I’m in the process of having a metal carport/canopy installed at my house for parking my trailer. They sent me a quote/contract with the specs and pricing on it, which I had to approve before they start construction. Included in bold print at the top and bottom of the page is this wording:
I’m having trouble parsing this language. I think they’re trying to say that if I pay with a credit/debit card they will charge 2.5% more, but it also seems like it could be interpreted to mean they will apply a 2.5% discount for using a card.
On the second page in the fine print, there is also this clause:
Obviously, whoever wrote this thing was not a student of English grammar. I think I’m probably going to have to pay more if I put it on my card, but I wish they could express that in understandable English.
Call them and ask them. If they can’t explain it in understandable english, are they the only contractor in town? If so, you’re stuck. If not, you’re not.
I would take it as a additional 2.5% added (applied) to the balance for use of a credit/debit card. Which is in line to what the CC’s charge the merchant. But worth a call because they are not suppose to do it and if questioned they may remove it.
It’s so sad what is happening out there. My pet peeve is when they advertise “300% more!”, and I figure, “Well, 100% more would be double, so 200% more must be triple, and so 300% must be quadruple.” But the truth is that they think “300% more” means triple. The innumeracy out there is even worse than the illiteracy, and going even further downhill all the time.
The way they’re phrasing it is almost certainly against the terms of their merchant service agreement. Those service agreements don’t prevent a cash discount… but they very explicitly forbid any kind of a surcharge for using a card, whether percentage or fixed fee.
So the correct wording for what the contractor intends is something like “Quoted price includes a 2.5% discount for timely payment by cash or check.”
Importantly though, Visa/Mastercard and the others don’t really give a shit about one of their merchants doing this. Speaking as a merchant, I never did this kind of thing, but I can tell you that I absolutely never had any fear of Visa/Mastercard getting mad about something as trivial as this.
I know that there are consumers that successfully bully small merchants into complying with the letter of their merchant agreement, but in reality it’s about as important as the tag on a matress that is not to be removed except by the end user.
I thought the recent financial industry reforms abolished that part of merchant agreements which forbid pricing differently for charge versus cash purchase. Can’t find the specific portion of the law, but haven’t you noticed that virtually all gas stations now post a cash and a credit card price?
For some reason gas stations were legally exempt from this requirement many years ago so it would be unrelated to anything recent. Back then gas stations also tried to change more for CC’s and many did for a while, but they lost too many sales to the few that didn’t and that went away.
We seem to be experiencing a new wave of that, if they can make it stick it still yet to be seen, but there still are many single price stations.
You can’t, or at least couldn’t, charge an extra fee for using a credit card. You can (or could) give a discount for paying cash. This meant essentially if an item had a price on it in a store you had to charge that price for a credit purchase (or less of course). Gas stations usually listed both prices right on the pump so that may have given them a pass.
I can’t tell though if this contract is telling you you have to pay more for using a credit card or could pay less for using cash, but I assume it means one of those two.