That's why you enter it in as "credit" instead of "debit"

They DO still make cash. Try using it sometime instead of whipping out that stupid card for a 80 cent transaction. there is NEVER a fee to use cash!!!!!! Your local mom and pop stores will thank you too as they wont have to pay 75 cents in fees on that 80 cent transaction.

this is nothing new - i've been a US Bank customer for some time and they've been charging this fee for at least 5 years. as pointed out by karl, all you need to do to avoid this fee is have the transaction run as credit instead of entering your pin. sorry to say it, but folks who don't keep an eye on their bills deserve what they get...

yeah. that too. though I hear the U.S. version of this "cash" continues to lose value.

@karlrove: They don't--yet--make a debit card that debits your stash of Krugerrands, so what the devil are you complaining about?

@karlrove: some stores require you to use a debit card with the PIN rather than signing. this is largely due to settlement in a lawsuit over interchange fees on debit cards between VISA/MC & wal-mart a couple years back. before that settlement, the customer had the right to choose, but now a merchant can force a customer to PIN or refuse to accept the card.

this is a sneaky practice, & i've heard of more than one bank charging similar fees. some even go so far as to roll it into the purchase amount (so a $19.99 purchase would show up on your statement as $20.24).

@mac-phisto: You are correct. The dollar tree requires a debit card transaction or a discover card.

Wow...I didn't any realize any card still did this. Time to change banks!

HSBC does this. No complaints on my part, though, because I can use my debit card to buy something small and get cash back for less than it would cost me to use a foreign ATM.

@mac-phisto: At a few places I shop at (Wal-Mart and Target for example) when I swipe my card, it will automatically do debit, but I can hit cancel and do credit.

I've had US Bank for several years and never had this issue. I hope it doesn't start for me soon

Chevy Chase bank also charges this fee. The fact that you get pinched this way after the merchant has steered you towards debit (to save themselves some money) is really infuriating.

@yg17: yeah, many times that bypass is still built in (probably b/c the retailer would rather pay a few dollars in interchange fees rather than lose the sale), but i wouldn't count on it to last forever. two supermarkets by me no longer accept debit cards w/o PIN, members-only (costco, bj's, sam's) have been like that for awhile, & eventually main retailers will simply assert their rights with more force.

if you consider the following:
-interchange fees are about 2% of purchases
-debit card usage marginally exceed credit card usage
-about half of debit card transactions are signed instead of PINed
(this information is from the 2007 EFT data book)

assuming a store racks up $10 billion in sales on credit & debit cards, a company could save ~$50 million in interchange fees by forcing the PIN on the $2.5 billion in sales on debit that are signed. add to that the cost-savings of ZERO chargeback rights on that $2.5 billion & you can begin to understand why this was such a large issue for retailers.

as an aside, i'm going to assume that those same retailers have a whole building full of actuaries sizing up payment data & anxiously awaiting the day that the cost of allowing the customer to choose exceeds the cost of rejecting sales on debit with signature.

this study from the FRB summarizes debit fees pretty well ([www.federalreserve.gov] ...check out section 6 specifically):

A fee that comprises less than 2 percent of the average purchase amount is associated with a 12 percent reduction in the likelihood of using the card.