I was recently at a Dairy Queen in a resort town in California that had a sign (see below) listing a 39 cent "customer service charge" to pay with a credit or debit card.
Right below it was another sign saying that you would get a 39 cent discount on the service charge by paying with a credit card. (I'm not sure if you also got the 'discount' from paying with a debit card.)
I figured this was just some sort of pretense so they could start surcharging in the future, but the interesting thing about this was that the receipt I got from them clearly showed a $.39 charge and a $.39 "discount" applied to the bill.
(Yes, it shows Chip but the terminals were not customer facing.)
Anybody care to suppose why they are doing this in this way? What advantage does it give the merchant to structure the transaction like this?
