Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Square to no longer return processing fees when buyers are issued a refund

squareup.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 176 posts

Re: Square to no longer return processing fees when buyers are issued a refund

#131

Post by ChoGGi »

makestuff wrote: post #119
Alupis wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Majority of returns are for BS reasons, regardless of how quality your listings and products are. "Item Defective" - Unopened factory sealed, tamper-proof blister pack. "Not Received In Time" - Delivered 3 days ahead of schedule. "Too Small" - Item clearly says in multiple places, and even demonstrates in images, the item is 2mm in diameter. The result? Everyone pays more for the products so we can support a few bad…

Another big one is clothing. Order two sizes and send the one back that doesn't fit.

When clothing manufacturers remove an inch or three to make people feel better about themselves, what else can you do?

Re: Square to no longer return processing fees when buyers are issued a refund

#132

Post by unglaublich »

fallingknife wrote: post #129
mihaic wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly have no idea how the hell the US public is still deluding itself to not make this illegal. Are the only ones that get it so content with their 1-2% pieces of silver that they're fine in trading the wellbeing of the less fortunate?

On the one hand, 3% cc fees are much higher than what would be set by a competitive market and are only possible with an oligopoly. On the other hand, the convenience that they allow for not carrying cash is often worth more than the 3% to consumers/merchants like me. E.g. any online payment. So while it's massively overpriced, it's still a win win usually, and I think that's probably why people aren't madder about i…

Yeah, the convenience of having drinkable tap water is also worth >3% of your net income. But luckily, because of competitive markets, it's often <0.1% of your income.

Re: Square to no longer return processing fees when buyers are issued a refund

#133

Post by thatguy0900 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #130
SoftTalker wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know if it’s worth 3% but the convenience of not having to have and handle cash is worth something, for both buyers and merchants.

If a business doesn’t accept credit cards, they’re going to lose a lot more than 3% in lost transactions.

Depends on the business. The Barbershop I go to is cash only, doesn't take reservations, and has always had a 30+ minute wait. I assume the uhh.. tax flexibility of cash payments is worth a lot

Re: Square to no longer return processing fees when buyers are issued a refund

#134

Post by jjeaff »

patmcc wrote: post #115
cwkoss wrote: post #86

Sounds like the real villains are the credit card companies who have the market power to enforce fees on cancelled payments. They are so entrenched no one is even questioning their position anymore. Visa and Mastercard are massive drains on our economy - it's ridiculous how unquestioningly their 3% tax on commerce is accepted.

From a user perspective, I get a lot of benefit from credit cards. I get cash back, an interest-free advance, the ability to do chargebacks, very low liability for lost/stolen cards, etc. If I got 1% or 2% lower prices, would I give all that up? I doubt it.

I get 2% cash back on all my purchases. So they are going to have to drop prices by more than that. And I also get the protection of the cc company if my card info is stolen or a company doesn't deliver what they promised.

Re: Square to no longer return processing fees when buyers are issued a refund

#135

Post by Marsymars »

rileymat2 wrote: post #126
cwkoss wrote: post #86

Sounds like the real villains are the credit card companies who have the market power to enforce fees on cancelled payments. They are so entrenched no one is even questioning their position anymore. Visa and Mastercard are massive drains on our economy - it's ridiculous how unquestioningly their 3% tax on commerce is accepted.

I don't know enough about the topic to analyze whether 3% is high or low, but I don't think it makes sense for them to refund the fee in the case of refunds. They have provided the same service, same costs. So I would hardly call them villains for that aspect.

If your baseline is “same service, same costs”, then the fees from Visa/MC should be a fixed amount rather than a %.

Re: Square to no longer return processing fees when buyers are issued a refund

#136

Post by LatteLazy »

gowld wrote: post #49
LatteLazy wrote: post #40

Devils advocate: this penalises businesses with a LOT of refunds. Which is probably a good thing. Because they generate a lot of work for square and are doing something wrong commercially (misadvertising?). And SHOULD be discouraged...

What work do they generate for Square? It's not really "Devil's" advocate to advicate for the current standard practice across the industry.

Dealing with disputes usually requires a lot of human manual intervention and had a high rate of bad publicity.

Re: Square to no longer return processing fees when buyers are issued a refund

#137

Post by Oxidation »

unglaublich wrote: post #132
fallingknife wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand, 3% cc fees are much higher than what would be set by a competitive market and are only possible with an oligopoly. On the other hand, the convenience that they allow for not carrying cash is often worth more than the 3% to consumers/merchants like me. E.g. any online payment. So while it's massively overpriced, it's still a win win usually, and I think that's probably why people aren't madder about i…

Yeah, the convenience of having drinkable tap water is also worth >3% of your net income. But luckily, because of competitive markets, it's often <0.1% of your income.

Isn't water one is the canonical examples of a natural monopoly?

Re: Square to no longer return processing fees when buyers are issued a refund

#138

Post by bwy »

unglaublich wrote: post #110
SQueeeeeL wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American system is too deeply tied to capital to have a policy that actually helps citizens and small businesses get passed. The second a government official proposed something like this, the espionage arms of the credit card corporations would come down so hard on them and arrange for them to fail their next appointment (through "lobbying")

CC companies are genius. They charge companies 3% -> companies embed that 3% in their prices -> customers get a 1% refund from CC companies. - If you do NOT use a CC, you effectively pay _more for CC users_ (3%!). - CC companies make the customer feel like they have a benefit, while in fact, they are net payers too (2%). - They have access to all (private) data of the customer, which is extremely powerful in this age…

You've articulated the exact sentiment that I have to others before.

What can we do about it? Is trying to out-lobby i.e. regulate the CC companies the only way? I noticed that other countries don't seem to have this problem.

Re: Square to no longer return processing fees when buyers are issued a refund

#139

Post by cwkoss »

patmcc wrote: post #115
cwkoss wrote: post #86

Sounds like the real villains are the credit card companies who have the market power to enforce fees on cancelled payments. They are so entrenched no one is even questioning their position anymore. Visa and Mastercard are massive drains on our economy - it's ridiculous how unquestioningly their 3% tax on commerce is accepted.

From a user perspective, I get a lot of benefit from credit cards. I get cash back, an interest-free advance, the ability to do chargebacks, very low liability for lost/stolen cards, etc. If I got 1% or 2% lower prices, would I give all that up? I doubt it.

Cashback on credit cards is really just a rebate on the CC fees that are baked in to all prices. It's still a net economic loss for consumers, just not as bad as if you weren't taking advantage of that.

Credit cards only seem like a good deal to consumers because it is hard to reason about n-th order economic effects. The profits these companies make are ultimately coming from all of our wallets.

Re: Square to no longer return processing fees when buyers are issued a refund

#140

Post by foobar1962 »

latchkey wrote: post #26

This will affect businesses that do 3rd party merchant services, like events. If the event is cancelled, refunds are issued. Who pays that fee? It would be up to the business to try to claw back funds from the promoter of the event... who is now bankrupt from not being able to do their event. It gets ugly fast.

> If the event is cancelled, refunds are issued. Who pays that fee?

Insurance. The promotor would have insurance to cover this. If the event was cancelled due to a performer cancelling, the performer's insurance will pay.

All this puts up the price of insurance, which puts up the price of event tickets.

Post reply on HN