fitzroyalty

There’s a degree of harsh reality amongst the junkies, hookers and homeless people that is far worse in King’s Cross than Fitzroy. We have a few annoying beggars but I have seen nothing quite as confronting as this on the streets of Fitzroy.

Thumbs down also to the Lido Suites on Roslyn St where I stayed. I booked online and entered my credit card details into the third party reservation website after accepting the booking price. When I checked in they swiped my card and  tried to charge a credit card surcharge that was not included in the price I had agreed to online. That is illegal.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission states that:

Merchants such as shop keepers, trades people and other businesses can charge you an extra fee (often called a surcharge) if you pay for goods and services with a credit card. This surcharge allows them to recover the costs of processing credit card payments (called merchant service fees).

Not all businesses will impose a surcharge if you choose to pay with your credit card. However if they do they must ensure that you know that a surcharge will apply and how much it will cost you before entering into the transaction.

Merchants must not mislead or deceive you about the amount or existence of credit card surcharges.

I threatened to walk away and report them unless they dropped the fee. They waived the fee rather unhappily, as if they were making a special exception for a pushy customer. I wonder how much money they have made by charging this fee illegally? If you don’t know the law you don’t deserve to be in business.

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 12:13 pm and is filed under Sydney, business, customer service, social issues, street justice, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.