MSE News: Government to ban debit and credit card surcharges

Former_MSE_Guy

This is the discussion thread for the following MSE News Story:

Read the full story:
Government to ban debit and credit card surcharges

opinions4u

The key line is this:

Businesses will only be able to charge what it costs them to process the transaction.

That doesn't look like a ban on surcharges to me. It actually looks like an encouragement to charge a fee for more expensive transactions (e.g. credit cards).

johnny5a

Your article states that an credit card charges tend to be 2%, I think that's Visa/mastercard - AMEX charges are much higher.

But I agree it should be much more transparent. Even on Opodo you can't find the charges easily until you're very late in the transaction.

JRsrule

It would be good if some of these companies who have overcharged us are forced to make refunds of the excessive charges. I usually use a credit card for bigger transactions because of the extra protection it offers (and I can appreciate that there may be a small extra charge) but where some companies have really charged too much they should offer a refund. Any chance of a campaign?!:beer:

2sides2everystory

It would be good if some of these companies who have overcharged us are forced to make refunds of the excessive charges. I usually use a credit card for bigger transactions because of the extra protection it offers (and I can appreciate that there may be a small extra charge) but where some companies have really charged too much they should offer a refund. Any chance of a campaign?!

Hear hear!

Doctor_Reg

Encouraging, but somehow I doubt we're going to just see Ryanair drop their ridiculous payment charges.

callum9999

JRsrule wrote: »

It would be good if some of these companies who have overcharged us are forced to make refunds of the excessive charges. I usually use a credit card for bigger transactions because of the extra protection it offers (and I can appreciate that there may be a small extra charge) but where some companies have really charged too much they should offer a refund. Any chance of a campaign?!:beer:

Erm... No. Shops are allowed to charge "excessive prices" if they want (well, not much longer on cards but still on the actual products themselves). They've legally done nothing wrong.

pqrdef

Well its pretty obvious that Ryanair can't really fly anybody to Malaga for 23p and they are going to have to get a lot more money out of people one way or another. What they actually call their charges is neither here nor there. If they don't call them one thing, they'll call them something else.

It's just like the free gift with £9.95 p&p trick. Limit them to honest p&p and there's no free gift.

Anybody who thinks anybody will get anything cheaper as a result of this change is away with the fairies.

Once again, the useless British consumer watchdog industry opens its mouth and puts its foot in it.

opinions4u

Anybody who thinks anybody will get anything cheaper as a result of this change is away with the fairies

And here the nail is hit well and truly on the head.

My big fear is that this could encourage more retailers to actually charge for acceptance of credit cards.

spike9

Agree with that. The only impact for me I feel is that the £48 I currently save by jumping through their hoops will no longer be available to me. There are far worse things done by Ryanair than this !

2sides2everystory

callum9999 wrote: »

Erm... No. Shops are allowed to charge "excessive prices" if they want (well, not much longer on cards but still on the actual products themselves). They've legally done nothing wrong.

Forgive me but that's a somewhat dense assertion, callum. What's the difference between "shops", airlines and banks in the matter? Does your assertion extrapolate to banks too? I.e. are banks allowed to charge excessively if they want to? Sorry - no they can't.