Community Chat

[1MrsT]

I know there is at least one other thread about this subject, but I came across a great article that I thought could explain a couple of important facts about this new law. I apologize that as soon as I hit "submit", it will run together with no paragraphs...but the info is important regarding this new rule. I tried to outsmart the no paragraph thing with "under scores" in between the paragraphs. Not sure how well it will work, but here goes! :-) ____ Credit card surcharges are banned by law in 10 states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Oklahoma and Texas. __ Visa and MasterCard have rules that require retailers to handle credit cards the same way in all of their stores across the country. That means a chain with stores in any of the 10 states where a surcharge is banned would not be able to have a surcharge at any of its stores. __ The National Retail Federation points out that under terms of the settlement, a merchant who adds a surcharge to purchases on a Visa or MasterCard would have to do the same with American Express cards. But AMEX prohibits surcharge fees. So a merchant who accepts American Express as well as Visa/MasterCard would not be able to surcharge any of those cards. __ “The bottom line is that very few retailers would be able to surcharge under the settlement, and that the vast majority don’t want to surcharge even if they could,” the NRF’s Sherman said. __ Ed Mierzwinski, Director of Consumer Programs at U.S. PIRG agrees. __ “In the brick-and-mortar world, no one who does any sort of volume business is going to want to surcharge because it will drive their customer crazy and slow down transactions,” Mierzwinski said. __ In fact, most consumer advocates believe that except for some small retailers, a credit card surcharge is a non-issue in the short-term. __ But Edgar Dworsky, founder of ConsumerWorld.org, worries that over time surcharges will gain traction. __ ”It’s predictable what’s going to happen,” he said. “We’re at the top of the hill and we’re going to start going down that slippery slope.” __ Dworsky points out that stores factor in the cost of processing credit cards when they price their merchandise. Charging for that again, he said, would be double-dipping, unless stores rolled back their prices – which no one expects them to do.