Actually I would prefer they did not accept anything but cash or they charged extra for other methods of payment as they increase costs to the business that should NOT be paid by the cash customer!

ARCO stations in my area don’t accept credit cards, and charge $0.45 to use debit cards.

Gas station owners generally hate high gas prices. After all, if you just dropped $75 to tank up, you probably aren’t in a mood to pick up a hot dog and a six pack in the mini-mart – where the real money is made.

So my question is: How long are you going to run a business that loses at least $1500 a month? I’d like to see all the books to understand the situation entirely, but losing money every month is not good business. I’d be getting out or cease operating I would think….pending the sale of the assets or the business…

Is the business being run as a tax writeoff or is the land appreciating fast enough to offset the loss? Just wondering…..

I see stuff on the internet like this all the time….people saying “i only bring in $5000 but my costs are $10000″ and just wonder why they are in that business or continue to be…..unless that is not the actual case…..

You might want to check the definition of “discrimination.” Charging two different prices to separate groups of customers is indeed discrimination. It’s not as serious as racial or sexual discrimination, but it is an accurate term.

I won’t address your personal comments except to say that it won’t be tolerated any further.

Do you presuppose by this statement that all payment methods are equal? Does the gas station take livestock in trade for their gas? Do they take out of state or second hand checks? Do they even take checks (some don’t) Do they take Euros?

There is a cost to the method by which a business is paid. The advantage to credit cards is you are guaranteed to get your money. The disadvantage is it costs you 2% of your gross sales to get this advantage. However cash has the exact same advantage without the disadvantage. Its not difficult to see why cash is preferable. Now if you are operating a furniture store operation on 100% margin, the 2% is irrelevant. If you are operating a gas station which regularly sells its gas on less than 10 cents margin well, then 2% on $4 dollar gas is 80% of your profit margin before costs.

Why do gas stations still have to operate on 10 cent margins? I don’t know, but it seems many still are. Maybe that will change. But in the meantime, to suggest you have some kind of right to purchase products using a credit card and to compare it to some kind of payment discrimination, really sounds quite ignorant for a finance blogger. The only currency that any mercant is required to accept in the USA is cold hard cash. Checks can be denied, and yes, so can credit cards.

If you want to be upset about it then by all means, take your business elsewhere. But to come here and whine about it on your blog like a child …. I’m sorry, thats just really lame.

The station I worked at just out of college was one of the first to match their prices up.

Despite the fact that I use a rewards credit card for most of my spending, I actually think credit card use is bad for all of us. It adds 1 to 3% overhead to everything we buy, without actually adding much to the transaction more often than not. I often get my gas at Arco which doesn’t take credit cards at all.

I guess this is one example where voting with your wallet worked. But, it only worked because all the stations didn’t follow suit and discriminate based on method of payment.