Originally Posted by
sethweinstein
This practice is growing rapidly in New York City, especially at bodegas and restaurants, particularly in Brooklyn.
NYC has always had a reputation of being less card friendly than most other places in the US. It's just in the past, a lot of places could get away with being cash only (vs. now where it's much harder if not impossible). I don't think there's been any real change in what merchants there think of cards, just an acknowledgement of market reality and taking advantage of the rules anywhere they can.
Originally Posted by
sethweinstein
We need a clear best procedure for reporting and rectifying these incidents, just as we have one for DCC. And I'd report a DCC of ten cents. But the rules for DCC seem much clearer and the violations much easier to dispute.
I feel like the complaint forms linked in the thread's wiki (or well, Visa's anyway) are fairly clear as to what constitutes a rule violation. In short, any extra fee that works out to >4% of the purchase price and/or surcharges imposed for debit cards quality. (There are also specific notification/signage requirements, but I consider those lower priority compared to the previous two issues--not to mention that reporting a merchant for not notifying Visa or MC before beginning to surcharge is problematic for obvious reasons.)
Originally Posted by
HotelHacker
Well Amazon accepts credit cards without an issue.
About that...
(Granted, they're not likely to stop accepting cards and/or restrict their use any time soon, but it does show they're interested in cutting back on their interchange fees. And who knows, if the vast majority of their customers do eventually decide to buy stuff online via ACH or something, they might be able to justify surcharging the rest.)