It was an exchange which somehow went 7-cents against me. There was a line, didn’t want to run out to the car for 7 cents which may or may not be in the cup holder (and it wasn’t), so I whipped out my card and ran what is easily the smallest debit card transaction at a store in my life.
How about y’all? What is the smallest in-person card transaction you’ve run?
The other thing I wonder… did Old Navy actually lose money on that transaction?
Once, I went to pick some prescription medicine. I expected it to be around $15, but through some quirk in my insurance, it was about 30 cents. I didn’t have any change, so I apologized and paid with a credit card. The pharmacy assistant shrugged and gave me the receipt.
I couldn’t tell you the exact amount now, but it was less than a dollar, probably right around ¢75. Was at the convenience store on my way to work to grab a cup of coffee, thought I had a couple of singles in my wallet, but turns out they were a couple of 100s.
Back about 8 years ago when my business still accepted checks, I had a guy use his credit card for a $98.00 purchase. After the sale was complete, he realized he wanted a different model, which it turned out was priced 60 cents more. If I were doing the transaction I would have told him not to worry about the money, but my employee wanted the sixty cents.
Instead of using his card for the sixty cents, or voiding the previous sale and starting over, he said he’d pay cash. He ran out to his car but couldfn’t scrape together the change, so he wrote a check.
Turns out the check was accidentally written on a closed account, so it came back NSF. I had a $30 charge for NSF checks. He never paid. The account was sent to collection, and a few years later he paid my collection agency $30.60 (I got 0% due to the age of the debt) as it was causing problems with him getting a mortgage.
A few years ago I was counting the money from the previous day’s sales and ran across a check for something less than 50¢. I just threw out the check. Partially because my bank charges me a fee for each check I deposit and partially because of the reason kayaker mentioned. If the check came back, the NSF charge on it and and having the person come back to bring me a few cents, in cash, would have been silly.
20p, for a single serve pack of marmite. It was while I was working at a chain coffee shop, on my lunch break. Fancied some toast, and the supervisor said I could have the ends off a loaf we’d just finished, and butter, but any spreads had to go through the till for stock control. I got a 50% employee discount.
My Dad once wrote and posted a check for £0.00, after the electricity company sent an invoice for £0.00. He’d ignored it (as you would), until he got a nasty letter saying the electricity would be cut off if it wasn’t paid.
Years ago, I got a bill for 4 cents from the 407 ETR - a toll highway in Ontario. I ignored it, and they mailed another invoice. I probably should have called and asked them to just cancel it, but it was less hassle just to pay it through an ATM.
If I had a five dollar bill for every time that happened to me!
What’s the value of a collection agency that gives you 0%? Revenge?
Only vaguely related: I was at a restaurant once and heard another customer ask the waiter how much the charge for a bounced check was. Nearly fell out of my chair laughing.
Almost certainly. The debit and credit card processing fees usually start at about 20 to 30 cents plus a percentage, no matter the amount. That’s why I don’t blame businesses who impose a $10 (or similar) minimum on card usage. I am cognizant of the issue, and don’t charge anything under $10 even at places that allow it.
I once made a purchase at a grocery store for something like $20.10. I had a stack of coupons from various promotions at the store and handed them to the cashier. As she was ringing up the coupons, I stuck my credit card in the reader. I wasn’t paying as much attention as I should have, but the total after coupons came to $0.10. I just routinely pressed the “OK” button and didn’t realize until after I was done that I had just charged 10 cents. And, yes, it did appear on my bill.
This wasn’t an in-person purchase, but just last month I made a $6.99 purchase from Amazon. I had a $6.95 gift card balance already in my account. Amazon said it would charge 4 cents to my credit card. I checked my credit card account and it didn’t show an authorization for the amount, even after the item shipped. I thought Amazon was going to do the sensible thing and just forget about it. But a week later a final charge for 4 cents appeared. So Amazon must have some special procedure where they don’t get approvals for tiny charges, but put them through anyway.
The common thread in many of the above penny-ante transactions is that the transactions are entirely automated, never seen nor touched by a sentient human. There may not even be any sentient humans on the staff to deal with it — that alone would probably cost more than it’s worth.
What they really need is to program their automated transactions to flag any questionable ones for further review by sentient humans (again, if there are any). Of course, it would take an even higher level of sentience for some business-rules-makers to decide what the criteria should be for that. Absurdly small transactions (especially those stupid $0.00 bills with their follow-up nastygrams) should certainly be flagged.
My almost-on-topic anecdote:
My propane company once underbilled me by the bank-busting sum of $0.25 — one of the many taxes they forgot to include. Instead of just rolling that into my next monthly bill (which I imagine any sentient human would do), they sent me a separate bill, by U. S. Mail, for $0.25 — at the cost of a first-class postage stamp (about 40¢ at the time IIRC) plus whatever the envelope might cost plus the cost of the return envelope.
Of course, I didn’t pay by U. S. Mail. I stopped by their office at a convenient time for me to pay in person. This was a small two- or three-person office, not at all automated except for maybe the desktop computer that prints the invoices and runs the bookkeeping app, stuff like that.
I called this anomaly to the attention of the desk clerk. It went totally over her head. She had no clue what my point was. I had the entire amount in my hand, in hard metal cash, ready to pay on the spot, but she bent over backward to assure me that it could wait until my next monthly bill if I wanted.
They needed a sentient human.
$0.00 bills should certainly be flagged – it indicates poor control, which is where staff theft starts.
Particularly because $ 0.00 amounts are easily converted to $90.00 amounts with a little careful editing.
Tangentially related, but years ago I bought some beer in a border town, and tried to pay cash with the exact amount, something like $19.75. One the quarters I had was Canadian, which we typically accept on par. The clerk/owner told me she wouldn’t take Canadian change, so I ended up paying with a credit card instead.
Now at the time, the Canadian dollar was trading about 5¢ higher than the USD, although normally it was trading lower. The credit card processor fee plus the commision was a hell of lot higher than any forex difference in a single quarter. That stupid bitch didn’t want to accept a Canadian quarter in a town where they’re par, and ended up shafting herself.
Walmart sent me a check for a 1 cent overpayment on my credit card. I still have it as a conversation piece.
The percentage the collection agency keeps increases with the age of the debt, since older debts are more difficult to collect. Normally, I’d send an account to collection the minute it occurred (my business does no billing, I want my $$ when services are rendered).
This guy owed me sixty cents, plus the $30 NSF fee. He chose to ignore my requests for payment, so I eventually sent the account to collection, which he continued to ignore. When he finally paid, it was an ancient debt and my percentage was zero.
It’s actually not that uncommon. I send an account to collection when it is fresh, and would get 80% if it was paid. Then the debtor ignores attempts at collection for years. If the debtor pays eventually I get notification of the payment, but the agency keeps 100% due to the debts age.
I have some sub $1 transactions. Many are bank verification ones where they will take out 2 small transaction that add up to a dollar and then put in a dollar, where you have to let them know the amounts that add up to a dollar.
Sometimes with a register error (ringing up the incorrect price or perhaps a subsiitutuin), that a low amount is charged or credited.
Store cashier here. The lowest amount I’ve put on a card was 19 cents.
If only I could say that happened more often, alas, it was only the one time.