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

squareup.com

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

#71

Post by zitterbewegung »

latchkey wrote: post #68
Jeremy1026 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd think they'd just amend insurance policies to include the potential 3% revenue loss.

Who is 'they' in your equation here? Also, tell me how a small merchant services business is going to get an insurance plan that covers something like that? This isn't 3% revenue on one single event, it could be on a number of events. What if a multi-event promoter goes out of business? This also isn't just events, that is only one example. Any 3rd party merchant service provider is going to be affected. Back when I…

I think they meant the people who are going to attend the event. But you make good points about everything else .

Usually this is a service charge.

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

#72

Post by munch117 »

jedberg wrote: post #24
munch117 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never seen a toll bridge that doesn't have tolls in both directions. I didn't even know that charging in only one direction was a thing. You live and you learn.

As I am also learning today. If you don't mind sharing, where do you live? Here in the Bay Area all of our bridges only have tolls in one direction.

Denmark. We have exactly one and a half toll bridges in the whole country, so I guess the both-directionalism may be down to toll-both amateurism.

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

#73

Post by duskwuff »

dragonwriter wrote: post #29
jedberg wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting! I'll admit my sample size is limited to bridges in California, but at least in the Bay Area all the bridges only have tolls in one direction.

I suspect the Bay Area model is more common where the dominant traffic on a bridge is two-way commute traffic that can’t easily escape the toll regime for one side of the commute. In that case, one-way tolls reduce infrastructure and operating costs, and traffic impacts, of toll collection without any significant downside.

The other half of that is a practical matter -- collecting tolls in both directions means constructing and staffing a larger and more complex toll plaza. It's hard to justify that expense unless a lot of tolls will go uncollected without it.

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

#74

Post by gtk40 »

bombcar wrote: post #8

Does anyone know if the "real big" merchants like Walmart have to pay the fee? I assume they're so large they can sit on the processors and squeeze them (I know Costco does, they pay 0% fees in-store because Visa is so hungry to be their processor).

I work for a very well known retail brand and we've negotiated our average interchange fee to under 2%. I believe it is around 1.7% currently but it's been lower in the past.

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

#75

Post by jkaplowitz »

aveline wrote: post #53
vinarun wrote: post #2

it was only a matter of time given that Stripe has a penalty too

Stripe doesn't refund the processing fee too. > Depending on your fee schedule, you may incur fees to refund a charge. Additionally, Stripe's processing fees from the original transaction will not be returned in case of a refund. https://support.stripe.com/questions/understanding-fees-for-...

Stripe made this change recently, I believe. It looks like Square is following Stripe's change.

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

#76

Post by arrosenberg »

gowld wrote: post #47
jarym wrote: post #32

I guess the days when refunds were frictionless so that consumers could purchase with confidence are gone? Refunds have always been a cost of doing business - it just seems the processors / card companies want to change the rules and have their cake and eat it now that cash is mostly dead.

Refunds are still frictionless for consumers. It's vendors who have to maintain product quality and prevent fraud to avoid returns. It's not Square's job to make sure that a vendor's product is high-quality or that customers really want to keep the products they buy. Credit cards mostly work the same way. https://www.cardfellow.com/blog/credit-card-refund-fees

Yeah, it's still bullshit. Almost all vendors are going to experience some amount of returns and it costs almost nothing to process it. This is just another form of rent seeking from the credit card processors

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

#77

Post by skyyler »

latchkey wrote: post #57
samwillis wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's why (well one of the reasons along with generally poor behaviour) most ticketing sites tag on so many extra "service" charges. Some charge to even receive a digital copy of your ticket! I believe they don't have to refund these charges when the event is cancelled.

The extra fees are simply a way to gouge end users. It has nothing to do with refunds and it is also often out of the control of the promoter of the event. When I built an event ticket sales site, we tried to get promoters to just raise their ticket prices a bit to include the 'service fees' so that end users got a single price, and they refused. Promoters just want to advertise $25, not $32.50 (contrived example)...…

The fees being non-refundable has to be a bonus.

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

#78

Post by rocqua »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #69
brianwawok wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly users still expect refunds for any reason. Charging a 3% fee on a refund is a cause for a shtfit.

I wonder how consumers developed that expectation? I don't think that expectation is actually more than 20 years old...

Where I live, that expectation is enshirined in a law created in 2001. The reasoning is, with remote buying you can't physically inspect the item. Hence you can decide to return an item at no cost, provided you have only handled it the way you would have been allowed in a physical store.

I believe the law was originally created due to massive over-promising of results by tele-marketers.

(I live in the Netherlands, but similar laws are common in Europe I believe)

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

#79

Post by crote »

peanuty1 wrote: post #62
gowld wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Refunds are still frictionless for consumers. It's vendors who have to maintain product quality and prevent fraud to avoid returns. It's not Square's job to make sure that a vendor's product is high-quality or that customers really want to keep the products they buy. Credit cards mostly work the same way. https://www.cardfellow.com/blog/credit-card-refund-fees

To be fair, sometimes people return stuff for arbitrary reasons like changing their mind.

Yes, and that's totally fine. That's part of doing business and stores already take that into account.

However, the web shop I work at pays a 3% processing fee on returned payments initiated by us. It just makes no sense.

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

#80

Post by crote »

Dayshine wrote: post #58

How is this going to work for businesses in the EU where customers are allowed to refund for no reason when buying things at a distance?

Raised prices. The company I work for alrady has to pay a 3% charge on payment returns. Take 3% of the product price, multiply by the expected rate of return, and add that as a hidden fee to the new product price.
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