There seems to be a lot of CC or nothing comments in the thread. I am curious, around town I am starting to carry more cash because more and more local vendors are charging a cash price and a CC price. There is usually a several dollar difference. The vendor would take a CC, but prefers cash. Is anyone else seeing this in their area? It is fairly recent (last year or so) around here. Southern US.
There are two states (Connecticut and Massachusetts) where credit card surcharges are banned. There are a handful more where debit card surcharged are banned. In most states retailers can charge a surcharge for both credit and debit card usage.
Visa/MC/Amex have been prohibited from prohibiting merchants from charging surcharges since 2013, but the practice has been slow to gain traction, thanks to a severe negative reaction from some customers.
They changed the law up here to allow surcharges before Covid, which I think put a quick end to merchants charging. One of the big cell phone companies tried it and quickly dropped it after a huge backlash.
Whoever first suggested that I find the exact balance on a card, which isn’t hard to do, and then charge that exact amount to the card, even if it’s not the totality of an order, and pay the balance of the order, is probably right.
My only problem is that I shop mostly online, and doing that online doesn’t work. It also doesn’t seem to work to transfer the cards to a credit account, like my Amazon gift account, because that is specifically prohibited. I wish I could, and I’m not sure why it’s prohibited.
Since these cards don’t expire for years, I’ve amassed probably close to a dozen with balances now between maybe $2 & $10. I guess my project this Sunday afternoon is to get a Sharpie, look them all up, and write the exact balance on each one.
I’ve been teaching at this particular school for 7 years. It was about 4 years ago that people started giving these cards, but lately, every year I get 2 or 3 or them, along with a couple from my Hebrew school families. So even if each card has only $3, we’re talking approximately $36.
I’ll rubber-band them, and put the one with the soonest expiration date on top (even the soonest one is still about two years away). Next time I have to go out to buy something in person, I’ll take them. Maybe I’ll even put them in the glove compartment, so if I have some sudden need for something (like a new tire!) I can use them.
Hmm. Maybe I ought to take just one of them and do something like go to PetsMart, and get my dog a chewie, just to make sure that is, in fact the solution. Before I drive around for months with the cards in my car.
But that solution really does make sense: like a credit card, they don’t zero out for what is left, just decline if there isn’t enough “credit”-- that just seems right.
Very, very interesting!
Years ago someone wanted to pay with Travelers Checks and I turned them down. They were upset, but I didn’t want the hassle.
It’s pretty common in restaurants and some small stores although some still do it the old-fashioned way and rather than charging a surcharge for CC they give a discount for cash.
Are you talking about this? Because I think that’s only ever talking about Amazon gift cards and means you can’t transfer an Amazon gift card to my account once you have redeemed the code in your account.
We’re talking about buying/reloading an Amazon gift card and using the Visa/MC gift card as the payment method. Apparently, you cannot do this with a gift card with less than a $1 balance.
Yes, I can see where that could be a hassle.
My employer still takes them, but we have a button on our registers specifically for that form of payment which makes it easier (though I would probably get a cashier calling the cash office asking how to deal with it).
I unfortunately have both recent & current experience with some eyewateringly outdated P.O.S. systems, and ^^ is correct for those.
Note that an internal gift card will have more data available to the P.O.S. than a generic VISA gift card. If you’re using a Craptacular brand gift card at a Craptacular store, sure they may be able to run the sale as “Charge however much you can, and then we’ll deal with the rest” but not for the generic VISA.
O.P. the back of each card will list a phone number and/or web site, where you enter in the card number, do a funny dance while standing on your left leg, and it’ll tell you the balance.
If the gods are kind, it’ll the the same phone/site for each and you can just sit there with your Sharpie & enter each card’s number to find each balance remaining.
Kind of like scratchoff tickets, I guess. You’re gonna win something but is it worth your time, or is it like, ten cents for fifteen minutes of your time? That’s the gamble!
Concur with @LSLGuy that the Amazon workaround was a new-to-me and useful little tidbit of info.
@FinsToTheLeft: if I read you correctly your two sentences seem to say opposite things.
@Mighty_Mouse: IIRC Visa & MC have prohibited surcharges from the git-go in the 1960s. With varying degrees of compliance from merchants. At some point gasoline vendors were exempted, or at least they challenged Visa/MC to a staring contest and won.
Also IIRC Government agencies that accepted credit cards have tended to have surcharges since their inception. Whether that’s simply government doing what it wants or Visa/MC carving out an exemption for them I cannot say. Been a long time since I was close to that biz.
They did - but around 2013 ish a law was passed prohibiting them from prohibiting surcharges. IOW , that law required them to allow surcharges. And gas stations weren’t exempt - even pre 2013 , Visa/MC allowed any merchant to give a discount for cash . Which is just a matter of framing - is the cash price the regular price and the CC has a surcharge or is the CC price the regular price and cash gets a discount? If both prices are displayed, who can tell?
The government thing was an exemption - because the alternative was that governments wouldn’t take credit cards if they couldn’t pass on the costs.
The key is that both prices are displayed. In the case of gas all taxes are included in the price, so it’s easy to display a “retail” price and a discounted “cash” price. Imagine doing this for 20,000 items in a CVS. Imagine the fights at the register with people who can’t figure out the math on taxes and discounts applied sequentially.
Oh, sure that would be impossible at CVS - I’m just saying that gas stations didn’t have some sort of exemption and because both prices were displayed, it’s impossible to tell which is the “regular” price. CVS would have been perfectly free to display the only the credit card price and give a discount for cash - plenty of restaurants and catalogs and even stores did just that before surcharges were allowed and some still do.
Thank you. That’s exactly what @Mighty_Mouse had written but I’d totally misunderstood them. Oops on me.
Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up:
The law to allow surcharging was passed before Covid, but the implementation by the merchants never took root due to the huge push against cash transactions during Covid. In other words, it is legally allowed but a business killer to implement.
Aaah, OK. That makes sense. Thank you.
I’ve done it several times with Visa/MC gift cards. I’ve never gotten a Safeway one. The terminal has to know to avoid putting through a charge that is too high, and avoid having the customer either guessing or having to go on line to find the balance.
Thanks. The ones at the Safeway I go to seem to be able to do this also.
The wise crack about Los Pollos Hermanos was surprisingly apropos. Merchants such as my employer prohibit certain kinds of transactions because they are frequently used in money laundering. A customer is forbidden initiate a transfer from one credit account to another, for example. Usually one thinks about money laundering in Breaking Bad magnitudes, but fraudulent enterprises have become adept at hiring operatives to run lots of small transactions that add up. The small size of typical transactions being discussed here does not shield large merchants from inquiries by law enforcement into the totality of the business they do in such channels.
For this reason, one cannot:
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Buy a game card or cellphone card with a gift card.
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Buy a gift card with a gift card.
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Buy a prepaid credit card with a gift card.
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Buy a prepaid credit card with a prepaid credit card. (I’m not sure about this one, but I think that’s the case.)
… although you can certainly purchase any of the above with a standard credit or debit card. Also and for the same reason, when buying a game card in a large denomination for your overseas lover, you can expect your friendly local merchant to read you the fifth degree before approving the transaction if they even approve it. You wouldn’t think it’d be any of their business, but law enforcement at Federal and state levels have made it their business.