Originally Posted by
notquiteaff
One of my otherwise favorite restaurants for years supposedly had problems processing my CSR. No other business or card reader ever had problems with the same card, and replacing the card (for other reasons) didn’t do any good. I suspected it was “user error” to avoid a perhaps higher merchant fee. I worked around it with my CFU, which also earns 3X dining, but isn’t a fancy metal card.
I don’t see how this possible change will be easy for restaurants to implement. Are they going to have a list of not-supported cards on the door or on the menu? Like,
or are guests going to find out when they try to pay that the Visa sticker on the door meant “some Visa cards accepted”, and some are not going to work?
To me this seems all very impractical and maybe that is why Visa and Mastercard agreed to it.
I am going to counter this with a comment that is not going to be popular here but IMO pretty much sums it all it. Why should a restaurant, especially a non corporate chain one, be paying a higher transaction rate for your card just so you can ultimately go to Aruba (or wherever) for free? Are you really that much better a customer than one paying cash or using a CC without the bells and whistles? Some of the people most into all this free stuff that you can do with a CC ain't exactly the best tippers either. And that is what this is all boiling down to with these cards. One of the first big dominos for this was with Delta, limiting SC visits and putting them behind real SC members if its crowded et al. Card benefits are going to be getting a lot of snipping here so don't be surprised if the businesses paying more allowing you that privilege because they don't want to pay a higher transaction few are pushing back as well.