Am I just being a fool?
Mar. 25th, 2011 06:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johnridleyGot a new Discover card today, and they of course took the opportunity to tell me what a great opportunity that I'm missing by not using my Discover card to get cash back.
I got into a bit of an argument with the guy, during which time he tried to tell me that he'd never heard of the merchant paying a fee when customers use credit cards. Eventually he relented on that.
But he seemed to be utterly without clue as to why anyone would care that the merchant is getting hit with those fees. "They're paying those fees anyway, and they're going to raise prices as a result." "Yes, but the more people who use their credit card, particularly ones with a higher fee structure such as Discover, the more and quicker they'll have to raise prices."
He actually insisted that the fees that merchants pay are FIXED and are not based on sales. I don't know if he figured that a main street shop with 2 employees paid the same as a mall store doing $100k/day, at that point he was clearly not worth arguing with. I did tell him that I've run retail shops before and I knew what fees were paid. There ARE generally fixed fees but they're minimal when compared to the percentages.
I stopped short of suggesting that he google "Tragedy of the Commons." I did tell him that I'd been sucked into that game fairly recently but that I'd decided that it just wasn't actually that moral to do so, and I wasn't going to play the game anymore.
After the call, I got to thinking that actually, due to marketing and data sharing agreements, merchants actually may not make out that badly, at least, large merchants. I still pay in cash/check when I go to the feed store in town and buy dog food. And I'd really rather just opt out of the whole thing.
Maybe even frequent flier plans are the same, I don't know, I've never investigated them since I don't fly enough to take advantage of any of them.
Comments?
I got into a bit of an argument with the guy, during which time he tried to tell me that he'd never heard of the merchant paying a fee when customers use credit cards. Eventually he relented on that.
But he seemed to be utterly without clue as to why anyone would care that the merchant is getting hit with those fees. "They're paying those fees anyway, and they're going to raise prices as a result." "Yes, but the more people who use their credit card, particularly ones with a higher fee structure such as Discover, the more and quicker they'll have to raise prices."
He actually insisted that the fees that merchants pay are FIXED and are not based on sales. I don't know if he figured that a main street shop with 2 employees paid the same as a mall store doing $100k/day, at that point he was clearly not worth arguing with. I did tell him that I've run retail shops before and I knew what fees were paid. There ARE generally fixed fees but they're minimal when compared to the percentages.
I stopped short of suggesting that he google "Tragedy of the Commons." I did tell him that I'd been sucked into that game fairly recently but that I'd decided that it just wasn't actually that moral to do so, and I wasn't going to play the game anymore.
After the call, I got to thinking that actually, due to marketing and data sharing agreements, merchants actually may not make out that badly, at least, large merchants. I still pay in cash/check when I go to the feed store in town and buy dog food. And I'd really rather just opt out of the whole thing.
Maybe even frequent flier plans are the same, I don't know, I've never investigated them since I don't fly enough to take advantage of any of them.
Comments?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-03-26 08:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-26 08:59 pm (UTC)