Picture was taken at Puzzle Coffee ~ Southern Cross.
Copied this over from a reddit post;
Per ACCC:
If there’s no way for a consumer to pay without paying a surcharge, the business must include the minimum surcharge payable in the displayed price for its products. This occurs when a business doesn’t accept cash and it applies a surcharge to all card payment types.
The same ACCC page also says that the reserve bank estimates that debit surcharges are 1% max and that if a business wants to charge the same surcharge for debit and credit, it cannot exceed 1%. So I would absolutely be dobbing this shit into the ACCC.
What I mostly don’t understand about the weekend surcharges is why businesses think it makes good sense to frame it that way instead of offering weekday discounts. People hate paying surcharges but love discounts.
I’m no expert but I think there are reasonably strict laws around pricing advertising, especially for dining. If there weren’t, despite looking ridiculous on a menu, just about every business would be like “hey buy my bagel! It was $25 now it’s only $12.50”. It’s misleading advertising.
It woudn’t be misleading though. It’s only misleading if they are advertising it as normally $25 when it is never actually sold at that. It’s quite common to have things like special lunch deals and there is nothing about having different prices for different times.
What does seem to be changing lately is that businesses are upset that they have to pay staff more on weekends, and they want to use the approach of putting on surcharges because they know it upsets people. They want people thinking about their hip pocket and how they don’t want to pay more for their weekend bagel so that they will support moves to cut the wages of their workers.
I don’t mind surcharges if staff are being paid more on those days. Otherwise go fuck yourself.
Surcharges are okay so long as there’s a way to avoid them if you’re keen to avoid them.
If the workers are working on a holiday, they should be paid more. The business can afford that by charging more on those days. Makes sense to me. (Strictly in the scenario where the business is compensating their workers fairly from the profits. If they’re just making profit hand over fist they can get stuffed)
I hate credit card surcharges though. Nobody uses cash.
surcharge is ok as long as i can pay in cash if not I will take my coffee somewhere else
