Passing credit card fees on to customers is legal in many but not all US states.
Passing debit card fees on is not allowed. Possibly clerk ignorance
Dealers charging a fee for using a credit card
I’m wondering if this is the new trend of dealers charging customers anywhere between 3 and 4% fee on the total sale if paying by credit card? I was going to buy a brand new item online for 5K, but stopped dead in my tracks when I found I was going to have to pay a 3.9% fee for using my Mastercard! The fee would have been almost $200.00! Since this dealer has mostly online sales, it sounds like a big money grab to me. Between the 5K price, add $275.00 for shipping and 200 for paying by CC plus sales tax of $300.00, it would have cost me $5775.00. I cancelled before I clicked send. I called the dealer and was told that is the cost of doing business on the internet, so I basically told them to pound sand.
Two weeks ago, I had all new brakes and rotors replaced on my 2020 Tucson with only 22K miles on it. The bill was $1375 and I paid with my card. When I got the statement, there was a CC fee of $37.00 added to the bill. I went back to the Hyundai dealer and was told all businesses do this and he pointed to the sign. I told them I saw the sign but paid with my DEBIT CARD, not a CC. I was told it didn’t matter. When I asked how many transactions were in cash, the service writer told me one out of fifteen pay in cash. This makes me sick to my stomach.
I would like to hear from others who have dealt with this.
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- 85 posts total
@stereo5 I understand that this sort of thing can come as a shock the first time you encounter it, but for the reasons explained by others, more and more businesses have no choice but to do this, or raise their prices across the board and for many customers that is even more off-putting. I think there is something nice about the price transparency that passing through CC processing fees provides (but, as noted, not gouging customers for debit card card transactions), and to @parkergetdean ’s point, increased tariffs should also be treated that way. FWIW, in many non-US jurisdictions, many transactions have been handled this way for a long time; in Scandinavia for example, pretty much all restaurants add a fee (2.5-3%) for credit cards, and no fee for local currency or Euro debit cards. A lovely hotel in NZ just emailed me to remind me that I could wire the accommodation charges to them ahead of time or pay by credit card at checkout with their —very prominently disclosed — 2.5% processing fee (which they would still be losing money on for those using American Express, which charges something in the 4% range). The OP may want brace himself for what will happen now that VISA & MasterCard have waived the “honor all cards” rule; presumably more merchants will start refusing, or charging customers to use, loyalty cards that come with high interchange fees: Agreement with Merchants to Waive the Honor All Cards rule |
Payment with credit cards that offer cash-back and other percentage-based incentives charge those incentives to the vendors, so it hits their bottom lines. Use of the cards has exploded because of these card features, and those are in addition to typical interchange fees that were about 2%. I have watched my own credit card exchange charges to my business triple over the last five years, to levels I find unreasonable because I cannot just raise prices to compensate. So I charge 4% for credit cards and, not surprisingly, people have returned to writing checks. The major card companies have over a 50% profit margin (56% recently with Visa or Mastercard). Buyers eventually can expect higher prices or convenience/technology fees. |
... or walked away. Credit cards (and BNPL) bring to your business something nothing else can: customers who want what you’re selling but can’t afford it. I think you’ll agree that that has a price too.
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- 85 posts total