MSE News: Which? super-complaint to ban excessive card payment fees

Mikhail

plumber2009 wrote: »

I reguarly go into local convenience stores to find that i have to pay 75p to pay with a debit card. Its mainly shops owned by foreginers that do this. No wonder eveyone uses supermarkets.

The most 'clever' comment I've ever read, ironically you can’t even spell ‘regularly’ and ‘everyone’ in your message; despite the fact that you also contradict yourself by saying -'I reguarly go into local convenience stores' and 'No wonder eveyone uses supermarkets.'

Regards,
Foreigner

Kilty_2

Amazed me that Elephant now charge for credit card transactions (£5.95). Not that bad in terms of % right enough. (not with my stupidly high insurance anyway :rotfl:)

davidgmmafan

"At the end of the day, the charges are avoidable."

With respect I disagree, with the Ryanair example the argument is strained. They now use a prepaid mastercard, but before some other card was magically cheaper to administer. I believe they switched to the prepaid Mastercard because it is less common, but keeps the 'option' of avoiding the charge alive.

I have no problem with people passing on thier costs for using credit cards and the like as long as its transparent. We need to be clear about what is happening here. We've gone from a situation where, mostly, companies didn't charge any extra for paying by card. Then some bright spark thought hey w can shaft them on this. Even if we get back to a situation where the legitimate costs companies incur are passed on to the customer the customer is still losing because before those costs weren't passed on.

Ah but they would've been included in the price I hear you cry. This is precisely the point. Usually a company would work out all costs (including payment processed), materials etc and profit obviously. I don't understand how else they could set a price. Now with the price set they come along and say oh and now we have a seperate charge for payment processing (which is an ESSENTIAL part of any transaction).

Also it doesn't even make sense. I recall once using the trainline only to be told at the very end it cost 50p to pay by card. Not a huge some but its the principle. So I bought the same ticket at the station PAYING WITH THE SAME CARD and there was no fee. Eh?

I'm sad to say its all a con and the sooner it is stopped the better. I'm eagerly anticipating explainations of why it costs Virgin Media sixty pounds per annum simply to process payments (particulalry in the case of a bank transfer where processing means having an account which I pay into!), and why it costs companies like Ryanir more to process six tickets on the same transation than it does one. In both cases its the customers doing all the work. Hmm maybe we should be charging them for our time???

izools

plumber2009 wrote: »

I reguarly go into local convenience stores to find that i have to pay 75p to pay with a debit card. Its mainly shops owned by foreginers that do this. No wonder eveyone uses supermarkets.

Supermarkets have significantly lower merchant fees and no phone bill because of their scale.

On my road I have an independent (non-chain) convenience store and pub, both of which accept cards.

The fees they pay to their respective merchants are significantly higher per-transaction as no only do they pay a percentage of the transaction amount (sliding scale depending on their monthly transaction turnover) but also the cost of an 0844 call to process the transaction. They have to recoup this cost somehow.

The pub therefore have a #5.00 minimum transaction, and the local store charge 50P per transaction under #10.00

Regardless, I still am happy (in fact prefer) to buy from that store and drink at that pub.

nuggsy1

This i believe falls into the same category.......

Some finance companies charging a 1.6% "payment processing fee" when you make a payment to your agreement, even to settle it. Only applies to non DD agreements, oh and you can't settle your agreement by DD!!

there's a previous thread on this