• Limonene@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    I once went to a restaurant that charged a 5% fee for paying by credit card. They only accepted credit cards.

    I think it’s illegal, but how could I enforce this?

    • markovs_gun@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      That is illegal in my state. I wrote a strongly worded email to a former landlord informing them of this when they tried to pull thos shit and they immediately backed down, presumably because a bunch of other people did the same thing. It is insane how often companies do just blatantly illegal shit in hopes that nobody will notice because the penalty for getting caught is basically just pay back the people who noticed they got scammed and maybe like a $50 fine that was set when $50 was a huge amount of money.

    • BussyGyatt@feddit.org
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      3 days ago

      “Legal tender for all debts public and private” is a guarantee backed by the treasury. if you owe the restaurant a debt, they are legally obligated to accept cash tender. Note that you have to actually owe them, you can’t demand they accept cash tender up front, they have the right to refuse the terms of sale. if you can successfully argue their card only policy was not successfully communicated, then you have a case. I ANAL.

      • Jhex@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Yes but, the USA is borderline anarchy nowadays (yes, I am exaggerating a bit here)… rules and laws only matter if they are applied and enforced uniformly and currently, they are not…

    • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      This is only illegal in some states, but apparently you can get around it by reversing the praying and giving a discount for cash. Which is complete bullshit.

      • Taldan@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        The discount for cash thing was based around credit card terms of service

        Most credit cards used to require merchants to agree to charge the regular price for credit card transactions. If they found out a merchant was charging customers 2-5% more for credit cards to cover fees, they’d cut off the merchant so they could no longer accept their card. VISA would do it a lot, and no longer being able to accept VISA is a huge blow to any business

        Businesses would use the workaround of a cash discount to avoid angering the credit card companies, but more recently it isn’t necessary. I’m not sure if it was a regulatory change or market pressures, but I haven’t heard of a merchant getting dropped for that in a while