Credit Card merchant experts.. Question.
 

This is more for my personal knowledge than anything else, but it does piss me off a little.

The power company here (Excel Energy) just sent me a letter stating that future payments via credit cards will result in a $4.50 automatic charge, plus a 3.5% "convience" fee for each time you pay your bill via credit.

I thought this was against Visa's merchant terms? From what I knew, you could NOT accept credit cards and charge a surcharge to use them. You could do a loophole though, and give everyone paying in cash/check a discount.. If my rusty memory doesn't fail me, I even thought it was against some funky consumer credit protection laws to do this.

Or was I completely wrong? Seems like just a lame attempt at a money-grab to me. It will now cost $36 or so to pay my $30 power bills each month. WTF?

-Phil

I just looked over my agreement with NOVA and I plainly states that charging a "service charge" for a CC transactions is prohibited

I would call VISA and complain

agreed

Yeah, just called visa and they verified that it is against their merchant agreement to do that.

Of course, we'll see if an insanely huge monopoly like Xcel Energy will actually get bitchslapped or not for it.. Doubtful.

Anyways, have a complaint tracking number. Whoo. I have my doubts this will lead anywhere though. ;)

-Phil