Is it legal for a business to give a discount for paying with cash vs. credit card? I ate at a Croatian restaurant where I had the option to pay with cash with euros or pay with my credit card. If I chose to pay with cash, I would be given a 10% discount. As I have a VISA credit card issued in another EU country, this discount seems to be against the law. According to https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/finance-funding/making-receiving-payments/electronic-cash-payments/index_en.htm : Card surcharges are not allowed You're not allowed to charge your customers extra for using a credit or debit card. This applies to all card purchases (in shops and online) made throughout the EU. So, is it a legal loophole to give discounts for paying with cash instead of adding a surcharge for paying with a credit card? Or is this actually illegal?
Yes, its legal Economically, there is no difference between a cash discount and a card surcharge; legally, there is. That’s because the law prohibits charging more than the advertised price for a given payment method but doesn’t prohibit charging less. Of course, it’s likely there is some illegality here but it’s not against the customer. A business doesn't give a 10% discount to avoid paying a 1-2% fee. They do it because they are not reporting (some of) their cash sales to the tax authorities and are therefore saving the 25% VAT and 18% company tax.
Yes, there is a reasonableness limit, and this is especially true in consumer transactions. If you were given an estimate and the final bill is a lot more than what you were expecting, you can dispute it. The final price should be ‘reasonable’. The law doesn’t say what counts as reasonable, so you’ll have to agree it between you. You should consider: the estimate you agreed to [if there was one] any changes, and why they happened anything that happened that was beyond the control of the trader, like bad weather or the cost of materials going up https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/getting-home-improvements-done/problem-with-home-improvements/ When it comes to work itself, the act states that a tradesman or professional has a 'duty of care' towards you and your property. Any standard or price you agree must be honoured. But if it isn't agreed in advance the work must be done to a reasonable standard, at a reasonable cost, and within a reasonable time. So if you haven't fixed a price, you don't have to pay a ridiculously high bill. All you have to pay is what you consider 'reasonable' and invite them to sue you for the rest. Be careful though, in some circumstances when you are withholding payment you may have a claim made against you by a supplier if you are in breach of contract. What's a reasonable amount would be what similar tradesmen would have charged for the job. So get a few quotations. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1fdlwC9xzyxjCpWMlsCGG3j/supply-of-services NB that article refers to The Supply of Goods &amp; Services Act 1982, which was partially superseded by the Consumer Rights Act 2015.
I think that this is an awkward reference to the Treasury Department of the United States government (upon which the Fed cannot impose liquidity ratios). By the way, this isn't really literally true. Liquidity ratio requirements apply only to regulated financial institutions, and there are many closely held non-financial businesses that aren't primarily in the lending business, which extend credit and can as a result end up with very low liquidity ratios that can still legally lend money in the course of their business. &quot;Grandma's feed store&quot;, for example, could extend credit to customers far beyond what any financial institution could lend due to liquidity ratio limitations, without violating any liquidity ratio regulations, since there are no such regulations for feed stores.
Of course, the credit company sets a limit on the cash back every quarter and thus no one can get unlimited money this way. That's why it's &quot;legal&quot;. But that's not the correct term to use for what's going on. Yes, it's legal under general banking and finance regulations for banks to make cashback offers like that, even if it appears they lose money. A bank isn't going to run a cashback program that is illegal; they'd lose their banking license. What's the sense of that? They're not going to run a cashback program that looses them too much money, either. A better way to think of the cashback system and the way to game the system of 4% by returning purchases it is to realize that it allowed under the Terms of Service of the credit card and issuing bank. They get people to sign up for cards and use them by enticing them with money. And the bank has set a limit to the total cashback each quarter; the bank is smart enough to make terms that have no loopholes, yet still make them money. And, if you read the Terms, I'm sure there is a clause that says the bank can change the terms at any time, and you agree to those terms by default or by simply using the card. The bank can decide at any time to stop the program for certain customers if they abuse it, i.e. try to max out the cashback each quarter. So the idea of this being illegal or fraud isn't the case here; the idea is that it is legal as the bank sets their cashback rules under federal and state regulations, and can change them, when needed.
18 USC Ch. 17 contains the laws against doing things to US currency and coins, and sale of currency is not included. So it is legal to set currency for an amount above or below face value, the former being more common. There might be some illegal aspect to the particular offer (money laundering, fraud – implying that they are real money, counterfeiting) but no law regulates the &quot;sale&quot; of US currency.
Are online stores supposed to state the true “order cost”/value of an order on the package/envelope for the customs? Yes Is it common practice to slash 10x off of the price for the customs to not add various fees? Common? Probably no. Uncommon? Also, probably no. Isn't that illegal? Yes Of course, they can claim it was a mistake if ever found out, but if they do it consistently, that seems difficult... Not to mention there must be electronic proof of how much each order actually cost the customer? Yes Look, robbing banks is illegal but people still rob banks. Similarly, ripping off HM Revenue &amp; Customs is illegal but people still do that too. In fact, far more people do that than rob banks.
"Fraud" requires an intent to deceive. In cases like this I would fall back on the saying, "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence." Practically speaking: the email you received from them is an amendment to their Terms of Service. I.e., your contract with the company starts with their standard Terms of Service, and is modified by any agreement you reach that explicitly supersedes the ToS. Based on your description it is your credit card company that is in violation of its duty to adjudicate chargebacks. If you refuse the charge, and present the email agreement and evidence of A's "failure," then the card company has no grounds to impose the charge on you (unless the merchant in its response to the chargeback can convincingly argue that the email agreement is invalid).
In the US, people are generally allowed to charge arbitrary amounts for services, as long as they do not violate various anti-discrimination laws in doing for. For example it would be illegal to charge people of one race less than they charge people of another race, because of federal and state anti-discrimination laws. Three primary factors govern the legality of a particular form of discrimination. One is the type of interaction, for example "voting rights", "public accommodation", "employment", "housing" – medical treatment would generally fall under "public accommodation". The second is jurisdiction – there can be federal, state, and municipal laws governing a particular kind of discrimination (the lower in the hierarchy you go, the stricter the laws tend to be). Finally there is the "protected class", that is, the basis for discrimination. Protected class is extremely variable, given the preceding two factors. Age discrimination is legal in ways that race discrimination is not. "Has insurance" is not a protected class anywhere, so this does not violate any discrimination laws (per se). There are numerous legal forms of discrimination which are analogous, for example to shop at Costco at all, you have to be a member; there are numerous businesses that offer "member discounts"; some doctors work on a "subscription" basis where they don't treat you unless you are a (paid) service subscriber. The idea that a service has to treat all comers identically is legally incorrect. Co-pay rates are dictated by insurance companies, and can vary depending on the specific insurance carrier that you have. To the extent that there are no specific laws saying otherwise, a service provider is legally entitled to charge less to a person who does not make a claims for coverage by medical insurance – or they could charge more. Indeed, the "without insurance" cost of medical services is typically higher, and the insurance company insists on doctors accepting lower compensation. A "practical" but somewhat risky solution is that if you know that the copay is higher than the street price, you can simply not reveal that you have insurance. However, sometimes an office visit results in a finding that some treatment is needed, and the street price for that treatment may be substantially higher than the insured price. At any rate, contractually-determined co-pays are legal. I should mention a remote possibility for applying anti-discrimination laws, owing to sec. 1557 of ACA. See this article on health care discrimination litigation, where the law enabled "private right of action for disparate impact claims opens the door to class-based claims challenging facially neutral health care policies, treatment decisions, and insurance coverage on the basis that they disproportionately affect members of protected classes". Under this regime, if a policy effectively discriminates on the basis of a protected class, without explicitly mentioning the class, the policy could still be found illegal. If there is a strong enough correlation between race and having health insurance, then "having health insurance" could be found to be a substitute for discrimination on prohibited grounds. There isn't enough case law on this issue, that we can clearly say that such an argument would or would not work.