General Discussion

Today I wanted to buy some milk and a couple of other items. So I decided to shop in Costcutters which is convenient for me. I also shop at the Coop, OneStop and Sainsburys as well.

So I went in did my bit of shopping, went to the checkout, looked in my pockets and discovered that I had forgotten my cash but had my debit card with me. (You know what's coming next, don't you?)

Yes, at the checkout my shopping came to £5.86 and I was told that they couldn't accept a debit card transaction for less than £6. So what did I do, I left the goods on the counter and walked out of the shop. I went to the Coop and bought the same things there and paid with my debit card, no problems.

Now, with Sainsurys opened and the losses that have been reported by local shops, how stupid of Costcutters to turn customers away for the sake of a few pence!

In future I will give Costcutters a miss, no matter how much I want to buy. I know where I'm not wanted!

Any one else had this experience?

Perhaps they could have made an exception but, unlike Sainsburys and the Co-op, Costcutter does not own its own bank. Small businesses have to pay a high charge to the credit card companies, which makes it uneconomic for them to accept cards for small transactions. Another example of the unfairness of Supermarkets!

There is a big sign on the counter explaining they will not accept a debit card for less than £6. You can't say fairer than that.

I watched a very interesting documentry recently about shops either making charges or having a minimum purchase amount for payment by card. The charge for a debit card is on average 2p charges for credit cards can be 3% of purchase price there is legislation in the pipeline to stop the practice of surcharges and minumum purchase amount for debit cards as far as i am concerned my debit card is as good as cash. I found recently Stokes now take Debit Cards with no minumum purchase if they can do it why not Costcutters

2p charge for a debit card transaction, please tell me which bank charges that and I am sure they will be swamped with new business customers.

All card charges are negotiable to some extent as obviously the bigger the customer the more power they have to get a good deal from the bank. I once spent 25p online and used a credit card, a small merchant could not offer that service. In Dawlish many small shops won't take cards, as the minimum debit card fee for many small shops is 50p, so you sell a can of whatever for 75p and pay the bank 50p!!!! Clearly your debit card is not as good as cash, why should a shop lose money to sell you something, maybe the card charge should be added to the sale and paid by the customer, the shop could then have a cash price and a card price, that would be fair.

But I would love to know what bank charges 2p for a debit card transaction, please let me know as I am sure that only applies to companies doing several thousand transactions per day, eg Tesco, Sainsburys, Asda, etc etc.

Don't forget the cost of having a landline every month plus the installation, many small shops don't need a landline, it's cheaper to have a mobile contract, so the monthly business line rental cost typically £15-20 minimum just to take cards. Add the 50p per card transaction and you might start to realise why many shops won't take cards or have a minimum sale of £6 to take a card, otherwise they are losing money so they are better off to lose the customer.

As it clearly says it on the sign, you cant moan. You could have picked up some mints , toilet roll or anything you knew you would use and gone over £6.