Originally Posted by
josephstern
Maybe the answer is an a la carte card where I can choose my benefits and pay accordingly:
+ Extended warranty = 5 basis points
+ Priority Pass = 31 bp
+ Add restaurants = 6 bp
+ Travel Insurance = 12 bp
+ Rental Car CDW = 14 bp
Then when my Whole Foods screen pops up and asks me if I want to pay an additional 3.29% to us my SternVisa, I can rest easy knowing that I opted for exactly this basket of benefits.
Begs the question - why should Whole Foods pay more in fees for my purchase if I choose to include Travel Insurance or Priority Pass on my card benefits? Wouldn’t the logical implementation of such an “a la carte” card be to have an annual fee that varies depending on the benefits?
Originally Posted by
frappant
Article also notes that retailers could try to ban high-swipe-fee cards like Visa Infinite (as opposed to maybe having different surcharges for different types of cards?) but in practice, won't do it because large chains won't ban such cards.
I don’t have any evidence, but one local restaurant has never accepted my CSR. I occasionally try again and the owner usually says that the card probably won’t go through (and even tells me ahead of time when I hand him the metal card) and still goes through the motions of trying to run it. I don’t see what exactly he enters on the terminal, so no idea if the failure is the result of that… or if the terminal is programmed to reject expensive cards… in any case, I just give him my CFU and get the same 3X rewards. If it wasn’t the only restaurant with that type of food in the area (and good food), I probably would have stopped going there a long time ago.