How are RingGo still charging a credit card convenience fee?

The_Slithy_Tove

It's all just another con. I have noticed that not all car park operators (usually councils) charge this fee, so it's optional. Whenever "convenience" is mentioned, you know it's a con, such as "for your convenience, we are making you queue for whatever out in the rain." Anyway, the point is that it's perfectly possible to roll the "fee" into the charge itself. After all, the operator has to pay to handle all other forms of payment: credit cards incur a fee (which it's illegal now to add as an "extra"), even cash costs money for emptying of the machines and banking the cash. So the sooner such fees are outlawed the better.

elsien

I use the Arcadian car park in Birmingham last night - only a card/app option, not possible to pay cash, but they didn’t whack on any extra fees. So yes, clearly it is optional for the operators.

Beeblebr0x

The savings for councils not having to empty parking meters of cash must be considerable where cash is no longer an option

DullGreyGuy

Beeblebr0x said:

The savings for councils not having to empty parking meters of cash must be considerable where cash is no longer an option

No longer having to collect cash, buy/maintain machines, repair machines that have been vandalised, lose revenue when the machine is broken, can more easily create and change differing fee patterns etc, lower insurance costs


When we lived outside London the local council said they wanted to change the fee patterns for their carparks so the 9-5 commuters paid more but the afternoon, evening & weekend shoppers paid less (or even nothing). Was celebrated as a great idea until they sent an engineer out to update the machines and found none of them could support the patterns and the cost to replace all the machines in town was deemed cost prohibitive