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
@elliottbnewcombjr, I always appreciate your posts. It was pretty much I realized I didn't want it that bad. It was going to be an impulse buy. Saved myself a lot of money. I have come across this in restaurants but never on big ticket purchases. The extra fee is nothing more than a money grab. Visa and MC fees to the retailer is somewhere between 1 and 2% and the merchant always paid it because they take CC. Now, the merchants have shifted the fees entirely on the customer and it irritates me to no end. It is similar to when I order take out and go pick it up. The counter person slides an iPad to me, and I am supposed to tip on take out now? The counter person grabs the bag and hands it to me and that warrants a tip? I always hit the NO TIP button on take out. If my wife and I are eating in the restaurant, then I tip between 20-25% but I give zilch for takeout. Everyone is pressed very thin in these times, and it seems like the retailers and CC companies are always scheming to figure ways to get more and more of our hard-earned money. |
Thought I’d throw in an Aussie perspective. We have four of the biggest banks in the world, and they rake in billions in profit every year. By and large they all try everything they can to rip off their customers, and routinely get fined for doing so. Very few Aussie retailers add a processing fee for card transactions, and by law they can be no more that the retailer is charged by the bank. Low cost operators like Aldi add 0.5% to most card transactions but we accept that with good grace alongside their low prices. There is a move by the banking regulator to ban surcharges for card use. It is much more efficient to transfer money electronically, as compared to tying up resources in wads of cash. But when the internet fails, the failure takes bank transactions and streaming services with it! I recently bought a Holbo air-bearing turntable from Slovenia, and would have preferred to use PayPal. In the end I decided I could trust Bostjan Holc and did a direct bank transfer instead. My trust was well placed. We fairly recently did a five-week trip to Iceland and Norway, in the middle of their winter and way north of the Arctic Circle, and never once saw or used cash. Don’t think that would work in the real outback, back of Bourke, where the only phone or internet service is by satellite, but I have not been recently. The test case would be the Roadhouse at Rabbit Flat, the most isolated Roadhouse in the world (apparently). |
- 85 posts total