Maybe my memory is faulty, but I never remembered having to pay a surcharge to use a credit card. Now everywhere I go there are signs saying that there is a 2.5-3.5% surcharge to use a car (and others that say that there’s a 2.5-3.5% discount for using cash, I assume to get around wording)
It’s always been the case. Now it’s just transparent, vs. being baked into the price of the goods. When the economy sucks, vendors do stuff like this to try and soften the blow (for themselves).
Was it really baked into the price of the goods when the price of the goods hasn’t changed?
If their costs went up by 3%, they could hold prices level by taking the credit card fee out and making it an explicit surcharge.
It sounds like a way of raising the price while incentivizing cash payment (because maybe just maybe they aren’t claiming all their cash sales)