> Bullshit Tim. The card holder (person paying) has an interest rate > tacked on their payments -EVERY MONTH-. It's right there at > the bottem of your statement. I would switch to a better card provider then if I were you - here in the UK, that interest payment only kicks in if you don't clear the balance when making your payment - ie it is the cost of the *loan* they are providing you not the cost of the purchase (if nothing else, if it were the cost of the purchase then it would be a one-shot rather than ongoing cost)
> Now, let's talk about the 1-3% transaction charge and who > -actually- pays it. How do you explain 'cash discounts'? I'll > tell you how chucklehead, the individual vendors crank their > prices up 2-5% to compensate. Indeed so - and in the UK, the CC "merchant account" provider *will* yank your account if you do that and they catch you. obviously, the big players wouldn't have this happen to them - but then, the big players won't give you a cash discount as a policy either (although individual branch managers often will) However, the fact that many merchants choose to "work around" the restriction if the customer pushes for a discount, does not alter the fact that a) the 1-3% is SUBTRACTED from the payment they receive, not ADDED to the bill of the customer b) the CC companies frown on even a HINT that a CC is more expensive for the customer than cash, and have enough tame lawyers to make it very expensive for any merchants they catch doing it. > Independence of transactions. There is no such thing, outside of very theoretical models. every time you are offered a bundle deal, a loyalty card, a special discount - anything - you break the model. Item pricing will commonly vary based on a lot of factors - the customer-merchant relationship, the quantity of stock, expected value of stock, recent sales, and of course the true value of the offered payment. However, it is a convenient fiction, as almost all of the transactions will go ahead at the offered price; usually, anything but a tiny retailler (or a medium sized one offered a big transaction) will refuse to treat - either you take the offered price or you don't. Enough choose "don't" though, and the price will drop, which of course is in itself a negotiation of sorts.
