Pay £10 at Paypoint to get 1kg of Dog meal

hazelc56

My local pet shop says that customers have to spend a minimum of £10 to be able to pay by paypoint terminal, so if i dont have cash on me and need to buy 1kg of dog meal at £1.50, using my debit card at the paypoint terminal,I'm expected to spend £10 to be able to buy the dog meal.

Other shops allow a £5 spend and some even less than this but is this a rip off or scam on the shopkeeper's part...is it illegal what they are doing.
How come different shops can have different spending amounts?
There are even some who allow you to spend any amount in this way so how can this be???

antrobus

hazelc56 wrote: »

...is it illegal what they are doing.

No

hazelc56 wrote: »

How come different shops can have different spending amounts? There are even some who allow you to spend any amount in this way so how can this be???

Because it's entirely down to the shop concerned. The shop will be paying someone to process the card payments, and they may well be paying a fixed charge per transaction plus a precentage of the transaction value. Some shops may well decide that if they have to pay 25p to process each transaction, then it's not worth their while for sales of less than £5/£10 (whatever) and set a minimum sale value. Others may well decide not to bother, on the basis that the customer who spends £1.50 today may well also be the one who spends £150 next week.

There's not much you can do about it except shop elsewhere.

liam8282

antrobus wrote: »

There's not much you can do about it except shop elsewhere.

Or take £1.50 cash?

suki1964

Theres many a shop nowdays who wont accept cards for any transactions, Ground coffee being one near me

Small business are being clobbered by bank charges. They can no longer soak them up with profit margins being so tight. You would have more to complain about if they passed the bank charge on to you - like the airlines do

hazelc56

liam8282 wrote: »

Or take £1.50 cash?

The problem with taking the cash..well it means that i still have to withdraw £10 from the bank at the ATM.Sometimes i dont have that much in my account and any Banks ive come across doesnt cater for lifting £5 so i am beat every way.BTW i try to leave as much money as possible in my account for bills,direct debit etc...If i have to keep spending tenners and fivers each time i go into a shop to use a paypoint machine i will be broke.Its the same old story with buying electricity.
Thanks for your response anyhow.

hazelc56

antrobus wrote: »

No



Because it's entirely down to the shop concerned. The shop will be paying someone to process the card payments, and they may well be paying a fixed charge per transaction plus a precentage of the transaction value. Some shops may well decide that if they have to pay 25p to process each transaction, then it's not worth their while for sales of less than £5/£10 (whatever) and set a minimum sale value. Others may well decide not to bother, on the basis that the customer who spends £1.50 today may well also be the one who spends £150 next week.

There's not much you can do about it except shop elsewhere.

Thank you for your answer...Personally i think the shop owners are taking advantage of people.I think you are right when you say its up to them as one shop accepted my spend of £4.08 the other night after complaining that the original amount i was going to spend was £3.50. If they could accept 4.08 they could have accepted the 3.50 i suspect.
Its the same no matter where you shop these days and use a paypoint terminal.All in all i do think that this caper needs looked into.Thanks again.

belfastgirl23

I am really failing to see what the issue is here? If you don't like how the shop charges, don't go there. See if you can get someone else to take a £1.50 card transaction.

Or alternatively withdraw a tenner and then (gasp) use the leftover cash to purchase other things elsewhere, therefore not 'wasting' the remaining money.

There is a charge per transaction for shopkeepers as far as I understand it so it's a perfectly reasonable strategy on their part.

hazelc56

belfastgirl23 wrote: »

I am really failing to see what the issue is here? If you don't like how the shop charges, don't go there. See if you can get someone else to take a £1.50 card transaction.

Or alternatively withdraw a tenner and then (gasp) use the leftover cash to purchase other things elsewhere, therefore not 'wasting' the remaining money.

There is a charge per transaction for shopkeepers as far as I understand it so it's a perfectly reasonable strategy on their part.

Yes Belfastgirl i see what you are saying but my point is how can one shop have a £10 and another shop have a £5 spending amount and again others even less than these.It seems that they just choose whatever they want to charge.If you read all of my posts and quotes correctly you will see what i am saying.I have explained what my query is and another poster has replied to my satisfaction thank you.

joefizz

'Yes Belfastgirl i see what you are saying but my point is how can one shop have a £10 and another shop have a £5 spending amount and again others even less than these'
Different commission rates. Depends if they are part of a large group/chain/holding company or not. Depends if they have a large card volume per month or not, depends on the commision the card owners keep.
Then theres different card rates as well with something like amex taking more than the rest (why a lot of places dont take amex).

If they have small volumes they might be charged as much as 50p plus 3% per transaction. On something costing 1.50 their profit margin might be 50p so by selling it to you they will lose money. Similarly a large buying group may have 10p plus 1.5% so they can afford to sell you it.

hazelc56

Thank you all for your enlightening comments.I am more aware of what is happening with these paypoint terminal transactions although I still dont like the idea of the different shops having different spending amounts.Looks like I will just have to put up with it for now.:wave:

liam8282

hazelc56 wrote: »

The problem with taking the cash..well it means that i still have to withdraw £10 from the bank at the ATM.Sometimes i dont have that much in my account and any Banks ive come across doesnt cater for lifting £5 so i am beat every way.BTW i try to leave as much money as possible in my account for bills,direct debit etc...If i have to keep spending tenners and fivers each time i go into a shop to use a paypoint machine i will be broke.Its the same old story with buying electricity.
Thanks for your response anyhow.

You could go into a bank with your ID and debit card, withdraw the £1.50 cash, then go pay for your dog food.

Buy your dog food in bulk.

Buy the dog food with the rest of your shopping.

At the end of the day, there is nothing new about this and the shop is doing nothing wrong.

There is no big conspiracy to try and make you spend more in the shop.

After all, some shops won't even have the facility to pay by card at all, it is an added convinience, so if they choose to operate them in a specific way, you can hardly complain about it.