Today at CAB I decided I wanted Chinese food so I went over to the cafeteria place to get some. Grabbed my good old Coke, and headed to the counter to pay using my debit card. What happened next I was not prepared for. I was shocked…they wanted to charge me a 35 cent surcharge for using Interac.
Before I go on, I must say I sat in CAB and griped to Andrew and Megan about the surcharge. I made a fuss, and even grabbed four forks and a stack of napkins to make myself feel like I was getting something for my 35 cents. However, if you are a frequent reader of my blog, you’ll know that I don’t rant without facts. And this post is no different.
Why was I upset about the surcharge? First and foremost, if a method of payment is made available for use, it seems counterproductive to then restrict the use of that method. Why did they invent Interac? Because it is convenient. Now Andrew made the claim that because it is convenient, I am willing to pay a higher price for this extra convenience. This is totally untrue. Any convenience I get from using Interac is instantly negated by the convenience the merchant receives. My use of Interac not only saves them time, but money. The funds go directly into their account, they don’t have to hold cash on hand, and there are no trips to the bank, no deposit slips to fill out, etc. From TD Canada Trust:
An automated terminal provides instant authorization of Interac Direct Payment, Visa and other major credit card transactions. As a merchant, use of an automated terminal allows you to reduce the number of trips you make to the bank, because funds are deposited for you electronically. And you don’t have to spend time filling out deposit summaries. These benefits add up to increased convenience and potentially increased sales.
Why on earth should I pay extra so that they benefit twice? Its ludicrous! But wait! It gets worse. This is from the Interac Association website:
Interac Association does not charge fees to consumers…
A surcharge is a fee charged to cardholders by the Interac Association member responsible for the Automated Banking Machine or the Interac Direct Payment terminal. A merchant cannot surcharge for the use of Interac Direct Payment. The surcharge fee is in addition to any service charges the cardholders may pay their financial institution for using the Interac shared services.
So as you can see from the above quote, merchants cannot charge me a surcharge for using Interac on top of whatever the bank is charging. So if the University wants to charge me a surcharge, I want COLD, HARD, PROOF that they are being charged per transaction by the bank. I haven’t read, seen, or heard anything about the banks raising their rates, and it seems to me that it would have made the news if they did. After all, “more than 34 million banking cards are in circulation among an adult population of 21.8 million. Canadians love their banking cards using them more than 2.4 billion times in 2002. That’s an average of 76 times a second for every hour of every day.”
Charging me for something that saves you money? Ridiculous, and I won’t have it. The war is on.