No one likes to pay extra fees. We do like shopping and banking online, but honestly, charging fees to make everything more efficient just smells of a swindle.
Especially since there are so many options these days.
OP was buying airline tickets when he noticed there was only one payment option that didn’t come with a fee.
I purchased some tickets online from a well known airline. When going to make the payment, they offered me a few options with different transaction processing fees.
0.97% for payments with a credit card
0.55% for payments with a debit card
0.97% for PayPal and PayPal Pay in 4 transactions.
0% if you do an interest free payment plan with a well known “buy now, pay later with no interest”* company
*There is a $10 a month account fee if you have a balance owing at the end of the month, no fee if you don’t.”
He used it, immediately paid if off, and was satisfied.
So what I did is take the interest free payment plan. There is nothing stopping you paying this off early.
I Immediately paid it off in full so that I would not get the $10 monthly account fee, so I literally paid nothing except the cost of the tickets.
If you know how these interest free things work, technically there is interest, but (assuming the customer pays on time) the merchant pays for it, not the customer.
After a bit more research, he learned he actually stuck it to the airline in the process.
I looked a bit later on and it seems this company charges the merchant ~5%.
So unless this airline has some really good arrangement, they probably got a ~5% cut taken from them, and I never paid any transaction processing fees.
Even better, right?
The top comment says it’s not like this everywhere.
Apparently there has been some attempt at regulation.
Now they’re just milking it.
At least that way you feel a little less icky about it.
Of course, sometimes you just shrug and move on. You have to pick your battles.
We all love stories about folk sticking it to the man.
Even if it is just 5% at a time.
If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.