To refuse to shop in places with a minimum card spend?

[kenchurch]

Not sure if I am being unreasonable or not.

It's 2018 and almost everyone used a debit (or credit) card to buy things.
I very rarely carry cash on me.

I point blank refuse to shop anywhere with a minimum total spend to be able to use my card.

Example; I'd fancied a specific type of chocolate all day and had a fairly rubbishy day. Went to shop with £1.05 in change (!). This chocolate is usually £1. It was £1.20, so I went to use my card, but no, minimum £5 spend. So I put the chocolate back, and the guy said he had other types for £1, but instead of giving in and getting one, I just said no thanks and left.

I'm sorry that it costs you to have a card reader etc, but other business also have extra costs associated with the modern age, such as WIFI or other softwares.

It's part of the cost of running a shop so face it and swallow it.

AIBU?

DD just got £15 off me (stuff she bought, I am reimbursing her for).
I guess the cashless would ping some money to her account electronically? I would need to spend £200 to get a phone that could do that.

No Dailywail
We dont get enough customer who give us change . The hand over notes usually £20 !and we have to give them change that we have got fron the bank every so often as we run out. We only have 2 or 3 customers a day that pay cash at the very most.

I don't blame small businesses for having a minimum spend, however I do think that the trend is more and more towards cashless transactions so they may risk getting left behind. Many newer independent cafes I have been to recently have contactless, it's more the small grocers and shops which still impose minimum spends.

If they were that brilliant, they wouldn't be small business owners.

OMG! The 'small' refers to the number of employees, not turnover!

I know a couple of micro businesses (sole traders like me) whose turnover is in the millions and their profit margins mean they earn a large % of that turnover.

It is also possible to find national businesses with hundreds/thousands of employees that don't make any profit... very easy to name the most recent ones!

Maybe some understanding of what you are sneering at would be useful! You could then sneer knowledgeably!

I’ve never come across a sole trader with turnover in the millions. What on earth do they do?

Sorry that sounds like I don’t believe it - I’m honestly just interested. I can’t imagine a turnover that high without needing more people just to handle cash flow, contracts, marketing and so on.

And why would someone with turnover in the millions leave themselves so exposed? They’d have unlimited liability.

All I am interested in is how much comes out of the account whether it is a card transaction or a cash withdrawal

That's a strange view of budgeting. If you just pulled a quarter of your monthly income out each week as cash and spent it, you'd regard examining a bank statement with four transactions on it as being worthwhile? I suspect that if the banks said "OK, we'll lump all the contactless transactions for the week together as one line item on a statement" there would be uproar.

Rather like the days of cheque stubs, I'm never really understood if people are checking their bank statements now for evidence of fraud (in which case you need to reconcile the entries with some other evidence, like a stub or a receipt), for evidence of the bank making "mistakes" (in which case you might do reconciliation, or you might just look for transactions you don't recognise and the just check those) or in order to budget (in which case you would trust the statement, but want to categorise each item as food, entertainment, whatever). I think "checking your bank statement" has become a ritual, divorced from purpose, but seen as virtuous nonetheless. What are you checking?

Shop where you like.

But try using a little compassion for those small businesses which can't afford the % charge of card machines.

And stop being a Princess.

I know a couple of micro businesses (sole traders like me) whose turnover is in the millions and their profit margins mean they earn a large % of that turnover.

If they've got profit margins like that, then whether they accept debit cards or not seems a little besides the point. I presume these aren't cash-only retailers, which was where we came in.

And they certainly do not own small village shops.

There's one near mine where there is a minimum spend of £5, but they'll give you change out of the till if you spent less. Handy for car parking, which is £2 and a meal deal from there is £3.

Not sure how it helps them but its convenient!

I suspect that if the banks said "OK, we'll lump all the contactless transactions for the week together as one line item on a statement" there would be uproar.

Actually I'd like that option. With the option to expand the information (online). But I realise I may be unusual.

I just like looking at a simplified summary of my spending patterns. OK? Like some people like looking at food diaries. Or whatever.

And sometimes I do learn things. Like the time I discovered our online grocery shop had not been coming out of our bank account for 2 months! (it had been coming out of my mother's since she used my account for her Christmas delivery)

I guess the cashless would ping some money to her account electronically? I would need to spend £200 to get a phone that could do that.

Whatever you're using to post on Mumsnet can also do online banking.

Indeed. It’s fascinating to speculate how someone can post to MN and yet regard online banking as witchcraft beyond their ken.

Credit and debit card fees vary. In general the smaller the shop the higher the processing fees as huge stores get discounts based on volume. It usually costs a percentage but with a minimum fee. With a low value item the processing fee can easily be higher than the profit margin, hence the minimum credit or debit card spend. A large store can absorb these costs, a small one can't.

Even if say it's 2%, that doesn't sound like a lot but if the minimum fee is 20p for example that's suddenly 20% on your £1 transaction. Often this just isn't manageable for small business who also don't have the same access to bulk discounts that give larger stores a higher profit margin.

Bruffin, why don't you stop taking transactions in cash, then? I've heard of cafes in London that don't take cash. Sounds like it would cause no harm at all to your business.

I'm surprised that your insurance doesn't allow £100 on premises overnight. You don't need more than that if you only take £60 in cash daily, maximum, right? I guess you'll tell me that's how awkward the insurance companies are.

Insurance allows £5000 on premises but it soon builds up as we do get people paying £1000s as well as small amounts in cash. Services and parts can be anything from £10 up to £1000 and people still turn up with £1000s to pay for cars even though they have been told not to.

Those of you who prefer to use a card all the time, even for small amounts. Don't you get irritated by all the teeny tiny amounts on your bank statement when you are trying to check that there are no mistakes and keep a general eye on what your finances are doing. Our bank statement is so LONG these days

It's really really easy to keep track of. I spend £2 at Pret on my Monzo card. I tap the card. Immediate I get a notification on my phone to alert me that I've spent £2 at Pret. It's logged and categorised. I can see at a glance how much I'm spending on eating out, how much on transport, how much on groceries etc. It's all logged. I can search my transcriptions easily.

It's really, really easy

I can budget by setting spending targets and get alerts if I'm overspending vs budget

Much, much easier to keep an eye on what my finances are doing than if I used cash

I can see that a debit card and notifications on your phone make keeping track of small expenditures easier. I can see that for some people that would be a really good thing. But I don't want to be notified of a £2 spend. The fewer notifications the better! I want a peaceful life...

Horses for courses...

Though an ability to sort and group transactions by type might be quite nice. My Santander account doesn't do that. And I do use contactless all the time. Just not normally for less than about £10. And what with those and lots of small online purchases the number of transactions on my online bank account just seems endless these days and it can be hard to see the wood for the trees. It's not really that big a deal though!

You got me checking out Monzo! It does look quite cool but no joint accounts, no interest or cashback paid as far as I can see, and no teen accounts. So not for us I'm afraid.

There are shops in my teeny town that have a minimum spend. They are independent shop keepers. I have cash for small transactions, for them. There are shops that are part of a chain, that by asking, I have learned that they don't have a minimum spend.
When its a single shop, why wouldn't they have a minimum spend?
It also doesn't take much intelligence to ask, after once, to find out which local shops have this and what it is

Excited101 I'd have just bought 4 bars.. I like your logic there.

OP YABU to make such a drama out of it.
YANBU to want to be able to pay by card everywhere. The shopkeeper INBU to not want to take card transactions for such tiny amounts.

YABU to think the shopkeeper should just "suck it up"...... what will obviously have to happen then is that the price of all goods will go up to cover the costs, and those of us who use cash will be paying for your convenience.

I love the idea of Monzo but I earn around £400 a year in cash back with a rewards based account so it’s not worth losing that to me.

I’ve never come across a sole trader with turnover in the millions. What on earth do they do? Mmm! That and the liability comment made me think! They are sole traders as in there is just one of them, but you have to be correct, they MUST be Ltd to avoid personal liability. They work in a really boring sounding business, international packaging. The legal side of it. I think they are an OPC, a One Person Company, LLP rather than a sole trader!

Cuboidal I suspect we'll continue to talk across each other but, as I said, I wasn't only talking about cashless transactions. So applying every word I type to just that one aspect will only continue to confuse!