Posted on 04/03/2024 6:37:40 AM PDT by 1Old Pro
Sebastian Maniscalco said he received a $3 COVID fee charge at a restaurant.
"It’s a real bad look as a business. Absorb the fee. It’s called the cost of doing business," Maniscalco continued, adding that it "ain’t right" in a seeming reference to the name of his upcoming stand-up tour.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxbusiness.com ...
Second, passing on the credit card fee to customers also pis*ses me off. They need to absorb that, it's a convenience and a service to customers, pretty soon the service industry will be providing ZERO service, and they are already getting cose to that.
Passing on a unique credit card fee to customers used to be legally considered as discrimination. You could give discounts for cash, but you could not charge extra to take cards. CC companies put this through the courts years ago. Might still be...
You run a business?
I get a severe discount on merchant fees, almost at cost, and it’s still close to 1500 bucks to process about 55k in plastic transactions monthly.
that’s 18k a year. While I absorb the cost, most other shops don’t get the rates I get, and it adds up really fast.
Don’t like paying the fees, Pay cash, check or go elsewhere. Lot of places are allowing Zelle and Paypal/Venmo now to try to cheapen out the rates.
It's 2024, checks are near obsolete, cash is hardly used for large transactions. Sorry for your fees, it's a cost of doing business.
It’s a cost to the business owner just like any other cost. Costs aren’t just “absorbed” if the business is to remain viable. Many small businesses operate on very small margins. Sure, make it illegal to charge an extra CC fee. The business owner will just raise prices on everything. I would rather have the option to pay cash to get a lower price.
Exactly.
It used to be like that but Government Agencies started taking Credit Cards and charging 3% to do so. It was ended then.
Good points, but there’s a lot of varied sentiment on this subject.
Some retail businesses feel as if they are being ripped off by the credit card companies charging 3-4 percent processing fees. The smaller the business, the more, it seems, that most people can sympathize. So these businesses encourage payment in cash. Some go so far as to ban digital payment. Young people especially think the people who run these businesses may as well be from Mars.
Other retail businesses consider cash transactions more trouble than they’re worth in terms of avoiding the credit card processing fee. They don’t like the bother of handling actual cash and would just as soon ban the use of cash at their retail locations, choosing to allow only digital transactions. Some actually do ban the use of cash, choosing to forego the business of people who prefer to use cash, or who refuse to pay digitally.
It’s kind of getting to be a culture clash.
When sales taxes came some wanted to hide it in the cost of business, so we wouldn’t think about it.
Others said it had to be listed so that we would know why it cost more and not hidden. That we would KNOW how much our govt costs.
Except it's a cost that only comes with a subset of your customers.
Adding a small charge for customers who use credit cards is no different than a parking garage charging more for valet parking than self-serve parking, as I see it.
I think the optics of it is worse than the justice of it. If credit card transactions are less than 15% of your business, that might be OK. But your business reputation may suffer if a sizable portion of your customer base prefers to use credit cards.
We’ve gotten to the point that not even Freepers understand capitalism.
Technology will win the day. Cards are much more than 3.5% efficient when you calculate in processing, theft, mistakes, bank deposits, accounting for cash, deterring and losing business from the majority of people who aren't carrying a bunch of Benjamin's in their wallet.
It’s kind of getting to be a culture clash.
It is literally putting real Small Business out of business.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot, try to use $50 and $100 bills. You'll get more stares and comments than you would think. A $100 bill today is worth less than $20s in the 1960s, but no one in the 1960s commented when you used a $20 bill.
I my part of the world, you need to keep significant cash for when the hurricanes take down the power grid. You would be surprised by the number of small stores that will open up even when they don't have electricity, because they get customers that they otherwise would not get.
Lol, businesses don’t exist to “serve the customer.” They exist to make a profit.
The good thing about capitalism is that it eventually creates equilibrium - government can influence things but in the end it is the consumer who decides. Just look at all the EV's that even with government credits they are not yet selling.
A few weeks ago, I ate at a TGI Friday at Dallas Ft. Worth Airport. After waiting for my bill, the waitress pointed to a QR code on the table and told me to do it myself. I had to scan the code, manually enter my card info and not get a printed receipt.
Then they had the stupidity to include a link for a survey.
I completed the survey and told them that I would not be returning to their restaurants. And the waitresses tip was reduced because I as the customer was being required to do her job.
They replied that they were sorry that I chose to not tip the waitress so much money.
Hey. do dumb things get dumb results. I hope others do the same and put a stop to that kind of nonsense.
And they won't make a profit if they don't serve the customer, then what happens.
That is actually more common than you might imagine. Even in situations like this in a "captured" market. People find ways to avoid fees and taxes, very easily actually and they do.
If you remove profit, then you get the awesome customer service the Soviet Union was known for.
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