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Years ago, when imposing a minimum credit card purchase was not allowed, I had the following exchange:
Me: I’d like to order a second beer.
Bartender: Sorry, we’ve already called last call.
Me: Okay, I’ll just close out my tab then. Here’s my credit card.
Bartender: You’ve only have the one beer, and we have a ten dollar minimum for credit card purchases.
Me: Cool, I’ll have that second beer then.
Bartender: But we’ve called last call.
Me: ….
Me: Listen, you can pour me a second beer and I’ll meet your minimum. Or you can ring me up for the one I had. Your choice. The alternative is I just leave.They rang me up for one.
I think that can put them in an off spot legally, depending on their local liquor board. I understand the bartenders reluctance.
Not really. I’ve bartended (and managed bartenders) in this state for twenty years. The only binding thing is the 2am cutoff, and that means no one is allowed to have ANY alcohol at 2am. For that reason, most places call last call 15–30 minutes before 2. Nothing out of the norm there, but he absolutely could have sold me one more beer at 1:40 saying that it has to be finished by 1:59.
I know in NY and CA there are to be no sales after the cutoff time but people are usually allowed to finish what they already bought past the time.
Most definitely not the case in California. No consuming after 2am no exceptions.
If imposing a minimum credit card purchase was not allowed, how could they impose a ten dollar minimum for credit card purchases??
Same way speeding in your car isn’t allowed.
Therefore that alcohol establishment was running the risk of being fined by the government for their illegal activity?
I never said it was “illegal” to do it, it was against the terms of their credit card acceptance. They weren’t putting their business or liquor license at risk, only their ability to accept credit cards.
Ok thanks for explaining. But to be clear, you did say their credit card policy was something they got away with just like we get away with speeding in our cars, and speeding in cars is illegal & punishable by law. 🤷🏼♀️ But now you explained it was only against the terms of their credit card acceptance. They weren’t putting their business or liquor license at risk, only their ability to accept credit cards. 😄
I can see how that paints a legal picture, and you’re not wrong reading that way. I only meant that speeding is something easy to get away with even if it’s not allowed.
I would have rang you up with a tip.
Sure, if you cleared it with the customer first. Otherwise your just a thief and an asshole.
If you ask me it OP that was the asshole. The bartender was just doing his job and wanted to go home.
What exactly was I supposed to do? Both options were as a result of their self imposed limitations: the credit card minimum is allowed now, but back then it was explicitly prohibited. And while they called last call, it was still twenty minutes away from the 2am when the law prohibits more sales. (Calling last call 20-30 minutes prior to 2am is common, and I have no issue with that).
It seems very unlikely that the bartender had any input on that policy.
No doubt, at least on the minimum cc purchase thing. They were, however, choosing to not serve me a second beer 20 minutes before 2am. That was definitely a choice the bartender made.
I’m any case, I wasn’t rude about it.
This was years ago when things were cheaper and a beer was like five dollars. Obviously (because I’m in the US, I’m going to throw down a couple of bucks for a tip, but it still wouldn’t have met their minimum.
Aw fuck, I can’t believe you’ve done this.
Am I too European to understand this? This minimum shit is stupid and should be illegal
Visa and Mastercard are horrible companies. For smaller businesses.
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If your transaction numbers are low they charge a flat + percentage So like 0.55 EUR + 1.2%. Stores in this tier generally try and keep a minimum spend, because you buy 1 EUR and mastercard charges 56c. From 44c you have to pay for product and make a profit. It’s stupid.
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You can opt for plans that don’t have flat fee, so it’s like 2.25% percentage only. Useful if you move a lot of small value items like a small convinience store.
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But if you’re a chain of convinience like SPAR, they can get custom deals. SPAR had a tiered deal, transactions below 1 EUR, they charge 0.4%, below 4 EUR it was 0.9%, below 10 EUR 1.5% and, above 1.9% This would never be possible for smaller shops.
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Every transaction enriches some foreign country as they take the cut. Homegrown system like wero should be dominant, cheap and stays in local economy.
Also I’d like to note, I’ve been out of touch of Europe for a while so my opinions and knowledge might be dated, but this is solved problem in ASIA, PayNow, Prompt Pay, UPI etc exist and are fantastic solutions for small businesses.
Cannot wait for the new payment systems being worked on. Visa and mastercard are going to lose out on their biggest bloc because of greed and stupid voters.
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Indeed it is in most of Europe, I think.
I did buy something in a takeaway a few years ago and it was like 20p below the minimum, and I just went “charge 20p extra then” and it seemed to break the other customers minds. Never occurred to them you can do that, rather than asking for an extra £2 of stuff you don’t want…
It isn’t illegal, but it’s against the TOS for every major cc company. If you see this shit you should report it.
It’s against the credit card company tos because the credit card companies want to force small businesses to lose money on small transactions or not have the option to take cards.
So ratting to Visa helps Visa and hurts the small business. Great job! With friends like you who needs enemies! Just bring fucking cash ffs.
Or let the customer buy a drink and eat it. It’s not like the fucking bar pays their employees anyway. It’s not about helping visa, it’s about helping the customer.
$10 is the amount generally outlined as the acceptable minimum. What information are you relying on? Can you provide a source for that?
Visa/Mastercard rules say that you can’t refuse to accept payment with credit cards if you accept them in general. They are pretty adamant about that rule and even have secret shoppers to confirm such cases. The 10$ minimum is only allowed in the US and territories, the rest of the world does not have this exception (https://www.visa.com/en-us/support/visa-rules#6153bdb1)
The post is in English and using $ specifically, so I’m unsure why they said it’s against TOS. I get that the commenter was European, but they were basically asking if this was a legit thing that they didn’t know because they aren’t from here. They didn’t ask “is this true in Europe”, so I feel like it’s misleading to suggest it’s against TOS unless you’re specifically suggesting “for Europe it’s against TOS but it’s fine in the US”.
Which part exactly? The store owner can refuse service to anyone for any reason, I really doubt there’s an enforceable agreement that requires them to take transactions simply by have a card pos system.
They absolutely must accept a card presented for any amount. It’s part of the TOS with every major cc company. This is the bar trying to shirk the service fees on small transactions, but it flies directly in the face of what the card issuer tries to guarantee, “accepted everywhere”. If they find out a business is refusing their cards when they don’t hit a minimum, they will warn the business, and if they keep doing it, will no longer do business with them. That’s a big reason some bar are cash only, all the cc companies cut them off. (Also tax evasion, obviously)
Edit: welp, I just did a little research, and while that USED to be true, it’s now allowed as long as the minimum is no more than $10. As of 2010.
Everything always gets shittier.
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Why the fuck are you fighting for visa?! You’re on the side of a major international corporation against small business. Fuck you. How’s that?
I’m not on the side of visa, I’m on the side of the guy trying to buy shit with his money vs the dude who doesn’t pay his employees in the first place. Fuck you too.
Ignoring ToS agreememts, I am on the side of the shop owner. It’s a bit annoying for me but fuck big finance
My understanding is that it used to be against their terms, but it no longer is.
? I encounter this in Europe regularly.
There are european countries that have made the practice illegal.
There are countries that said you should always, without extra costs, allow digital payment.
Funny enough, they bypassed cards then and went for things like payconiq, wero, apple pay, google wallet, … to bypass the costs of card readers hahaI’ve definitely encountered this in Germany recently.
You shouldn’t. The 10$ minimum transaction is only valid in the US and territories. Report them, this violates their contract with every credit card payment provider. On top of that it’s illegal in many countries.
Yeah, I’m clearly gonna report local shops for stealing a couple of Euros a day from MasterCard/Visa. Bootlicker
If they don’t want to play by the rules they put their signature under and force people to spend more money than they actually want to, they are also stealing from you. Noone forced them to enter a contract. And the conditions are clear, its not like they got baited or something.
Also, these are not a few euros per day, this can amount to a substantial amount of money over the course of a month - that costumers have to pay, not Visa or MasterCard.
You lost the plot.
See my reply above.
Credit card and Debit Card charge the merchant per transaction, so most places will have a minimum spend. but usually it is like $3 or something. Same with food bank donations, it has a low minimum because their transaction provider charges fees for handling the donations online
Nothing to do with being European. I see this occasionally at small businesses here in Austria, such as tobacco stores.
It was 15€ minimum for a long time in France, but now they’ve finally caught up.
Businesses pay fees to accept payment through credit cards. This business decided it wasn’t worth it for small transactions.
It used to be a lot more common, but it’s pretty rare these days.
Local companies in Germany also have a min.limit on card payments like EC?
They arent everywhere but they exist.It’s not illegal yet, but it violates Visa/Mastercard TOS. Extra charges for using a credit card are illegal EU-wide.
Germany is planning for next year to put into law the right for the costumer to choose which payment method he wants to use, without any limitations. This is also being used to make sure that at least one european digital payment service has to be accepted to break the stranglehold of US companies Visa/Mastercard - a very important step towards general security for the european economy.
And in an unexpected move, the EU is going to make accepting cash payments mandatory - currently you can exclude any payment method with your TOS.
I think it is here too but people still do it.
They generally have to pay a fee per digital transaction, and I once saw it was 0.55€ for a transaction I did, so I can definitely understand that they don’t want to lose money on small purchases.
The alternative would be to require extra payment for digital transactions, or to increase prices for everyone (even more).
… make it illegal and nothing in a store will be under $10 (or so).
You’re too illogical to understand it, apparently.
Just a heads up, you should probably fix your title before someone makes a shota joke.
it’s almost been an hour… they shota fixed it by now
Shota, cota, wota
Ya drink the shota you futa bill.
Lol I almost did.
Shot glasses are usually pretty small and peanut m&ms are relatively large, $1 for what probably amounts to ~6 m&ms sounds like a rip off.
bars are a ripoff. $4 a drink during happy hour, for the cost of one good evening I can just buy a bottle and drink for a week.
You’re not paying for the booze, you’re paying for space and time in that spot. It’s so expensive to keep the doors open. All the licencing and insurance. Wages, rent. It all adds up so quickly. I worked at a modest sized place for a few years and got to know the business side of it. It was at least 7k a week through the till to break even.
Edit: to all the bar haters out there; find a spot without TVs or blaring music. You may be surprised by how nice it can be just chilling and having some drinks. So many bars are just sensory overload. A nice quiet drinking hole is worth its weight in gold.
Which is why young people aren’t drinking anymore. The space etc is simply not worth the prices.
No. It’s a deeper change than that. Young people also aren’t just grabbing some alcohol and hanging out at each other’s apartments/houses drinking, at least not as much as prior generations.
…or maybe they’re just not inviting you.
I’d hope that they’re not. That would be really creepy.
I mean, I don’t know if I’m part of the trend or not as someone in his mid 20s who rarely ever drinks, but many of my mates don’t drink at all, and when we hang out there’s little alcohol, we also tend to play online games etc a lot. Going to a bar sounds quite bothersome and unnecessary tbh. But I don’t know if I’m too old to be part of this trend.
In any case, I see little conceptual value in bars, at least to me. I can buy alcohol for stuff we do at home if I even want to drink (not often).
understanding why it sucks doesn’t make it suck any less.
$4? What year is this? 2005?
only during happy hour. The rest of the time the price is 2x or 3x, depending on which bar and what drink.
And they still expect you to tip on top of that.
I wish a bottle lasted me a whole week
Buy olive oil.
Even better buy castor oil.
Even better, buy a mini chainsaw, realize it doesn’t come with bar and chain oil, go to your local auto shop and realize the minimum size sold is a gallon of bar and chain oil…
fellow alcoholic, it’s an aspiration not a benchmark.
Maybe it was sparkle m&m? They are not cheap
Make mine a double!
chocolate all over face, slurring from insanely high blood sugar I’ll tell you when I’ve had enough
Diabeetuusss?
MnMnMnM
Bars in general I just don’t get, like you want to be outside/in public, with people you don’t know, to buy food that’s double+ what it costs anywhere else, to have like 2oz shots and pretend to be ‘wasted’, the bathroom looks like a highway rest stop, they play bad music, you can watch people who can’t play pool get mad at other people who also can’t play pool…
Oh and places that claim to be ‘clubs’ and just give the illusion of being upscale and exclusive but it’s the same thing behind the veil. A ‘cover charge’ to receive nothing at all? You gotta be out of your mind. Running iTunes on a laptop does not make your music ‘curated’ by ‘DJ Drippin’. And if there’s a ‘dance floor’ it’s all horny stumbling people who think they can dance.
And then you get the bros that are like ‘getting blackout drunk and finding out you plowed 3 chicks is my definition of a great weekend’ like dude you blew $800 last night and there was a pool cue sticking out of your ass when you woke up. Explain how this is so great. ‘it just is bro, you just need to try it, experience it, bro’. Whatever you say, bro.
Everyone I know that wants to drink just hits up Walmart or Costco first, grabs food after, and goes home to chill with said food and liquor. Even when we were the target demographic, just… why.
From this I feel like you are afraid to be in oublic because youightdrink too much and sodomise yourself with a pool cue.
You have said a lot about some very specific things that are not that indictative of real life.
This is just from my limited experience, + some friends stories. But lmao, I guess desperate times can call for desperate measures with the pool cue.
I go to a bar whenever I’m in another city, easiest way to make quick acquaintances and get the vibe for the place. Heck, I’m drinking less now, so I’d get a non-alcoholic or a mocktail and still have a decent time. It’s not about drinking.
Maybe you just have the wrong bars in your area? I don’t go as often as I used to but for me going to a (bistro) bar or a brewpub offers a nice change of scenery. Sitting outside watching other people strolling by gives you something else to talk about. Or when the weather is crap, I’ll sit inside sipping some dark craft beer I can’t buy in the supermarket.
When we hang out someone’s home conversation tends to dry out after an hour or so and we just end up playing board games (which is fine too).
Or maybe you got a local bar with decently priced food, generous drink pours, and regularly attended by friendly neighbors whom you don’t always have to chat up but are perfectly lovely when you do
Bars when they pick the literal most dogshit music to blast
For a dollar not sure it could be anything else. Alcohol is expensive.
I could see it being a way to get rid of flavored liqueurs that have been sitting around
That sounds a lot better than what I was thinking.
Eyy welcome back. You were gone for a while. Missed your snarky comments man. All good?
