Non traditional ways to pay a bill with a credit card

[red259]

I wonder if they are even allowed to charge an 8% fee. Seems like credit card companies would have a serious issue with a merchant charging that much because it seems intentionally designed to discourage the use of credit cards and not merely offset the fees they pay the credit card company.

[Anonymous]

Pre-pay your cable bill if you have one. I will be pre-paying about 6 months work of Comcast to hit my spend for one card. 

[Justrebuilding]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@CreditInspired wrote:
@Justrebuilding

Yep just request them. NFCU asks if you want 3, 6, or 9. I always got 9. Then after my 2nd batch, I didn’t even ask anymore. They knew when I was on my last one and sent 9 automatically.

And the nice thing is checks have your name and address imprinted on them. And you can go to bank to get checks same day.

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Please note that if you're trying to hit a miminum spend or accrue points, checks most of the time pull from the cash advance side.  Verify with your issuer more than once with different reps!  You don't want to get hit with fees, a late pay because you forgot, etc.  If you can't get a benefit rewards wise, just pay those bills normally.

Also, plastiq is a good service.  Just check to make sure it will allow what you want based on your needs, bills, etc. YMMV

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Thanks for pointing this out....I went online and read the T&Cs and it looks like the convenience checks are treated as cash advance and do not earn rewards. So this wouldn’t be beneficial for me.

[Justrebuilding]

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@red259 wrote:

I wonder if they are even allowed to charge an 8% fee. Seems like credit card companies would have a serious issue with a merchant charging that much because it seems intentionally designed to discourage the use of credit cards and not merely offset the fees they pay the credit card company.

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Doesn’t seem like they should be able to do this, but they are....surprising because they are a part of a large franchise, not a small daycare.

[Justrebuilding]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Pre-pay your cable bill if you have one. I will be pre-paying about 6 months work of Comcast to hit my spend for one card. 

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Thankfully my cable bill is super low, only $55 for cable and internet combined. I may try and do this with my gas & electric though.

[Anonymous]

I think 8% is way too much, aren't they only allowed to charge enough to cover the CC fees?

It's also not always easy to know whether a mchant will code as a charge or Cash advance by your CCC. For instance a car payment made via Moneygram was a charge on one card, but was a CA on another. 

If you know it will be coded a "purchase" it's best to overpay like someone else suggested. That way you meet the spend sooner, and with less uses. Which is why I tend to wait until I have a large spend coming up before apping for a new card, moreso if it's a larger spend. $2-3K in 90 days is fairly manegable, but anything over $4-5K can be very close. 

[iv]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I think 8% is way too much, aren't they only allowed to charge enough to cover the CC fees?

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"Allowed to"... by who, exactly?

Card issuers/processors/networks would certainly like it if there were no swipe surcharges at all (and have in the past tried to enforce that in some contracts... those contract terms are largely gone now, for various reasons.)

There was a federal-level surcharge ban in the 70s... but it was completely gone by the mid-80s.

Some states have tried to restrict surcharges (or only allow "cash discounts" instead)... that's been recently partly shot down by SCOTUS, see Expressions Hair v. Schneiderman.

None of those attempts set an allowed amount for the surcharge (or cash discount).  I'm not aware of any contract or law that attempted to allow surcharges, but restricted them to the actual processing fees incurred. (Although it's possible that there is some state or local law somewhere...)

[Anonymous]

Well most retailers do not pass on the swipe fee as a courtesy to thier customers. However, there are few who do tack it on. Which is why I thought that they were only allowed to charge you the actual swipe fee? If the standard swipe fee is say 3%, but said retailer charges you 6%.

Wouldn't they be in violation of something? 

Or what if this were Target, and they charged the customer swipe fees on all CC except their Red Card?

Something about this would seem unethical at best.

[iv]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Well most retailers do not pass on the swipe fee as a courtesy to thier customers.

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Funny! ...but no.

Retailers aren't as courteous as you may believe - ALL retailers that accept cards pass on the swipe fees to their customers. ALL. Some just make it more obvious than others.

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@Anonymous wrote:

However, there are few who do tack it on.

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Nope. There are a few (quite a few, mostly smaller retailers and gas stations) who make it explictly clear what the swipe fee is, and allow you to not pay the fee, if you use a different payment method.

Swipe fees are part of the cost of doing business today.  Most large retailers include swipe fees in their standard list prices, and in most cases, charge you the cost of that swipe fee even if you pay cash!

Some offer a "cash discount" (ie: removing the built-in swipe fee)... frequently this is due to the structure of local laws on list prices.

The stores that, as you say "tack it on", are among the set of retailers that DON'T include the fee in all transactions, make it clear what the fee actually is, and provide a clear an easy way to avoid it (pay cash/check/etc).  Those are, relatively speaking, the "good guys" here.

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@Anonymous wrote:

Which is why I thought that they were only allowed to charge you the actual swipe fee? If the standard swipe fee is say 3%, but said retailer charges you 6%.

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And? They could choose to charge you 10% or 25% for the privilege of using a card.

Or they could offer a similar discount for using cash instead.

Or a discount for using specific cards (like their store card...)

The price they choose to charge you for a transaction is not tied to the exact amount of their direct costs.
(If retail worked that way, everything would be sold at cost, and there would be no profit in the business...)

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@Anonymous wrote:

Wouldn't they be in violation of something? 

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...no. What, exactly, would they be "violating"?

(I guess if they stated in advertising that they charged a "cost recovery fee" exactly equal to their swipe fees, they would run into Truth in Advertising laws? But no store does, or would do, that, so...)

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@Anonymous wrote:

Or what if this were Target, and they charged the customer swipe fees on all CC except their Red Card?

Something about this would seem unethical at best.

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You mean the way any retailer who offers a store-card discount works?

What's unethical about that? A retailer offers a store credit card, and swipes from it cost them than other bank cards (and they get to collect behavioral data...), so they (sometimes) offer discounts if you pay with their card. So what? Where's the ethical issue?