SumUp purchase treated as cash advance?!?

crispy_duck

At no point is there a fault by the bank

That's irrelevant. The contract between the bank and the cardholder is goverened by the terms and conditions, and if they give a list of items regarded as cash advances, they cannot treat purchases of other items as cash advances. That the bank were given wrong information by the retailer is, from the point of view of the cardholder neither here nor there unless the terms and conditions also make the cardholder responsible for the communications chain between the retailer and the bank (which condition would, I imagine, be thrown out as unreasonable in any case).

The bank has failed to act in accordance with the terms and conditions, and when this is brought to their attention they can't just throw their hands in the air and act like a cowboy builder.

Nasqueron

crispy_duck said:

At no point is there a fault by the bank

That's irrelevant. The contract between the bank and the cardholder is goverened by the terms and conditions, and if they give a list of items regarded as cash advances, they cannot treat purchases of other items as cash advances. That the bank were given wrong information by the retailer is, from the point of view of the cardholder neither here nor there unless the terms and conditions also make the cardholder responsible for the communications chain between the retailer and the bank (which condition would, I imagine, be thrown out as unreasonable in any case).

The bank has failed to act in accordance with the terms and conditions, and when this is brought to their attention they can't just throw their hands in the air and act like a cowboy builder.

The bank has not failed to act in accordance with the terms and conditions, they charged based on the MCC presented. 

The bank has not treated a purchase as a cash advance, the bank has been told by the seller's terminal that it was a cash advance so have charged for a cash advance. The fault is 100% with the seller sending the wrong MCC to the bank.

There are no cowboy builder antics, the OP needs to complain to the seller that they were given a charge by the bank because of the seller's mistake. 

If you think about it, anyone with a suitable friend could do a cash advance on their card and then knock up an invoice saying it was a purchase and then ask the bank to refund it.

Again, the seller is at fault, not the bank, who have acted in line with the information presented. They are quite right to follow the MCC presented, they should absolutely not start second guessing whether the MCC presented is right.

I strongly suspect that the bank will roll over and refund this (assuming low charges) with a complaint, but it doesn't mean it's correct, just cheaper for them to not argue it, but, they could equally, and quite rightly, within the terms and conditions of use, which they have followed to the letter, refuse to do so and keep the cash advance charge.

HillStreetBlues

It doesn't matter what the bank was told, it's the bank that has levied the charge, once notified of this mistake it is the bank that should act.

HillStreetBlues

mouseysarah said:

I have been charged interest on my NatWest credit card because they have categorised a purchase I made in a local music shop as "cash equivalent" due to the fact that they use SumUp as their card payment processor. It was a normal purchase of goods (music equipment) from a shop and I put my card into a normal card reader - I had no idea this might be treated as cash rather than a purchase.

When I look at the NatWest T&Cs about cash advance fees they talk about ATMs, buying gambling chips, and putting credit on a mobile - there is nothing there to indicate you need to be careful about using the card in some shops.

NatWest are refusing to budge and just saying it is categorised as cash and so subject to interest.

Has anyone else come across this? 

Have you the receipt that shows what you bought?
Have you made an official complaint?

HillStreetBlues

Nasqueron said:

If you think about it, anyone with a suitable friend could do a cash advance on their card and then knock up an invoice saying it was a purchase and then ask the bank to refund it.

The bank can investigate if this has happened or not. A bank certainly can't rule out all evidence their customer might provide of the off chance  that it might be fake. 

Growingold

Very strange.  Once the retailers account has been set up with SumUp using the card reader is no different from using any other Card machine.  Retailer enters amount due and the customer tenders their card.  Was it a large amount?  Out of interest where was the local music shop?

The_Urbanite

Nasqueron said:

crispy_duck said:

At no point is there a fault by the bank

That's irrelevant. The contract between the bank and the cardholder is goverened by the terms and conditions, and if they give a list of items regarded as cash advances, they cannot treat purchases of other items as cash advances. That the bank were given wrong information by the retailer is, from the point of view of the cardholder neither here nor there unless the terms and conditions also make the cardholder responsible for the communications chain between the retailer and the bank (which condition would, I imagine, be thrown out as unreasonable in any case).

The bank has failed to act in accordance with the terms and conditions, and when this is brought to their attention they can't just throw their hands in the air and act like a cowboy builder.

The bank has not failed to act in accordance with the terms and conditions, they charged based on the MCC presented. 

The bank has not treated a purchase as a cash advance, the bank has been told by the seller's terminal that it was a cash advance so have charged for a cash advance. The fault is 100% with the seller sending the wrong MCC to the bank.

There are no cowboy builder antics, the OP needs to complain to the seller that they were given a charge by the bank because of the seller's mistake. 

If you think about it, anyone with a suitable friend could do a cash advance on their card and then knock up an invoice saying it was a purchase and then ask the bank to refund it.

Again, the seller is at fault, not the bank, who have acted in line with the information presented. They are quite right to follow the MCC presented, they should absolutely not start second guessing whether the MCC presented is right.

I strongly suspect that the bank will roll over and refund this (assuming low charges) with a complaint, but it doesn't mean it's correct, just cheaper for them to not argue it, but, they could equally, and quite rightly, within the terms and conditions of use, which they have followed to the letter, refuse to do so and keep the cash advance charge.

The bank decides which MCCs they categorise as cash advances. In many cases they do not divulge this information to customers as it’s too technical, so they usually provide a simple, but vague list of transactions types in general terms that they will treat as cash advances and that’s all the information customers get.

If the customer bought something not in that list from a music shop then the bank will lose if this is taken to the Ombudsman because they did not advise beforehand that buying goods from a music shop will be treated as a cash advance.

It’s not the customer’s job to understand MCCs or anything about how the bank determines how cash advances are identified. Sounds like the OP was wrongly caught in the net and even if 99% of transactions under that MCC are actually cash advances, they should be putting customers in this situation right. Most likely the agent for the bank has no idea about MCCs and is under instructions to fob off complaints as most people won’t escalate. 

Where it comes to cash advances, some dumb things which defy logic has stung banks. For example when people were topping up Revolut to extract money from 0% cards and get free rewards. Revolut were using a MCC not considered to be a cash advance so nobody was getting charged despite the fact it clearly should have been treated as a cash advance. Revolut then changed their MCC so people quite rightly started getting hit with the cash advance fees/interest. But the banks had to take the hit for it when people complained for failing to warn people in advance that they’d start being charged!

km1500

a customer, when they apply for a credit card, signs the terms and conditions and any reasonable person would assume if they buy something in a shop or stall or whatever then that's it's not treated as a 'cash advance'.

The internal workings of MCC or whatever are nothing to do with the customer

if a customer buys something with the reasonable expectation that this is an ordinary credit transaction then they should not be charged a cash advance fee and should complain

born_again

HillStreetBlues said:

Nasqueron said:

If you think about it, anyone with a suitable friend could do a cash advance on their card and then knock up an invoice saying it was a purchase and then ask the bank to refund it.

The bank can investigate if this has happened or not. A bank certainly can't rule out all evidence their customer might provide of the off chance  that it might be fake. 

Nothing to investigate other than looking at MCC. That is all the banks has to do. If a retailer miss reports, then that is their issue, not the banks.

HillStreetBlues

born_again said:

HillStreetBlues said:

Nasqueron said:

If you think about it, anyone with a suitable friend could do a cash advance on their card and then knock up an invoice saying it was a purchase and then ask the bank to refund it.

The bank can investigate if this has happened or not. A bank certainly can't rule out all evidence their customer might provide of the off chance  that it might be fake. 

Nothing to investigate other than looking at MCC. That is all the banks has to do. If a retailer miss reports, then that is their issue, not the banks.

Not if the bank makes the charge to their customer. It's a certain lose for the bank if they just point to the retailer and says it's their fault.