this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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I've actually gone back to using cash when most merchants are Charing a 1.5% card fee. Fuck that shit.
Yeah same. I'd be really interested to know what the cost of cash is, my guess is more than 1.5% with the extra effort needing to be put into banking, slower transactions, mistakes and fake notes. Seems like most businesses are just assuming laziness of their customers just wanting to tap.
It's a tax dodge. You can skim off the top easier with cash.
Well, that and the fact that every credit card transaction includes a transaction fee that the business ends up paying. When they add 1.5% (I've usually seen 2.5%) they're just moving the expense from being hidden inside the list price of the things you're buying to being added at the register.
Think of it like a "bank tax” in addition to sales tax. Business could easily include tax in the price, but they don't because customers are used to seeing the lower price and having tax added at the register.
Right, but as @tfyoung said above, there are costs to the business associated with cash as well. Probably much higher, if a little harder to precisely calculate.
The time and expense associated with handling, counting, and physically banking cash is not insignificant.
It's that harder to calculate part that makes some business favor cash. After all, the humans running the business are not perfect economic machines. Some people are going to favor a nebulous expense (that they honestly probably didn't consider at all) over a clear and obvious expense.
I often opt-out of stores that add a bonus fee when the transaction is high enough that it should be their operating cost, but pretty much 100% of utility bills have are tacking their fees onto the next bill.
It seems like a very anti-consumer practice that is going to become ubiquitous.