Do I have legal obligation to change the payment method at a restaurant, if they refuse to (but have the ability to) accept my credit card? I ate in a restaurant one day and paid with my Discover credit card. The restaurant reluctantly accepted it but told me that this card incurs a higher fee to them. The next day after my meal, they refused to accept this same credit card. I happened to carry enough cash with me and paid with cash instead. My question: Do I have the legal right to insist on making the payment with my Discover credit card? If not, what if I only carry one Discover credit card with me? That is, what if this is the only payment method that I can offer? Just a side note: Discover's website says that &quot;Discover is accepted nationwide by 99% of the places that take credit cards.&quot; But practically many places have the ability to charge a Discover card but prefer not accept it. Not a legal issue but a frustrating observation. Edit I called Discover customer service and here is their response: Just go to places where Discover Credit Cards are accepted. Doesn't sound very helpful.
You have the legal (contractual) obligation to pay the amount that you owe for your meal. The restaurant can refuse to accept a particular kind of payment, such as check, cash, credit cards (generally or brand-specific), various cash-transfer programs, foreign currency, bitcoin or ridiculous numbers of pennies. There is no requirement that they do today what they did yesterday. If you have in your possession only a Discover card, and if they are unwilling to accept service barter as payment (washing dishes is classical), then you would have a debt to the restaurant which you must pay in a reasonable time, using an acceptable medium (such as cash, unless they don't accept cash). They cannot make it impossible or highly burdensome for you to discharge your obligation (e.g. they cannot demand Krugerrands or Mongolian ᠲᠥᠭᠦᠷᠢᠭ as the alternative payment, unless you are in Mongolia). You were given advance notice of this possibility of non-acceptance, yet you willfully proffered a card that you knew that they were not likely to accept a second time. Your hands were not clean, and if this had gone to court, you could not expect mercy from the court on the grounds that you were surprised that they didn't accept your card.
There is no misrepresentation by the bank as you describe it, there is negligence by the account holder to comply with the terms of the account. The bank made no representation at all regarding a balance due. If you want the bank to be at fault, they the customer would have to demand a declaration as to the existence of a balance due (choose your words carefully), and the bank would have to have falsely asserted that there is no present or future obligation. This is not going to happen. All the bank can say is that they have no present record of charges. The customer's question might be something like &quot;Do you guarantee that there will be no charges to this account as of now&quot;. Of course, the bank cannot know whether there is a forthcoming paper charge that was made at some mountain resort. If case they did make such a promise, you could disavow the debt, using your reliance on their assertion as the basis for denying the debt. There is no law requiring banks to warn people of their contractual obligations when they close an account. I've never encountered a credit card contract that includes such a clause, but I suppose some bank might include a mandatory-warning clause, in which case they could be in breach of contract.
This follows from a term in your agreement: in opening the account, you agreed to a binding arbitration clause. The general reason why they can do this is because it is not prohibited by law to have such clauses in agreements (in fact, the Federal Arbitration Act protects such clauses from legal challenge). For the same reasons, the clauses can impose deadlines on opt-out or require opt-out by mail as opposed to email or phone call. The premise is that if you find such terms unacceptably onerous or unacceptable, you will not patronize that business. That assumes that the customer read and understood the agreement that they signed, which I grant is often untrue.
Until it was found to be unconstitutional, Florida had a law against surcharges for using a credit card (the statute is still on the books, however). That was the only law against &quot;convenience fees&quot; related to making payments. Whether or not a business will accept a particular form of payment (check, credit card, money order, traveler's check, cash) is up to business. Apart from credit cards, there has been no law against charging for accepting a particular form of payment, but that charge would have to be part of the contract – the lease would have to specify in advance what the processing fee is for money orders vs. cash vs. credit card. The residential tenancies law of Florida does not prohibit incorporating fees into the terms of a lease (as some states do), so the lease can specify &quot;$1500 for rent plus $10 for payment-processing, every month&quot;.
In general, &quot;making a reservation&quot; does not create a contract, except when it is obvious that you have a contractual agreement. That would be the case with an airline reservation, and one clear sign is that you have to pay for the ticket when you make the reservation; or, it you don't, then there is no contract, and they can cancel or change the price. You would look for clear signs of an agreement, such as a &quot;agree to terms&quot; button that you have to click. Paying a deposit is another clear sign. Then you would simply look at the terms of the contract to see what their obligation is, and what yours is. They may have strongly committed to providing service in which case you might have a cause for legal action if they break that commitment, or they might have made no specific promises about service in case of intervening events (such as if the chef has a heart attack, or the power goes out). If we do think of this as a contractual matter, you breached your duty as a customer, to be there by 7:30, so even if there is a contract, they didn't break it. The note that you added renegotiating the arrival time was insufficient – it is outside of the contract, and possibly something that they didn't see (they only look at the names and official time blocks reported by the web page). In lieu of a contract, there could be some statutory obligation, i.e. a specific regulation in Sweden saying &quot;if a restaurant accepts a reservation, they absolutely must hold the space available for the entire reserved time&quot;, which is an unreasonably onerous business practice that no nation requires.
It doesn't even have to be pennies. Any cash denomination is open to discretion. The Federal Reserve tells us "There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person, or an organization must accept currency or coins as payment for goods or services. "
"One day and that day may never come" If a company never invoices me, am I obligated to do anything? No (given that they know how to contact you i.e. you are not evading being invoiced). That said, you will still owe the money. When/if they ask it to be paid, you will need to pay. But there is no need to proactively bug them to take the payment. Until invoiced, you can enjoy the money as a zero-interest loan.
The same page at the ICO website also lists what an organisation should do if they refuse to comply with a request: What should we do if we refuse to comply with a request? You must inform the individual without undue delay and within one month of receipt of the request. You should inform the individual about: the reasons you are not taking action; their right to make a complaint to the ICO or another supervisory authority; and their ability to seek to enforce this right through a judicial remedy. You should also provide this information if you request a reasonable fee or need additional information to identify the individual. Even if they did not inform you about this, the last two bullet points basically list your options. You can make a complaint (Art. 77 GDPR), or go to court (Art. 79 GDPR) requesting the online retailer to comply with your request. (Or do both). You can request a compensation for damages, but it is often difficult to prove if you have suffered (non-material) damages.