Originally Posted by
notquiteaff
How do travelers in Australia, NZ or… Canada and Europe reserve hotels and guarantee the stay ahead of time without a credit card? Do they leave a large cash deposit to rent a car? Seems all very impractical.
I do not know. Our friends in Australia have only 1 credit card used to make booking with rental car etc. When they returned the rental, they chose to pay Cash. Yes, Cash. The Avis counter handled it like business as usual - apparently a very common practice.
I dont believe you can do that in either North America or Europe.
Originally Posted by
notquiteaff
Another example, but not a good one: I don’t know what they do now in CA, but in OR Arco for years now has accepted plastic, and they charge more for plastic than for cash (gas tends to still be cheaper than at the major brands). It doesn’t matter if plastic is Credit or Debit - they gladly pocket the extra dollars from the higher price even if there is only a low-ish debit card fee.
And in years past, when I lived in CA, the workaround to using credit cards at Arco without any fees was to simply buy an Arco giftcard with plastic somewhere, preferably at 5X at an office supply store. No fee, no hassle with cash. I don’t buy enough gas anymore to bother with that. I just pay the higher plastic price if I stop at Arco, or use fuel points at Chevron. The few cents for gas make little difference to me, but - to bring this back on topic - expecting people to pay hotel bills with actual cash seems ridiculous, so I just consider it a junk fee. What’s next - pay airline tickets with cash at a ticket counter again to avoid a surcharge?
It does not work in Florida. Sunoco started Cash get lower price but it spreaded to other popular brands also - primarily at the edge of an urban county like Broward or Palm Beach, not in main parts of it. Or in the rural county like Marine County. The debit or gift card are processed as credit card, i.e. same mechanism, and being charged higher price. Only Cold Hard Cash gets the lower price benefit.
Several years ago a law passed that if the advertised price is cash only, the gas station now has to display it on the billboard and in not so small characters so people would know ahead of pulling in gas stations. We once pulled out when we found out the actual price for CC payment at the pump, so as a car followed us. That was before the law passed.