you a 65" Sony TV for fifty bucks just because the clerk screwed up the decimal place in “$5,000.00”.
I’m not quite sure, but I think… US law… the pricing tag is viewed as an implicit contract or some such. If the price is not clear human error, there seems to be leverage to sue people on.
Thanks, everyone, for responding. I wonder if there’s a place I could find a complete list of Canadian/Quebec retail law? and if my company violates a law, what are my responsibilities as a clerk?
There’s a sign up in several stores around town that states that if the cash register and the price tag disagree, Quebec law requires that ten dollars be knocked off the price (to a minimum of zero), or something like that.
Since this was never mentioned when I started working there, I’ve begun to wonder how complete my education was.