Jack In The Box: That'll Be A $30 Minimum Charge For Credit Or Debit, Please
Reader Jereme writes:
This last evening I was hungry and decided that I wanted Jack In the Box. So I went to the Manhattan Beach, CA store on Sepulveda Ave. When I pulled up and was beginning to determine what I wanted for dinner I noticed a sign on the order board. It stated that in order to use a credit card it required a 30 dollar purchase, ID and a signature. While I have seen minimum payment requirements before at various liquor stores and restaurants I have never seen one so high especially for a drive thru window...
I did ask if they accepted debit cards which I was told no. Since I did not have any cash I left and went to another fast food drive-thru that did accept my debit card without a minimum purchase or other requirements. I have read many posts on your website regarding this and the many responses from your readers. I did not make a fuss or a scene, I simply drove past their window without making an order as I did not feel that store wanted my business. I did send a complaint to the corporate office of Jack In the Box as well regarding the violation of the merchant agreements. While reporting them to VISA may do nothing I felt that your readers should know that some franchisees are getting a but silly with their credit card use requirements.Jereme updated us:
As a follow up, I reported to the corporate office, VISA, and my bank. I heard nothing from Jack in the Box, VISA gave me their rules on what is not allowed, and Wells Fargo stated that merchants can set minimum purchase prices. I replied back to my bank with the answer I received from VISA. I have not yet heard back from my bank since that initial response. ... I just got off the phone with Jack in the Box corporate customer care. The guy on the phone was nice enough, however he was not aware of the VISA merchant agreements either. He did state that the particular restaurant has had some cc fraud issues recently. But this shouldn't cause users to be imposed with 30 dollar minimum purchases. He asked if I was able to be able to make a purchase using alternative means, so I stated that I did not have cash and did not return. He did offer to send out a coupon for some free Jack In the Box good at any of their restaurants.Really, Jack In The Box? $30? A fast food place is one thing, but it's kind of sad that even Wells Fargo can't bother to read the Visa merchant guidelines.
The relevant section reads:
Always honor valid Visa cards in your acceptance category, regardless of the dollar amount of the purchase. Imposing minimum or maximum purchase amounts in order to accept a Visa card transaction is a violation of the Visa rules.Visa Merchant Rules (PDF) [VISA]
This is a test using rich text formatting and html links. It's the generic "company" ad that should appear on all posts with the Company category if they don't have an ad attached to a specific company.
Post a comment
Comments:
Those are the public "general" rules.
The terms of the merchant agreements are quite different.
This must be a store managers imposed policy, There are two jack in the boxes where I live and I have used my CC there for $3-$9 purchases I think I even just got a large fry once at 4am (Jack Fries are the bomb after a night of clubing) never had a problem.
Still if they had a problem of fraud what amt? unless someone was feeding a bus of people, I would think their losses would be small, unless they have a fraud wave of people coming in.
This is really wierd.
I've never been to a Jack In The Box, but assuming it's just like any other fast food place in terms of prices, I'd imagine it would be pretty difficult to reach a 30 dollar minimum unless you're bingeing or have a party of like 10 people and are paying for all of them. Seems crazy on their part, I'm sure it's turning away many customers like Jereme here.
So now they will have $30 fraud charges instead of $6 fraud charges.
The hassles in order to pay for things in CA was the part I disliked most about living there. But that was also when demanding a credit card (and they wrote it all down on the check) was required in order to write a check most places. That was also my first introduction to the pay before you pump stupidity.
How many dollars should I spend?
30!
That's what I was thinking!
who the hell blows 30 bucks at a fast food place???!!!!
Maybe if you are picking up lunch for all your coworkers (as i have done that before), but I doubt even a family of 5 couldnt blow THAT much at one fast food place!
Even in California, $30 in fast food is a LOT of fast food. lol
JinB isn't all that damn special, and the *only* fast food joint I'd spend upwards of $30 or more (group) is White Castle, home of the sliders/belly bombers and various fried sides. usually late, and after a few (taste so much better!)
From what I understand, business aren't allowed to impose a minimum for credit card purchases. A few do; a green grocer near me won't accept orders under $10 for plastic payment. I've never bothered to take them to task as their prices are great. I suppose the the fees are bothersome for accepting credit but I'd think the advantages would far outweigh the disadvantages. Folks are carrying less paper in their wallets and credit/debit cards are easier to zip out, sign and go.
I feel as though $30 for a bacon ultimate cheeseburger is worth it. Should have done it - it woulda been goooooood.
Mastercard doesn't seem to care if their merchants are violating the agreement. I've reported several gross violations around my town (min. purchase + ID requirements) and I never get a reply from them.
I'm just going to have to stop patronizing those businesses since I almost never have cash on me.
MasterCard rules are extremely clear:
No minimum purchase required.
No ID required.
-------------
Visa rules are:
No minimum purchase required.
@stinerman: Did you try complaining through the MasterCard website? I did about a local merchant and sure enough, the next time I was there they had taken down their signs about requiring ID and minimum purchases.
I SOOOOOOOO miss white castle! Nothign I liked more after getting off work at 5 am than stopping buy the grandview, MO whitecastle & getting a bag of bellybombers to take home. WhiteCastle closed all of its shops here in Kansas city years ago & the closest ones are all the way across the state in St Louis! :*(
as for the article.... I hate it when companies get all militant against their customers after getting defrauded by criminals .... basically treating every customer as a potential criminal. You'd think that companies would realize that its expected to get a cetain percentage of fraud/loss & not take it out on their customers.
30 dollars is huge, but who knows, Jack in the box might be a fancy restaurant or something.
/sarcasm
Anyways, 2 things I'll never do:
1. Spend more than 5 bucks for fast food
2. Give my debit/credit card to the teenager working the register.
Alas, perhaps my penchant for planning ahead and being a cheap bastard will bite me in the ass, however, I think in the long run I'll be ok.
What's a Jack in the Box
$30?!
At the Jack In The Boxes here, they have installed RFID credit card readers on all of their drive-thrus and counter cash registers, and those are only supposed to be used for small (less than $25, I think) transactions.
Sounds like this particular franchisee didn't want to accept credit cards at all, but JITB corporate forced them to.
Jack in the Box is fast food restaurant on the West coast that is somewhere between White Castle and McDonald's in terms of, uh, quality.
Who do I have to email to report this? I took at look at their site and couldn't find any relevant email address. There are a bunch of places around me with high minimums. Since I get great rewards on my credit cards and never carry cash anyway, I can never go for something easy, like lunch. But I'm not going to fight too hard for them to take my money.
What I find interesting is that the 'excuse' for the high minimum made by JITB corporate was that this particular outlet had been experiencing a good deal of credit card fraud. So...their solution is to only accept cards for really BIG purchases? Shouldn't it be the other way around? Only accept cards for small purchases. This way the fraudulent amounts will be less.
so I got another contact from Wells Fargo after I sent in VISA's response. they gave me an address to write in a complaint to. I guess this is their ATM Executive Service, or something. VISA's response to me was to also contact the bank that issued the card, and not them specifically.
Wells Fargo Bank
Customer Correspondence
P.O. Box 6995
Portland, OR 97208
I carry the appropriate rules in my wallet. I haven't had to use them yet, but I'm ready! -- [james.roomfullofmirrors.com]
Jack in the Box leads the way (alongside Carl's Jr.) for expensive fast food in my neck of the desert, with combo meals at $7 now. It won't be long until you can spend $30 on a fast food meal with teh hyperinflatians. Karl's comment got it right--the franchise holder doesn't want credit cards (and their fees) at all.
The reason for the high minimum should be obvious: this Jack wants cash only PERIOD.
My local JiTBs don't have a minimum. In fact, they have an outside card reader at the window, so you get to swipe your card.
I'd have to disagree, Ithink they are a better quality Taco Bell...I grew up in MD and Jack in the Box was the only place open late at night so we loved it, then I moved to Phoenix in 1984 and lived there until 1995 and continued to love Jack in the Box, moved back to Maryland, and the Jack in the Boxes are no longer here. Their website says the closest one to me is in either Ohio or NC, this is not fair, I miss my Jack in the Box. However I was able to order the Jack antenna balls on-line, and I have my niece send me holiday ones (she lives in Seattle) Come on JinB come back to Maryland@snowpuff:
It's important to read the disclaimer on page 4 of the Rules For Visa Merchants document:
"Your merchant agreement and the Visa U.S.A. Inc. Operating Regulations take precedence over this guide or any updates to its information."
Key words: YOUR merchant agreement. So, the question becomes:
Is it possible that indvidual merchant agreements can include provisions for minimum purchases and/or fees?
Just checked their website, looks like they don't even have tacos anymore..is this true?
@snowpuff: I really hope that you did this to a chain or other large-scale store. There is a mom & pop gas station next door to me which has a $4 minimum for cards. It sucks when I just want to pop in for a cup of coffee or a soda, but I understand why they do it, and I'd rather see them supported (never encountered subpar service there) as opposed to some large conglomerate stepping in.
I don't know, it seems like a situation where, yeah, you can complain, bu should you?
I use my Amex card at JitB all the time, so it's not a company policy. However, if I'm not mistaken, JitB is a franchiser, which means that different stores may have wildly varying policies.
Hmm. Good thing I always order a TOTALLY RIDICULOUS amount of food whenever I go to Jack-In-The-Box. It's totally reasonable to expect people to buy $30 worth of food at a drive-thru, right?
Oops! I just had a massive coronary embolism.
I personally don't think I'd ever eat a place that calls itself Jack in the Box and employs teenage males who A) tend to do stupid, impulsive things to amuse themselves and B] are sexually frustrated in their newly changed bodies with special functions.
@boones farmer: Yeah, but then why not just stop accepting cards altogether? Is someone committing fraud going to care they they'll have to buy a bunch of extra food to use the card? It's not like they're going to pay for it: it's fraud!
$30 is a crazy limit! Fast food prices have gone up over the years. Sure you can still get your .99 menu items, but the meals are upwards of $8
Those VISA rules that everybody just love to quote are the "general operating rules" of VISA.
1) There are specific VISA rules that apply to each business class of merchants. Those rules have a NDA attached and I am not privilaged to all merchant class rules. If you search the VISA site you will find references to the NDA.
[www.usa.visa.com]
2) The Merchant Banks publish "public" rules which are general guidelines for that Merchant Bank. The Merchant Bank also has a specific set of rules that apply only to specific business classes and those rules and guidelines also have a NDA attached.
3) There are an entirely different set of rules for 3rd party CC transactions.
Many small value merchants (such as fast food joints) use a 3rd party CC transaction service. My understanding is that 3rd party service charges the merchant a % or flat rate fee for every transaction. The merchant can then legally add that fee to the CC transaction OR have a minimum transaction amount.
I know why they might be doing this...several major POS software packages have a threshold limit where the transaction is immediately approved before actually calling up the bank to verify the card...these small sums are then batch processed at the end of the day or during slow periods.
I know of two fast food chains were purchases under 30 dollars will be approved in this manner. So it's very simple to hand them any old card you want, get your food, and never get caught.
You can tell this is happening because the receipt will print out extra fast..only taking a few seconds instead of the normal 5-15 seconds in other places.
This manager probably knows that $30.00 transaction amounts will trigger the real-time verification engine.
Why he does not just change the software threshold is beyond me....
There are a few small businesses around me that have $5 minimums for paying with a card. I personally don't mind this; for a small business, merchant fees can take a big bite out of their profit. I'd rather give them business than complain about a violation of credit card merchant agreements. (I also am more inclined to pay cash, which bypasses the whole merchant fee issue for them.)
However, a $30 minimum at a chain restaurant is preposterous. I hope they lose plenty of business because of it, on top of getting in trouble with the credit card companies. Rude!
So...... now if you want to rip-off JinB with your stolen CC, you walk up to the register with a blank piece of paper in your hand and say:
"4 Double Bacon Burgers, 2 with jumbo fries.
3 Kids meals with Coke.
A Super Deluxe Salad with Honey Mustard Dressing.
Blah Blah Blah Blah..........."
(please substitute whatever they actually sell)
Leave with $35 worth and feed your buds.
So what about the flipside of this? I had a car dealer refuse to accept my AMEX card for the full amount of the down payment I wanted to make. I was pissed, because I missed out on 2000 easy membership reward points.
They said the fee on the AMEX transaction was the reason for capping the credit card amount.
@erica.blog: I never understood the rationale that a lot of Consumerists here that "small business=good, big business=bad." There are a lot of small businesses out there that aren't big businesses because they haven't figured out how to offer a good value to customers or otherwise have a flawed business model. Conversely, practically every "big business" started out as a small business and grew because they were doing things better than their competitors.
All else being equal, I too tend to prefer to patronize small businesses. But knee-jerk anti-corporatism is rather irrational.
I sincerely hope that the people who use credit cards at fast food places do so because it's easy/fast. I'm old school. Credit cards are for major purchases. I am the one they made that commerical about where people are zipping along in line paying with plastic and then *cue record scratching* someone like me wants to pay cash. I'll step into the 90's soon! :-)
@rdytmire: what you're referring to is called the floor limit, but card issuers usually do not have chargeback rights on amounts under the floor limit. the fraud is absorbed by the card issuer & their bonding agent. personally, i think the fraud argument is b.s. (unless their problem was internal theft related to card acceptance).
@rdytmire: now i read your post a little more carefully & i see what you're saying. the specific software the merchant is using is bypassing the approval process (even purchases under the floor limit require an approval, but the approval process is simplified), so the merchant is sacrificing safety against fraud for 10 seconds of time. doesn't sound like the best idea.
i think in an instances like this, management should be investigating alternatives to software that strips away the protection that interchange fees provide.
@James Sumners: Do you by chance suffer from sciatica? Might be from all the extra stuff you're carrying around in your wallet.
It's not just Wells Fargo. I had a similar issue recently with a Mastercard from HSBC. I received conflicting information from both parties, and neither Mastercard nor HSBC was aware that it was against the agreement for a merchant to charge a fee for credit card use.