U.S., AmEx in Antitrust Suit (AMEX refuses to Obey B.O.)

WSJ ^ | 10/5/10 | THOMAS CATAN And ROBIN SIDEL

[SoFloFreeper]

WASHINGTON—The Justice Department slapped American Express Co. with a civil antitrust suit after the credit-card company refused to join an industrywide agreement to allow merchants to steer customers toward cheaper forms of plastic.

To head off a court fight with the government and seven state attorneys general, Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. agreed Monday to scrap a range of restrictions on the merchants that accept their cards. Under the proposed settlement, Visa and MasterCard would allow merchants to offer discounts, rebates or other incentives to get customers to use cards with lower merchant fees, such as "plain-vanilla" cards with no rewards or points programs.

[SoFloFreeper]

See, you're too stupid to choose how you want to pay for a purchase. You need Obama to do that FOR you.

Notice, too: Visa and MasterCard have caved to Obama...AMEX isn't caving--so they're being attacked for not caving with the other two companies. And AMEX is accused of being monopolistic. LOL.

[KarlInOhio]

Is there a way for stores to tell in an instant what type of card is being used and what the credit card company's charges will be? When my company was looking at changing card servicing companies I was frightened by the huge number of different rates charged based on whether we had the card in hand or not, if we had the verification code from the back, what exact style of card it was, etc. etc.

I noticed that a lot of my cards have been switched to "Visa Signature" cards. I guess those have higher merchant fees, but I have no way of telling.

[Atlas Sneezed]

I use AmEx for the points. It gets us two first class overseas flights per year, playing them right, which is worth tens of thousands of dollars.

Merchants that punish me for paying this way can expect to lose my business.

[IYAS9YAS]

Fascism. Ain’t it great.

[Red Badger]

Use Discover.................

[matginzac]

Interesting...I thought the CEO of AmEx was an Obamabot...

[babygene]

“Merchants that punish me for paying this way can expect to lose my business.”

It is not unreasonable for a merchant that is paying a higher merchant fee so that you get “free tickets” to charge you more for the goods or services. Your asking someone else to pay for your tickets... In the end, it will be all the other customers of these merchants.

[troy McClure]

Really? So you think that my thin profit should be used to fly you around?

Many small Biz including mine don't take AMEX as they are the most expensive to process.

[sportutegrl]

I have Costco no fee Amex cards. I earn over 3% on travel and dining, 2% on gas, and 1% elsewhere. It piles up.

[Atlas Sneezed]

So you think that my thin profit should be used to fly you around?

---

Fist, I’m a biz owner and I take Amex (and don’t whine about the 3% charge, or whatever). Second, if merchants want customers who use low-rate cards, they can attract them. I’ll simply be attracted to merchants who don’t chisel the benefits of my patronage. It’s a little discount I expect.

I use the SPG Amex card, and get 1 point per dollar, which turns into 1.25 miles per point, so $80,000 in spending earns two round trip business class tickets to Europe or South America, which is worth maybe $6000, so I’m earning about 7.5 cents benefit per dollar spent. I take that level of reward very seriously.

Free market.