£1.50 surcharge to use a DEBIT card?????

daveboy

Women cost a lot more than £1.50 but we all seem to put up with them!

MickKnipfler

I will write to trading standards I think. I don't know who deals with Crowthorne...

Bokken_2

MickKnipfler wrote:

OK, more info:

I did offer to leave a credit card while I walked over the road to get my cheque book out of my car. They agreed. )

NEVER EVER DO THIS.
This is the primary way the restuarant trade skim cards and pass the details on to other offenders in their syndicate.Always keep the card within view and don't be distracted when asked about buying extra goods from the top shelf or display.It takes seconds to skim the card so only hand it over at the actual point of sale or choose another method of payment ie.cash

MickKnipfler wrote:

They then called the police who of course weren't interested - they did ask to speak to me and suggested that I should just pay the charge to which my reply was "why should I?".

Depending on the hour of the day and day of the week the police can be very busy and this would be termed a private dispute between you and the restuarant.Typically not many officers understand the deception offences and "providing a service" parts of the offences let alone the surcharges levied on a credit or debit card so they tend to fall back on the "it's a dispute between you two " to get out of dealing with it.

nomoneytoday

I simply wouldn't leave a tip.
£1.50 in the till instead of £3-£4 in their back pocket... what a shame :beer:

Also I would use whichever card cost them them the most in charges

King_Of_Fools

Rafter wrote:

The restaurant has to pay a small fee for a debit card transaction, but much less than for a credit card, and probably about the same as the cost of depositing the cash in a bank.

Debit cards fees are fixed, typically at around £1.
Credit Card fees are a percentage of the total bill, typically arond 2%.
Therefore, the meal bill would have to be more than around £50 for it to cost more by credit card.

The ridiculous part of this story is that they were happy to accept a cheque without a fee but they will probably have paid more to cash the cheque than they would have in card fees!

I do not understand the issue that some small businesses have with cards. If I ran one I would only take cards and refuse to accept cash or cheques!

Altarf

King_Of_Fools wrote:

Debit cards fees are fixed, typically at around £1.
Credit Card fees are a percentage of the total bill, typically around 2%.

Those figures are too high.

For a small business debit card transactions are around 19 pence per transaction and credit cards between 1.25% and 1.5%. For a large national retailer credit card fees are around 0.4%.

MickKnipfler

Bokken wrote:

NEVER EVER DO THIS.
This is the primary way the restuarant trade skim cards and pass the details on to other offenders in their syndicate.Always keep the card within view and don't be distracted when asked about buying extra goods from the top shelf or display.It takes seconds to skim the card so only hand it over at the actual point of sale or choose another method of payment ie.cash


QUOTE]

I didn't even think about that. Luckily though I di leave a card that I hardly ever use so.....any dogy business and I'll know where it originated from...

steve_cov

Just a little mischief-making...

Why not get someone to call them in a week or two (but not you if you have a non-local accent: they will remember) and book, then ask whether they accept credit/debit cards? If they don't mention the £1.50 fee then you would be quite within your rights to report them to Trading Standards for their failure to inform the customer of their terms and conditions.

Of course, the really mischievous would book lots of tables on their busiest nights and then fail to show: think of the lost takings (and £1.50s) from all those bookings they turned away!! I couldn't condone that sort of revenge, though.

MickKnipfler

I coul just try to order a takeaway. It was a chinese..

Bernard_Coleslaw

Have a word with your local paper - they normally love "consumer battling against business" stories like this. Might not actually make them change anything, but you'll feel better and at least others in your area will be warned!

BC