By Arthur Vidro
On Consumerism
Plenty of times I’ve seen cashiers chase after exiting customers to remind them they haven’t paid for their purchases, or that they forgot their change.
But I never witnessed a cashier chase after an exiting customer because the customer had paid twice instead of once — until last week, that is.
That’s when a man entered the vestibule at the local Hannaford bearing one bag of whatever he had purchased.
He was exiting the store, I was entering.
From behind him someone yelled, “Sir! Sir! Wait up, sir!”
The man seemed not to hear. He wore a hearing aid in his right ear. Perhaps it wasn’t turned on, or didn’t work well on voices from behind.
So, I stuck out my arm like a traffic cop, silently alerting him to stop, and pointing behind him to let him know where to turn.
He did so and looked around in confusion.
The employee who had been calling for him to stop ran over and informed the gentleman that he had paid twice for his purchase, and she wanted to refund his extra payment.
The customer followed her back into the store and at a cash register they resolved the matter.
He had not paid with cash, so the extra payment had to be put back onto his plastic card, which took longer than a cash refund would have taken.
But what had happened to cause him to pay twice?
Turns out he had gone to the self-checkout area at first and tried to make his purchase that way. Alas, the machinery doesn’t always readily accept one’s plastic card. Sometimes there isn’t enough money on one’s card to cover one’s purchase. Sometimes a card or scanner merely behaves stubbornly. I don’t know what the story was in this case. But as happens often enough, the payment via card wasn’t proceeding smoothly.
In the end the gentleman gave up and got into a regular checkout lane, where a human cashier rang up his purchase. No problem with the card that time.
Fortunately for this customer, an observant worker had noticed his difficulties and was curious enough to visit the self-checkout machine in question.
There at the machine, dispensed but not claimed, was the receipt for the self-checkout transaction.
Without the customer’s realizing, the purchase had gone through.
And that’s how he had paid twice for a purchase instead of once.
It’s possible he would have noticed the double-charge on his monthly statement, but it’s also possible it wouldn’t have stood out. Not everyone diligently reads every line of their monthly statements. (True consumerism pros do so.)
He might never have known he had paid twice.
On the other hand, if he had paid with cash (as some of us do at the self-checkout), there would have been no confusion about whether the payment had gone through. If the machine accepts your cash without spitting it back at you, then it’s gone through.
Another benefit of paying with cash is you often receive a lower price. Plenty a filling station has a two-tier price structure, offering a lower amount per gallon for paying with cash, and a slightly larger amount for paying with credit.
Retail stores also offer discounts. For instance, this month I spent $110.98 at the Claremont Pet Center.
As usual, I paid with cash. It saved me some money.
The prices on display at the Claremont Pet Center are the cash prices. As the signage on the door clearly explains, a 3% non-cash fee is added automatically to all credit card or debit card payments. To avoid the fee, one must pay with cash or check.
In my case, my $110.98 purchase would have been $114.31 if I had paid with plastic.
To many shoppers, the convenience is worth the extra 3%. But it is an area where one may minimize costs by changing the payment method.
At the very least, a smart shopper should be aware they are paying extra for using plastic. It should be done with knowledge and acceptance, not out of ignorance.
There is nothing illegal in this 3% fee. It makes perfect sense. To allow a customer the convenience of using a plastic card, the merchant is hit with a fee for each transaction by the banks and credit companies that supply the plastic cards in the first place.
The 3% fee is not intended to create profits for the store. It is meant to offset the store’s cost for using the card-reading system.
Asked if the 3% fee has led to customers paying more often with cash than they used to, a worker at Claremont Pet Center said yes, they are definitely seeing more cash payments since implementing the rule.
So, there are still some savvy consumers out there.
