Re: fun with your credit rating

fanoid <fanoid@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> goldfarb@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (David Goldfarb) wrote: 
> >Nels Satterlund  <NelsS@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> >>We toyed with doing this when I bought my 2004 Honda Civic DX (with
AC), 
> >>but chickened out .. in part due to the knowledge that Visa/Mastercard

> >>charge a percentage fee and we didn't think the car dealer would go
for it.
> >
> >The copy shop I work for bought an oversize color scanner this year, 
> >and the dealer we bought it from bumped up the price by a couple of
> >percent to offset that.
>
> That used to be illegal. It might still be. It has always been
> legal to give a discount for not using a credit card, though.
>
> IANAL.

If it was ever illegal, it was considerably before my time of having a
credit card (since 1995, so not that long.) Further, it doesn't jive with
my
pre-credit-card experience of seeing separate cash and charge prices for
gas
as a child (now mostly gone, although a very few places still do, and most
local Arco stations only take cash/debit, no credit at all.)

What's I've consistently seen re****ted during the time that I've had a
credit card is that MOST merchant agreements prohibit merchant surcharges
for credit card use, separate advertised prices for credit card use, or
advertising a cash discount.  I'm not sure if the exceptions one can find
to
that are a matter of merchants ignoring the agreement terms or of
agreements
that don't cover it, but one way or another, it's merely uncommon.

-- 
Nate Edel                               http://www.cubiclehermit.com/
 preferred email  | 
 is "nate" at the | "I do have a cause, though. It is obscenity.
 posting domain   |  I'm for it." - prologue to "Smut" by Tom Lehrer