Refusing to take cash

[FoundWaldo]

@Martin_Hyde

In any case, I had always heard “all kinds” of people buy cars with cash, so I was a little shocked that the dealership seemed surprised and a little unsure how to handle it.

When you “pay cash” for a car, it really means you’re not financing it. It doesn’t mean bringing in a suitcase full of $100 bills. This form of buying a car is common, and easy. They have no problem with it. I’ve done it myself, even for quite expensive cars, by just writing a personal check, and they’ve never blinked.

[chiroptera]

@Martin_Hyde

When I first retired from the military I bought a fairly nice car new, and took about $20,000 in cash down to the dealer for the down payment (I had basically decided I wanted to spend that amount upfront and would finance the rest of any vehicle I purchased.) I don’t to this day know why I carried $20k into a dealership, I think part of it was I just liked how it felt…which makes no sense. In any case, I had always heard “all kinds” of people buy cars with cash, so I was a little shocked that the dealership seemed surprised and a little unsure how to handle it.

Fast forward years later to when I bought my most recent car, I had no intentions of repeating that and I was also taking advantage of a 0.9% financing offer so I was only putting down something like $2500 on a vehicle I was buying. I just went by my bank and took out $2500, a much smaller sum than before and this time around the dealership actually flat out turned my money down. Not that they wouldn’t take it, but they said they couldn’t take it right then, and I would need to come back tomorrow for them to be able to process the cash and give me a receipt. So I just ended up cutting them a personal check.

I bought a (used) van at a dealership a few years ago and planned to pay cash. They asked me specifically to bring in a cashiers check from my bank instead of a wad of hundreds, which I did…it was a little over $6,000. I figured they simply didn’t want the hassle of going through all those bills checking for counterfeits.

Other than that I’ve never had a business refuse cash. The expalnations upthread all make sense, though.

[Nawth_Chucka]

@Candyman74

Most online stores do not accept cash.

Once in awhile I dump my change jar into a Coinstar machine, select an Amazon gift certificate and get full value back; then I use it to buy groceries. So, Amazon takes cash, they just don’t know it.

[Balthisar]

@suranyi

Not just Air Canada, many airlines are going to the model of not taking cash for any in-air purchases.

Or sometimes they’re schizo. American Eagle will take only cash, and American Airlines will take only credit cards. Despite their structure (blah blah blah) they’re basically the same bloody airline.

@Dewey_Finn

The OP mentions the gas pumps at Costco as an example of a business not taking cash.

Sam’s is the same way, for what it’s worth. I like it. I’m never afraid to wait in line there if I need gasoline.

[Aji_de_Gallina]

FWIW, in Perú businesses must accept cash.

[barbitu8]

Enterprise Car Rentals has a sign on the desk that they do not accept cash. I asked an employee for the reason. He said that it is a security risk.

[Quercus]

@Martin_Hyde

I had always heard “all kinds” of people buy cars with cash, so I was a little shocked that the dealership seemed surprised and a little unsure how to handle it.

Could be that you fell victim to the two uses of ‘cash’. Usually, it means actual bills and coins, but when talking about a car or house, that are often financed, sometimes ‘cash’ means ‘without a loan’, but not necessarily in bills. So ‘I paid cash for my car’ usually means “I wrote a check for the whole price, without getting a loan”, not “I brought three hundred bills down”

[Floater]

I had to ID myself when I paid a hotel bill in Scotland with cash a while ago. Before I have only had to show an ID when paying with a plastic card.

[Si_Amigo]

@Dewey_Finn

The OP mentions the gas pumps at Costco as an example of a business not taking cash. I’ve been there a few times to get gas and think I understand why they don’t want to deal with cash. At the Costco closest to my parents’ house, there are four islands with four pumps on each, so sixteen cars are getting gas at once. Although there is an attendant, the pumps are self service and generally it’s not necessary to interact with the attendant at all. Even if the pumps had slots to insert cash, you’d still have to talk to the guy to get change. It’s far more efficient for all of the customers to pay with a debit or credit card. So it’s not at all a stupid business move not to accept cash.

There are many stores that have self serve check outs that take cash and give change. Pretty sure Costco does it just to keep it as cheap as possible and for peoples safety. No one needed to service the pumps and walk around with large sums of money on there way to a drop box.

[md2000]

@Baffle

When submitting paperwork for a passport renewal recently, my wife discovered that the passport office, a government agency, would not accept cash. This is in Canada. I was quite surprised – what does legal tender mean again?

@Ferret_Herder

That it’s real money, not that anyone has to take it.

The law about legal tender, as I’ve heard it - in Canada - is that the country’s money is “legal tender for any debt”. A business can legitimately refuse to do business with you if you want to pay cash; but once you owe someone money, if you offer to pay them legal tender and they refuse, they are effectively cancelling the debt. Not sure how the donut thing would work in all this, but I would assume they would not be able to charge you with theft; since you are offering to pay a debt. Notice Costco or the passport office gets around this by making it impossible for you to rack up a debt unless you agree to their payment terms.

@barbitu8

Enterprise Car Rentals has a sign on the desk that they do not accept cash. I asked an employee for the reason. He said that it is a security risk.

Most car rental, hotels etc. make it impossible to rent from them unless you have a credit card. This way, someone else has already done the work of checking out your credit history, validated your identification, etc. Businesses like that where you can run up significant extra charges, like room service or traffic tickets, want some way to be sure they can find you and make you pay.

Why avoid cash? All the reasons cited above. Handling and counting, theft opportunities, counterfeits, keeping and making change, you dont need to vet employees for cash theft liability; automated devices are so much simpler if they don’t need a bill and coin mechanism and the maintenance that goes with it… Plus everyone worth being your customer probably already has plastic. Obviously it’s worth the 1.5% to 3% credit card rake-off to avoid cash, or the $1-plus merchant fee that banks charge on debit.

[MPB_in_Salt_Lake]

@Floater

I had to ID myself when I paid a hotel bill in Scotland with cash a while ago. Before I have only had to show an ID when paying with a plastic card.

Though I have not visited Scotland, I have traveled a fair share, but NEVER in my life have I heard of being asked to show ID when paying for something (anything) with cash.

Any idea what would have happened if you told them that you had no ID?

(I obviously understand that you need some kind of ID to check into just about any hotel, anywhere in the world, and in probably 95%+ of the places that I have taken the trouble of noticing, you also need a credit card as well, even if you intend on paying upfront with cash. I imagine that in some cases, some of the lower-end properties might accept a large cash deposit for someone who had no credit card)