re: 3% Credit Card Fee

Gas stations usually charge less for cash payments in many states. If it’s a business that asks for tips I will just deduct it from the tip. frick em.

I think the credit cards lobbied to allow companies to offer a discount for paying in cash, but they couldn’t word it as a fee for using credit cards.

The business doesn’t get reimbursed. They never see the up charge. The processing company keeps the fee. The business just gets the cost of the product plus the tax deposited in their account. Before this they would get the cost of the product plus tax minus the fee

Them days are over. Any big ticket item that they need that % they will pass the cost to you. Times are tough and no one wants to eat that fee. Most services don't have a full 3% fee so they are actually charging you more which I'm not a fan of. If a retail wants to take the chance of passing their card swipe fee on to you so be it. But it they charge you more than that sucks.

I get why they do it. I'm stunned how many here think they'd just eat the cost if they owned the business.

My dad will turn any conversation into one about uplift fees aa

quote:

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So you wanna use credit, gain cash back, place a burden on the business...and think is unfair they uocharge you for a service they pay dor...extra, on top of their cash price?

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I agree with you. People acting like all these small businesses are run by millionaires. Retail business is hard. Especially when everyone is buying everything off Amazon and the margins are zip. Bring cash if you don't want to pay the 3%.

How it works:

Generally speaking merchants pay anywhere from 2.3-3.0% on all charges including on the tips you leave on a credit card. What the processing companies have begun doing like Shift 4 and other is they have begun buying up POS Terminal systems. So what they do now is they come in and offer to give you a free POS System if you will switch from a regular pay your 2.4% setup to a Cash Discount setup. They tell you that you will no longer have to pay the 2.4% if you offer a cash discount and charge your customers who use credit cards what amounts to 4.0% fee. Then what they do is instead of charging you 2.4% on processing fees they raise your processing fees to 3.9% so they can make an extra 1.5% but the clueless merchant is happy to not be paying the processing fees anymore so they go along with it. I did this for a time at my business because I was paying almost $30,000 a year in processing fees on transactions. After awhile I didn't feel good about it and stopped, but when I did do it I had negotiated their fee down to 3.25% instead of the 3.9% they try to slip in behind your 4.0% charges to the customer. All this scheme is is a way for the processing companies to nearly double what they charge the merchant for processing fees by bribing the merchant to charge the customer 4.0% even though most processing fees lie around 2.3%.

Profit margins for small businesses continue to dwindle. Labor costs are up. Material costs are up. Loan rates are up. Credit card processing fees are up. Rent is up. Insurance is up. Healthcare costs are up. Payment terms are getting worse. Terms customers are taking longer to pay.

Taking credit cards is expensive for a business. Paying for the terminals, the software, the seemingly constantly fees, cash flow while the transactions settle, charge back dispute issues, etc.

It is not possible for the costs associated with businesses to keep rising while the consumer demands prices stay flat. The market is broken.

Every time I try to raise prices at a minimum amount just to match my overhead, my globonational competitors seem to offer a sale and absorb costs because they can hold out longer than I can on flat or negative cash flow.

First I tried to just raise the prices, but I got tons of pushback for being too expensive, so then I tried to list out the fees but I got called an a-hole for charging them, so then I offered cash discounts but I got yelled at by people who refuse to carry cash.

What are small business owners supposed to do? It is literally impossible to compete with national conglomerates strictly in pricing. I can provide all the personal service and community outreach as possible but without the local consumer deciding to spend their money locally eventually small businesses simply will not exist anymore. And that’s just sad.

One day I think we’ll look back and realize that just maybe buying the absolute cheapest product we could afford from the absolute largest conglomerate we could find wasn’t the best idea.

We should be striving to support our local businesses and telling national chains to take a hike. Instead we’re demanding Brawndo in every aspect of life because it’s got electrolytes.

America is sick. We’re hyper obsessed with consuming as much as possible as quickly as possible without any thought to what we’re consuming or how it affects us.

This is true in everything from the food we eat to the entertainment media we consume to the unnecessary trinkets we fill our lives and houses with daily.

We’re a society of narcissistic gluttonous immature consumers with an insatiable appetite for anything all the time as long as we never have to pause to think or digest.

Happy Saturday. Hope you enjoy staring at your phones and televisions instead of spending time with your loved ones and then buying 100 things you don’t need and won’t remember off Amazon while complaining about the lack of local investments and opportunities.

I can’t participate in the charade anymore. I quit. So long and thanks for the fish.