71–80 of 107 posts
It's also a way for them to save on credit card processing fees by trading the fees of multiple (relatively) small drink purchases for one fee for the gift card purchase. An often overlooked innovation of iTunes was delayed billing, which converted multiple separate song transactions into one bundled transaction to save on credit card transaction fees.
Highway tolls in France have been doing it for something like 20 years.
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Indeed, im pretty sick and tired of people making excuses for others lack of financial planning. Perhaps seeing a big bill dropped on them all at once for their past purchases is the exact wake-up call some people need to track their finances.
If instead of taking uninformed pot shots you took just a moment to check, you'd see overdrafts come from a tiny slice of customers who get hit by overdrafts over and over again. No one made any excuses for anyone, it was a simple statement of fact that batched transactions save a marginal cost for the good in question and affect the age group that's using them the most. — It might even be profitable for them to eat…
In one of my businesses, hotel booking, i also sell gift cards and market them agressively in festive seasons.1 year validity. 45% goes unclaimed, its now 20% of total profit (all legal here, expiry date in a large font)
There's almost always a consequence for not providing value, and if 45% is unclaimed, that's not valuable to anyone but you.
I'd also wonder why so little goes claimed. I'd be worried about my product or service if people didn't want it, even if it was gifted to them.
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> For debit cards, imagine your account has $0.01 in it and about to be overdrawn. Each transaction from here on out will net you a $35 overdraft fee. Everyone using a debit card, especially if poor, should disable overdraft protection at the bank. The fees will eat you alive otherwise.
be careful I disabled overdraft protection and my bank had an additional layer "courtesy pay" that also changed an overdraft and they didn't tell me about it. I found out the hard way.
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It does not wreck anymore havoc than lots of separate transactions pushing them deeper into debt.
Stuff like this reminds me of the bubble tech lives in. There are a lot of people who aren't on top of their finances at all. For them, a delayed transaction wreaks plenty of havoc because they're not keeping track of how much "ghost transactions" are affecting the account balance they see. Now you could argue it's on them for not being on top of their finances, but Uber makes a lot of money from these people. The la…
But it's still difficult to stay on top of finances when you run dry every month. You need to account for all the different ways a transaction could come in: a check you wrote; a recurring payment that you send out, a recurring payment via ACH, debit, whatever; your own card purchases while out and about.
So it easily becomes overwhelming and then you're in NSF territory.
I used to donate $3 at a time via check to some religious sisters. They were very appreciative and sent me nice tokens and letters, but they waited long intervals to deposit those checks, so there were unfortunate times when the checks bounced, and they rightly objected, because their fees already outstripped the amounts I was donating to them. I just felt kind of helpless at that, and sad that a good relationship was soured over $3.
Gift cards are such an odd concept. Here is my gift: expiring cash that can only be used at one place.
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Stuff like this reminds me of the bubble tech lives in. There are a lot of people who aren't on top of their finances at all. For them, a delayed transaction wreaks plenty of havoc because they're not keeping track of how much "ghost transactions" are affecting the account balance they see. Now you could argue it's on them for not being on top of their finances, but Uber makes a lot of money from these people. The la…
I never learned how to balance a checkbook. At this point, it's moot, because the bank does that tracking for me. But it's still difficult to stay on top of finances when you run dry every month. You need to account for all the different ways a transaction could come in: a check you wrote; a recurring payment that you send out, a recurring payment via ACH, debit, whatever; your own card purchases while out and about.…
I think it is unprecedented in history, and absurd, that a company can just reach in and scoop out as much funds as they want on a regular basis. I mean, many things I set up AutoPay have a variable billing amount. They can just increase the bill and they're still hunkydory to remove that amount in the coming months! Please keep consumers in the loop and in control here, folks.
Bill Pay from the bank is, unfortunately, sometimes perilous and difficult to manage, and you may wish for AutoPay after you've had a few mishaps. I recently received a PAST DUE LATE FEES APPLY notice because of a penny. If Bill Pay can't generate an electronic transfer, then it cuts a paper check to mail out (at no charge, which is great) but with all the pitfalls of floating checks (for a poor person who lives close to $0 balance, you don't want a lot of float!)