Paying For Gas With A Credit Card? $1 Extra Per Gallon, Please

By March 16, 2012
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(jpmarth)

It’s not legal for a store to charge an extra fee or percentage when customers pay by credit card, but it is legal to offer a discount to customers who pay in cash. Great. The flaw in this plan is that, at least in New York state, there aren’t any laws regulating how big that discount can be. Which is why some Long Island gas station operators recently hiked the price per gallon of gas a dollar, then offered a one-dollar discount to customers who pay cash.

At a station in Brentwood, N.Y., for example, the posted cash price was $3.859 per gallon earlier this week, but credit card customers were charged $4.859. The average price at other stations was around $3.85 at the time.

“It’s really aggravating to me. It gives the industry a bad name,” the president of the Long Island Gasoline Retailers Association told Newsday.

Since the amounts of cash “discounts” aren’t regulated by the state attorney general’s office, this isn’t illegal and the stations won’t be prosecuted. Let’s hope that the invisible hand of the free market smacks the owners upside the head.

Outrage as gas cash-credit gap reaches $1 [Newsday] (Thanks, Frank!)

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Comments

  1. karlmarx says:
    March 18, 2012 at 9:32 pm

    This is really charging more for a credit card with different wording.

  2. Optimus says:
    March 19, 2012 at 2:34 pm

    This prime agrees. A million and one internets to you.

  3. Jimmy37 says:
    March 19, 2012 at 4:01 pm

    Using credit cards or checks is a priviledge, not a mandate, so giving significant “discounts” shouldn’t be illegal. Nothing keeps people from using cash. If any merchant wants to either make lots more money off people that are hard-up to buy something with a credit card, or turn their business into all-cash, let them.

    And if people don’t want to use the gas station because they are so addicted to their plastic and their rewards, the owners will find out when people vote with their bucks.

    I prefer to use cash if I can get a significant discount. But I haven’t found any gas station that makes it worth my while to pull out cash and carry it around so I can buy gas.

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