Mastercard/Visa/Discover are modern-day crooks

[drcollie]

MC/Visa and Discover are charging fees to merchants based on the KIND of credit card presented to us for a transaction and we have no way of knowing what it is. On my most recent statement there are (19) different classes of cards that carry surcharges over and above the base processing rate.

Example: One customer in June presented me with a specialty 'reward' card that cost me an additional $ 65.41 to process over and above the $ 88.70 normal processing fee. This is ridiculous, and I am preparing a series of documents to mail off to my Congressmen/Senators to ask them to investigate these ridiculous add-on fees that no merchant can understand.

All those 'free' rewards to the card user are being paid by the merchant. I know that as a merchant I signed onto all that, but the dig is I have no way of knowing if I'm taking a regular card or a high tier rewards card that costs me nearly double to process. There is no way to tell in looking at the card or numbers, so its just a gotcha when you get the billing statement. As a businessman, I think I have a right to know what I'm being charged for and not get it put upon the business after-the-fact.

The real gig of it all is that I'm going to have to raise my retails to cover these, since no one pays by check or cash anymore. Just another case of those FREE REWARDS not being free at all, because they're going to be covered in the retail price and we all have been duped by these credit card companies into thinking we're getting something for nothing.

Stay tuned for more. I'm mulling this all over how to adjust prices and offer a higher discount for check/cash.