Government to ban card surcharges

[denphone]

Originally Posted by Chris

It's not quite the same. If any genuine admin costs are included within the ticket price, it means the true cost of the booking is visible up-front, rather than only being revealed at the very end of the transaction.

And l would rather have that then a nasty surprise at the end of the transaction.

[m8internet]

Originally Posted by deadite66

it's funny because the DVLA did this themselves.

The charge is not excessive though, fixed at £2.50 per licence to Credit Cards only
Equally, they advise in advance that you can avoid this by using other methods, such as a Debit Card

[Chrysalis]

automated card transactions have very little inherit cost to the seller. By that I mean either an order done over the internet or one done automatically on the phone. The only costs are the transaction fees by the card processor, which for large companies is very low. This seems to have come about because the system is been abused, some companies it seems will charge a significant fee for transactions even when its automated, this in effect allows them to advertise a lower base price to lure customers in and then push of some of the base price as a admin fee of some sort. To me that is false advertising and for that reason the ASA should have already clamped down on this.

[SMG]

Its not before time either, it must be the most cost effective method of paying a bill, electronic transfer, my local car auctions charge nothing for card transactions, but they do charge 1.5% on any cash transaction, simply because it involves physically moving money about.

[AndyCambs]

I notice that the news stated retailers would be permitted to charge a "reasonable" fee, and the figure mentioned I think was 2% credit card and 20p debit card.

If a retailer is going to charge to use a debit card, then I just wondered how much the costs for alternative methods of payment would be?
If I paid in cash, then I believe there is a similar banking charge for this to be deposited.

So does this mean they're going to include the possibilty for a retailer to charge for ANY payment type, and if I have cashback, (since there's no additional charge for the retailer) can we charge the retailer a fee?

My main point is, whilst I can understand a small fee for credit cards, debit cards should not attract any fee whatsoever.

[j52c]

When I buy anything in a shop I always ask if they charge for using a credit card, if they say there is then I pay cash. not sure if I am correct but don't businessses have to pay bank charges when paying cash into their account.

Don't the shop have to display a notice that they charge for credit card payments?

They will just put up the cost of the goods to cover their losses now, it is just the government trying to make us think they have done something positive.