Credit card surcharge by car retailer

CKhalvashi

Trio wrote: »

This as really helpful as I am just about to pay for a car by credit card and thought the charge seems excessive!! I still do really as to pay this amount a lot of people would do it by credit card. I thought there would be a charge of a few pounds - naïve maybe!!!

£75 (or whatever it turns out to be) does sound a lot though. Whether it's 'borrowed' money or not it can't be costing the dealership anywhere near that can it???

If you pay a cheque into my business account for £3k, I'll pay about 20p.

If processing by card (which I don't accept), it'll cost a minimum of 1.5%.

That needs to be taken into consideration.

CK

Eonel

Trio wrote: »

£75 (or whatever it turns out to be) does sound a lot though. Whether it's 'borrowed' money or not it can't be costing the dealership anywhere near that can it???

If you read the rest of this thread you will see this is what is is costing the dealer. For example, if a dealer put £1000 pound through a credit card transaction, he may receive only £970 in his bank account. The £30 is the credit card companies fee for processing the transaction.

Most likely, people who manage to negotiate the fee away with the car dealer were paying too much for the car in the first place.

lisyloo

either work it into the cost of the car, or be open and itemise the cost

I'm glad you got a good result, but I think you need to understand that you cannot tell car dealerships (or any other company) how to run their business (you can of course gove them consumer feedback - which you did by your actions). It's up to them how they choose to run their business.

But well done for getting a result.

bigadaj

There's other ways of looking at it though. Your potentially getting six weeks interest free and with a decent credit record might be able to transfer for a couple of per cent to keep it interest free for a year or more. Also there's chargeback and section 75 protection as an added layer if something does go wrong.

Against the charge there's the argument that it costs a business to handle money whether it be cash or cheque and credit cards are probably less risky than these options.

So long as charges art transparent and reasonable then I don't have a particular problem, after all no additional charges for cards means that people paying by other means are effectively subsidising credit card payers.