Pay Cash = Pay Less?

This whole idea bothers me. Some of these retailers need to put on their big-girl panties and deal with life as it is. Don't like the credit card companies skimping on you? Don't accept the credit card as a form of payment.

A good plenty of businesses will tell you "NO CHECKS" in nice bold print by the register. They've been burned a good plenty of times by unscrupulous customers and/or people who have no idea their account has been overdrawn somehow. At least with a credit card, it either goes through and is approved or it isn't. There is no grey area there. You don't have to chase after your customer for payment and listen to the "I had no idea the gas company got my check yesterday instead of next week and would cash it right away!" stories.

(Which might actually be true in this era of electronic check cashing. Another post, but that makes me nervous how a business can literally ruin you by resubmitting a check 48000 times. I get the idea that a check-bouncer should pay, but banks and financial institutions are not mistake-free, and sometimes, just sometimes, it's the little guy without the lawyer left with the bill. Ok, that's another post.)

With cash, you run into problems as well. In fact, I remember a day not too long ago when people were proposing giving lower prices to CREDIT CARD users because of the problems with counterfeiting cash, not to mention some of the crime a business might attract if it became known that large amounts of cash were lying around in the register.

The article argues that some customers give a greater profit margin to a business based on the payment form. Well, if we're going to treat customers differently because of the profit margin they provide a business, we'll have a host of unexpected consequences.

For example, when a morbidly obese lady comes in on her electric scooter, the local buffet will charge her $50 for her meal. Hey, our obese customers tend to eat more than our skinny ones. Why should the skinny people "subsidize" the chubby ones?

Obviously no buffet is going to do this, really. Bad public relations. Anyone who runs a buffet restaurant for any length of time would tell you that they've figured out what an "average" customer is going to eat and charged one price for everyone accordingly. They have a little padding on the bill for some people, and they may lose a little on other customers, but overall, they've figured out how to make a profit.

That's one of the reasons I don't buy a new car. I don't want to haggle with and negotiate with people (ahem, remember this story). Another reason is that I don't have about $40,000 jingling around in my pocket with nothing to do. No, "crinkling" around in my pocket.

In other news, I wonder what $40,000 would sound like in my pocket when I wander around town. Note to thieves: I will really just have $4 in my pocket and be pretending. :P