LA and Paying to Pay – AGAIN

A while back I put up a post about ARCO Gas Stations charging a 75 cent fee to use your debit card.  Now I have realized that many other gas stations and merchants in Los Angeles are doing the same in a more sneaky way.

At two gas stations I have been to recently I noticed they have two sets of prices.  If you use your debit card they charge 10 cents per gallon more.  Other merchants are also tacking on a 75 cent fee to use your debit card.  And if you don’t like that and pull the money out of an ATM you’ll be paying even more.

Please share this and ask your friends to post the locations of Los Angeles
gas stations that don’t do this in the comments.

ATM fees are somewhat understandable. It does cost money to send someone out each day to service the machines.  And, yes, greedy credit card fees double dip.  They charge the merchant a fee to receive the money, and the consumer interest on it too.  Sweet game.

But merchants are not charged on debit card transactions.  I know.  I am a merchant.  And the fees merchants are charging customers outstrip what they are being charged by the banks.

I’m getting on in years.  I actually remember the day when you actually earned money on a savings account.  Now even the interest paid on a CD is laughable and there are countries where you actually have to pay to keep your money in a savings account and people are looking for which once charges the least instead of which one charges the most.

It is difficult to believe how far south things have gone.  Money is NOT a commodity.  It is the medium used to exchange goods and services.  Now, thanks to the mismanagement, greed and corruption of our banking and finance industries coupled with the same in the government oversight committees, we now have to pay for what we use to pay for what we need.

It’s time for this to change. Or maybe we all need to go back to cash and keep our money under our mattresses.  It appears it is a lot safer there.