Woman arrested at toll bridge because she only had cash?

[FROSTYBALLS]

Moved to General Discussions.

[Justin Smith]

8 hours ago, FROSTYBALLS said:

The charges for Mersey Gateway are £2 for a car, and a driver has until midnight on the day to pay.  If not paid, a penalty charge notice of £20 is issued.

The Gateway is part funded by toll charges, so If you use it, you pay a nominal toll. 

It isn't difficult to understand.

If the people in the article had paid the two toll charges in question, they would have been £4 out of pocket instead of leaving the issue for 5 years and letting the costs for non payment escalate to £870.

Also she wasn't arrested at the toll bridge, but on 29th May 2023 on suspicion of blocking the highway and obstructing enforcement officers.

So I have no sympathy at all for them.

And bear in mind the title of this topic is misleading.

There is a breakdown in communication here.

As far as I am concerned no publicly funded service, or even quasi public service, should be unavailable to those without a  bank account or means to pay "electronically".

Thus I have no sympathy whatsoever for any of these service providers who get any trouble or pushback as a result of their arrogant attitude.

[Justin Smith]

8 hours ago, Cyker said:

Ha, that reminds me of last year at RIAT - A phone mast or something died causing everyone to overload the WiFi, and loads of stalls were unable to take card payments or it took several attempts and a long time for the payment to be processed, which was both funny and tragic at the same time due to the large number of people who were paying by phone contactless and didn't bring much money.

I've also had it a few times where the internet has gone at a shop which then bricked card payments. The weirdest one was at a normally very busy petrol station, where they lost internet, and there was this bizarre situation where people would have to use the Link cash machine outside the petrol station to withdraw cash to pay for their fuel - That's probably the most that machine's ever been used  

 

I have a shop and we do a little bit over the counter, but 95% is Online or phoned through orders. From the latter our average sale is about £50.
However, some people come in and want to buy a CoAx plug at a poxy £1 on a card.
Apart from the fee we get charged for that payment, if it's the only card payment we take that day (which is not uncommon) we get charged a 35p paying in fee by our bank.
Thus there is a we set a minimum £5 payment on a card or a 50p surcharge.

As an interesting aside, is no customer has ever complained about this, yet I can remember debating this on A N Other forum and all sorts of troll type wazzocks were up in arms about it. Making all sorts of ludicrous threats about getting agencies involved to prosecute us.
Which says much about the some of the people you get on forums who have too much time on their hands and should get out a bit more....

Personally I never make any payment under about £10 by card, it just clogs up my bank statement with crap and makes it awkward to check through.

[Paul john]

On 6/6/2023 at 8:17 AM, Justin Smith said:

I have a shop and we do a little bit over the counter, but 95% is Online or phoned through orders. From the latter our average sale is about £50.
However, some people come in and want to buy a CoAx plug at a poxy £1 on a card.
Apart from the fee we get charged for that payment, if it's the only card payment we take that day (which is not uncommon) we get charged a 35p paying in fee by our bank.
Thus there is a we set a minimum £5 payment on a card or a 50p surcharge.

As an interesting aside, is no customer has ever complained about this, yet I can remember debating this on A N Other forum and all sorts of troll type wazzocks were up in arms about it. Making all sorts of ludicrous threats about getting agencies involved to prosecute us.
Which says much about the some of the people you get on forums who have too much time on their hands and should get out a bit more....

Personally I never make any payment under about £10 by card, it just clogs up my bank statement with crap and makes it awkward to check through.

I thought surcharges for debit or credit card use were banned in 2018.

certainly the rates were set at a maximum of 3.5% of the transaction…

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/card-surcharge-ban-means-no-more-nasty-surprises-for-shoppers

 

[Justin Smith]

On 6/12/2023 at 7:50 PM, Paul john said:

I thought surcharges for debit or credit card use were banned in 2018.

certainly the rates were set at a maximum of 3.5% of the transaction…

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/card-surcharge-ban-means-no-more-nasty-surprises-for-shoppers

Are you talking from the bank (to the retailer) ?

Or for the customer (from the retailer) ?

If they do not want a 50p surcharge they can pay the minimum invoice of £5, and if they don't want to do that I'll just decide not to sell them anything and direct them to Wilko down the road..

As I have explained, because of how the payments system operates (from my card payment company into my bank account) it is possible, if we only have one card payment in a day, for me to pay as much as 40p in fees for a £1 transaction.
And I refuse to lose money on a £1 transaction just because the customer has decided he cannot be bothered to carry any cash with him, plus it SPAMs my bank account.
TBH our average invoice value is way over £50 and I am not really that bothered about even getting a sale of £1 anyway, from my perspective it's more a service to the customer.

[Bper]

33 minutes ago, Justin Smith said:

Are you talking from the bank (to the retailer) ?

Or for the customer (from the retailer) ?

If they do not want a 50p surcharge they can pay the minimum invoice of £5, and if they don't want to do that I'll just decide not to sell them anything and direct them to Wilko down the road..

As I have explained, because of how the payments system operates (from my card payment company into my bank account) it is possible, if we only have one card payment in a day, for me to pay as much as 40p in fees for a £1 transaction.
And I refuse to lose money on a £1 transaction just because the customer has decided he cannot be bothered to carry any cash with him, plus it SPAMs my bank account.
TBH our average invoice value is way over £50 and I am not really that bothered about even getting a sale of £1 anyway, from my perspective it's more a service to the customer.

Why are the fees so high for retailers on card transactions with the amount passing through the banking system every day they could charge a fraction of the charges you have to pay.

[Justin Smith]

13 minutes ago, Bper said:

Why are the fees so high for retailers on card transactions with the amount passing through the banking system every day they could charge a fraction of the charges you have to pay.

It's a foible of the way my business operates.
We write relatively few, but relatively large, invoices, and most of them are for orders placed online.
We have the card machine for customers ordering by phone, again, relatively large orders on average. Thus it is not uncommon for us to not use the card machine all day.
Each credit to my business bank account costs me 35p.
Therefore, if someone comes in and buys a £1 plug but that is the only card transaction all day, it costs me that 35p plus the card fee, maybe a few pence, so we're talking not far off 40p. i.e. more than the profit on the sale. Plus I get another entry on my business account, for £1, SPAMMING it up.
And if it's contactless it only prints out one payment receipt and if we forget and give that to the customer it can then make balancing the till a nightmare.... 
TBH I'm not that happy about making a £1 sale to someone who wants to pay by card even if they are happy to pay the 50p surcharge (which they all are happy to pay BTW).
I really would rather they went to Wilko !