161–170 of 176 posts
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Poor poor ticket master.
It's a genuine point, they did incur non-zero real costs to process the order then the refund. Low effort trolling doesn't help anyone.
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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…
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?
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Based on this article it sounds like they pay enough to want a law to make it less: https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/20/business/credit-card-fees-vis... Costco gets away with 0% because they offer exclusivity and because they cover some of the cost of the rewards programs. I guess Walmart et al did the math and figured they would lose too much business. The average Costco shopper makes over $100K a year, so getting anothe…
> The average Costco shopper makes over $100K a year... While technically true, that statistic is misleading as it requires further qualification, namely that $100k figure only applies to shoppers in Costco's PNW area - not nationwide, and certainly not internationally.
More recent attempts at analysis put the number closer to $125K these days for all their customers worldwide.
Which makes sense, given inflation and the fact that they only build Costcos in more affluent areas and target business owners.
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 agree that is not a consumer friendly situation but on the grounds that it because its effectively a duopoly and not because they charge for a service they provide.
These monopolies never benefit the consumer. The best ways to approach this are 1. the government to break up the duopoly, 2. a competitor to come along to introduce more competition, or 3. the consumer can get fed up and go back to using cash or carry a laptop around to transfer bitcoin until said companies are forced to break up and consolidate to a better product. These solutions are tried and true.
I am tired of hearing people complain about a service and still continue to use the service.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface
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.
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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?
It's a prisoner's dilemma. If we collectively switched to a payment system with lower transaction costs, we would all be better off. But as an individual, it is in your best interest to use the credit card with the highest rewards program, because you have to pay that extra 3% either way.
And we also taught our children to be ethical and aim to do good, even in school, which helped.
I learned the hard way in March 2020 that PayPal doesn't do this anymore either. I was helping an organization raise money for a Charitable 5k when COVID shut everything down. This was when everyone thought the world was ending still so we didn't think to change it to a virtual 5K. Refunded all payments on a couple thousand dollars and was out around 4% in processing fees.
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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.
It's a net economic loss for consumers as a class , sure. That doesn't mean it's a loss for each individual consumer. I'm not against lowering CC fees. But the idea that they're just rent seeking is very silly.
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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