If a dealer, who accepts credit cards in their sales department, refused to take your credit card for the full amount of the car's purchase price, how would you have standing to contest the issue? Seems to me that the ultimate dispute would be between the card issuer and the dealer, not between you and the dealer.

if costco.com sells cars for PU in store, I bet you can buy one from them online flat out as long as your CC can handle the limit!

How would I have standing?

Well, lets see...I have an agreement with my CC company...that company has an agreement with a merchant. The merchants must abide by their agreement or risk losing the benefits of the agreement. They don't get to rewrite the contract.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, but...

Your agreement with the CC company governs the terms of credit given (to you) and your payment obligations to the issuer.

The agreement between the CC company and the dealer (probably) governs the terms of accepting said CC's company's cards and the issuer's payment obligations to the dealer. You would be a third-party beneficiary to the agreement between the CC issuer and the dealer, but is that enough to give you standing? Is there any contractual privity between you and the dealer?

I really don't know....but it seems to me that if the dealer will not allow you to use your CC in a certain manner, the issue of whether the CC should be accepted would be between the dealer and the CC issuer. Sure you can complain, but what rights do you really have?

No argument here...If nothing else I have a right to complain to the CC issuing bank.

I've had absolutely NO issue getting my CC company to make it work. I have no clue what they've said to the dealership, but I'm pretty sure it had something to do with the fact that they aren't allowed to set rules on how much of your available credit can be used...that's not their job or their right.

Does anyone remember back when gas stations, who operate on very tight margins, used to charge a % or per gallon fee cc payment? How'd they get away with that?

Besides the cost of card transaction processing, you also have more recourse on cc to deny payment. It is a riskier transaction for the merchant than a bank draft or finance contract.

In the end, the cc company can and likely will do nothing. What the dealer will or will not accept for payment is part of the deal - and like everything about a vehicle purchase is negotiable. The simple fact is you don�t have the right to purchase something if the seller doesn�t want to sell it to you in that manner. You�re a grown up � if they can�t work the deal you want, get up and move to the next dealership. In reality, people just get tired of the ordeal and will give up and agree to whatever just to finish the whole thing. But that is your decision. Me � I agree whipping the cc out is a good way to get freebies that are worth more than the miles.

I agree it is part of the deal. But if the dealer knows it won't sell the car to you on the agreed upon terms if you want to pay by CC, it is up to them to raise this condition before negotiating the price. If they wait until after the negotiation to tell me they won't accept a CC, they are adding a condition after the fact.

Unless they have a new program I'm not aware of, Costco doesn't sell cars - their Auto Buyer program is just a negotiated '$-over-invoice' deal with the fleet sales group at select dealers. Sometimes these are great deals, and sometimes not so great.

I am going to test their pricing on a '07 Lexus RX400h this weekend - given the rather poor sales numbers for this model, I'm hoping the markup is very low, otherwise I will need to go to another dealer and waste the day doing hard negotiations.

Clark Howard talked about this on his show yesterday...

It wasn't a CC Fee...it was a cash discount. You must understand that a merchant is NEVER allowed to charge additional fees to the CC holder just to process a transaction. However, they are allowed to give you a discount on the price if you pay cash. I know it seems backwards, but that's the way it works.


IF a merchant decides to accept a CC for payment they're bound by those rules.

BTW...this "cash discount" is back in a big way on the west coast, and will probably gain even more popularity. The problem with this is that the money the station owners think they're saving by bypassing the CC fees...they're actually reducing the number of people who use the station b/c it takes longer to go into the business to pay w/cash. You lose customers by taking up the pumps longer.

Are merchant agreements generally posted in the CC website?

I don't believe so.

They didn't -- you got a discount for paying cash; you weren't surcharged for using a credit card.

I know it's a question of semantics, but that's the reason behind that practice not violating the merchant agreement.

And you get up and walk out if you don't like the deal, even after spending hours hammering out what you want. It sucks I know and some dealers base their business on just wearing out customers. I've had dealers agree to something and literally walk back and say we calculated wrong and we need a little more. They were right but I wasn't comfortable with the deal anymore and I just left.

Not directed to you, but just some of the undertones I am reading in the posts. You don't have to call the cc company, the government, the manufacturer, or anything else - just move on. Dealers might suck, but expecting someone else do something is kind of silly. You're the customer.

Plus every vehicle I have ever bought in my life, somewhere early in the whole discussion they asked something along the lines of, "how are you planning to pay for this?"

If you live in a larger city, that's correct. But some of us live in smaller towns, and the alternative dealers for the car we want (especially if it's a nicer import) are a couple hours' drive away, or more. Where I live, if I want a BMW, there's a dealer 5 minutes away...or one 75 minutes away. So contrary to your first paragraph, there might very well be situations in which the customer would (and should) push the issue....

And expecting someone else to do something isn't silly, if they've already agreed to do it.

The one point you've made that I'd agree with is that most dealers seem to ask about method of payment in the conversation. But based on other posts in this thread, that doesn't appear to happen all the time.

Interesting Los Angeles Times (August 21, 2007) article about gas stations cutting back on credit card acceptance in favor of cash.

Start of story:

"Cash rules at some pumps

Credit card companies' fees can be a significant expense for dealers. Some offer markdowns of 3 to 15 cents per gallon.
By Elizabeth Douglass
August 21, 2007
Americans love their credit cards. But at more and more gas stations, it pays to be part of the cash crowd.

In Costa Mesa, Craig Hummel pocketed a 12-cent-a-gallon discount recently because he used real money at a Valero station instead of his Visa or MasterCard. He bought 9 1/2 gallons of premium for his Mercedes sport utility vehicle and saved $1.14.

"I know a lot of people just go wherever they want for gas . . . but I only come here," said Hummel, a Realtor from Newport Beach. "Over a year's time, you save quite a bit. I think more stations should offer it."

They are. To dodge the rising fees that credit card companies tack on to transactions, both no-name and big-brand stations are charging drivers less when they buy with cash. In California, the savings range from 3 cents to 15 cents a gallon."

Read the rest at:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...,6090239.story

You can also take a look at the Chicago Sun Times consumer writer's take on minimums from August 11, 2007 at: http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/n...XER_S1.article