[4RE KLR]

Ron,
great story you posted yesterday. I enjoyed it. I think I have read that before somewhere.

OK,
As far as the CC companies go. They charge you interest for using the cards and some even have the audacity to charge an annual fee for you to pay them to use their card.

They charge the merchant a percentage of the sales price for every transaction, plus a transaction fee plus a batch fee. The percentage is anywhere from 1.5% -3.5% of the purchase price. The per transaction fee is almost always @ $.30 PER TRANSACTION. The batch fees are usually @ $1.00 per batch for the day or a specified number of transactions. Plus the charge you for the machine that the customer slides the card through. $50.00 -$500.00 or the virtual terminal on an E-Commerce website.

If you buy something on your credit card and then decide it was not what you thought it was and return it, the CC companies charge a return fee from $25.00 - $35.00 for That ONE return. If they accept your card and then it gets charged back they charge the retailer a charge back fee of @ $25.00- $35.00 for that ONE charge back.

They charge the retailer for a statement fee of about $20.00 $25.00 a month depending on volume.

Then after all the money they are screwing you and the retailer out of, if you credit card is stolen they all advertise loudly they will give you your money back, no questions. The problem with that is they perform a charge back to the retailer and take the money out of his account and give it back to you. Then they charge him a charge back fee on top of that.

American Express and Discover are the two worse cards for being fee happy. When I was accepting CC for my business I had a sign that said
"We proudly DO NOT accept American Express"

The truth of the matter is that when you use your credit card, the retailer takes about a 5% hit on the merchandise he sells you, as well as 100% of the liability for the purchase.

Think about this for a second. If I sell something and take a credit card I first have to pay for the merchandise I sell you. Then if you tell your credit card company the card is stolen I have to give you your money back plus the charge back fees. So I have paid for the merchandise TWICE and the CC company has gotten paid for the transaction twice.