50cent surcharge for topping up leap card

anto2009

went too top up the leap card and Thorntons card for mother inlaw and was told there was a 50cent surcharge each whats this all about? :mad:

LawlessBoy

Working in a centra myself. They have a surcharge on phone top ups under €20, Electricity, gas and rent or any other bills paid on the Payzone/Paypoint machine. We don't however charge on Leap Card top ups. Id say the 50c charge was because of the Thorntons bill.

Not sure how it works out thought to be honest, I was told its to cover the cost of the machines because the shop has no margin on them and its only there as a service and not for profit.

anto2009

LawlessBoy wrote: »

Working in a centra myself. They have a surcharge on phone top ups under €20, Electricity, gas and rent or any other bills paid on the Payzone/Paypoint machine. We don't however charge on Leap Card top ups. Id say the 50c charge was because of the Thorntons bill.

Not sure how it works out thought to be honest, I was told its to cover the cost of the machines because the shop has no margin on them and its only there as a service and not for profit.

thanks for the reply LawlessBoy its a bit of a pain in the butt do you know if this is long term?

LawlessBoy

The Centra im working in is based in the City Centre, and noticed alot more shops adding on surcharges including little corner shops around my area. Would say its a thing thatll catch onto all the other shops in my opinion.

anto2009

No worries thanks again

foggy_lad

anto2009 wrote: »

No worries thanks again

Contact Thorntons and ask them for a list of shops that don't charge for taking your money and also contact the national transport authority and see what they have to say about their payzone agents ripping off leap card users.

ScouseMouse

get a grip will you.

if you earn 19 cent for a service, you would not provide a service which is earning you the same price . Tne when someone presents a card you end up paying 20 - 50 in bank fees. You would be some ejit to accept it.

No Pants

foggy_lad wrote: »

payzone agents ripping off leap card users.

What's the margin on a Leapcard top-up for a retailer in general?

ScouseMouse

foggy_lad wrote: »

Contact Thorntons and ask them for a list of shops that don't charge for taking your money and also contact the national transport authority and see what they have to say about their payzone agents ripping off leap card users.

FIXED YOU POST FOGGY LAD.

Contact Thorntons and ask them for a list of shops that don't charge for taking your money and also contact the national transport authority and see what they have to say about their payzone agents ripping off leap card users charging a fee to allay a foolish loss making transaction.

dudara

Posters - take it easy.

OP - unfortunately I can see why shops may charge a service fee. You can use a Luas machine or train station machine for free. If you have an issue, the contact Transport for Ireland/National Transport Authority and ask for their stand on it.

Five Lamps

It's ridiculous that retailers charge an additional fee. If they can't do it on the agreed fee structure then don't provide the service. It's all extra business and in most cases requires no inventory. Staff are there anyway and every time a new service is added it's new business.

ComputerKing

Five Lamps wrote: »

It's ridiculous that retailers charge an additional fee. If they can't do it on the agreed fee structure then don't provide the service. It's all extra business and in most cases requires no inventory. Staff are there anyway and every time a new service is added it's new business.

Most times it isn't extra business its just someone who comes into get their card topped up and may not get anything else so its costing the retailer to provide the service and so they charge accordingly for it.

ABajaninCork

Aren't the surcharges to cover the bank charges?

Sulla Felix

Contact the two card issuers and the paypoint merchant. Depending on the merchant, they may not be allowed add surcharges.

ScouseMouse

Payzone tried that with me. They told me it "went to the top" and they were not accepting it.

I lodged a complaint with the competition authority for price fixing and cc'd it to payzone.

Funnily enough, they backed off.........

leeroybrown

Five Lamps wrote: »

It's ridiculous that retailers charge an additional fee. If they can't do it on the agreed fee structure then don't provide the service. It's all extra business and in most cases requires no inventory. Staff are there anyway and every time a new service is added it's new business.

It's exactly the same situation that arose with mobile phone credit years ago. The margin on these services are quite tight but small shops tend to incur relatively high card transaction and cash fees with the banks. If someone walks in and uses their bank card to make a small top up without buying anything else the shop is basically losing money. I can understand exactly why they're doing it. Vote with you feet if you don't like it.

Five Lamps

leeroybrown wrote: »

It's exactly the same situation that arose with mobile phone credit years ago. The margin on these services are quite tight but small shops tend to incur relatively high card transaction and cash fees with the banks. If someone walks in and uses their bank card to make a small top up without buying anything else the shop is basically losing money. I can understand exactly why they're doing it. Vote with you feet if you don't like it.

OP didn't say he was paying with a credit/debit card. By the same token, most purchases in small shop are likely to be small anyway - paper, fags, confectionary, pint of milk etc.

leeroybrown

Five Lamps wrote: »

OP didn't say he was paying with a credit/debit card. By the same token, most purchases in small shop are likely to be small anyway - paper, fags, confectionary, pint of milk etc.

The point isn't the individual transaction. What matters is the average profit margin after charges and it's incredibly low on these kinds of credit payment services. If the shop isn't making money it either has to stop offering the service or add a surcharge. I'm not aware if Leap have made any recent changes but typically these service have a better margin when they're first launched then reduce this once the initial contract with the vendor ends.

Most purchases in small shops have a much better margin than credit purchase services. The vendor is considerably more money on these ordinary items.

Five Lamps

leeroybrown wrote: »

The point isn't the individual transaction. What matters is the average profit margin after charges and it's incredibly low on these kinds of credit payment services. If the shop isn't making money it either has to stop offering the service or add a surcharge. I'm not aware if Leap have made any recent changes but typically these service have a better margin when they're first launched then reduce this once the initial contract with the vendor ends.

Most purchases in small shops have a much better margin than credit purchase services. The vendor is considerably more money on these ordinary items.

Then why do it at all?

All of these purchases are financial transactions that require no stock to be purchase and held by the vendor. The transaction is completed by a staff member who is there anywhere. Effectively the get a cut of a bunch of financial transactions in addition to the produce that they normally sell.

leeroybrown

Five Lamps wrote: »

Then why do it at all?

All of these purchases are financial transactions that require no stock to be purchase and held by the vendor. The transaction is completed by a staff member who is there anywhere. Effectively the get a cut of a bunch of financial transactions in addition to the produce that they normally sell.

Many of them probably will exit the Leap service over time. It's one of those services like phone credit that people expect small shops to sell and small shops business model is to maximise the chance of footfall through the door.

It's the banking fees that's the problem. My Visa Debit card costs a vendor a minimum of €0.46 in merchant fees when I use it. Cash fees that banks charge small businesses aren't too far off that mark either. When you're selling someone milk, a newspaper, some chocolate and a box of cigarettes you've already adjusted your margins to include these charges. With fixed fee services a €20 top-up turns into a loss leader to get customers through the door once you include banking costs.

ScouseMouse

Five Lamps wrote: »

Then why do it at all?

All of these purchases are financial transactions that require no stock to be purchase and held by the vendor. The transaction is completed by a staff member who is there anywhere. Effectively the get a cut of a bunch of financial transactions in addition to the produce that they normally sell.

A cut of the financial transactions?

Earning 19c for a billpay which will cost you more than that in bank charges makes no sense. And as for staff who are there anyway, they expect to be paid. Why shouldnt the shop be as well?

punisher5112

Why not select auto top up on leap card then your never left with a zero balance or worrying about finding a shop to top up.

coylemj

punisher5112 wrote: »

Why not select auto top up on leap card then your never left with a zero balance or worrying about finding a shop to top up.

Because the minimum topup is €30. If it was 10 or 20 I'd use auto topup but I don't spend more than €10-15 a month on my Leap card (I also use Travel90 tickets) and forking out two or three months fares in advance is a not a good deal as far as I'm concerned.

Shops who do Payzone transactions can't have it both ways - a lot of them don't like the low margin but operate the machine simply to stop their nearby competition from getting the business, the people who run the system should insist that there is no premium charged for topup transactions.

GerardKeating

Five Lamps wrote: »

It's ridiculous that retailers charge an additional fee. If they can't do it on the agreed fee structure then don't provide the service. It's all extra business and in most cases requires no inventory. Staff are there anyway and every time a new service is added it's new business.

Why is it ridiculous to expect retailers to want to make a profit on a sale, or at the least, not to want to be forced to subsidise large organisations.

Five Lamps

GerardKeating wrote: »

Why is it ridiculous to expect retailers to want to make a profit on a sale, or at the least, not to want to be forced to subsidise large organisations.

I'm all for profit but aren't those large organisations sending consumers walking into those stores to make a transaction that the retailer gets a cut of? A service that requires the retailer to neither purchase or hold stock and that he can sell an infinite amount of?

leeroybrown

Five Lamps wrote: »

I'm all for profit but aren't those large organisations sending consumers walking into those stores to make a transaction that the retailer gets a cut of? A service that requires the retailer to neither purchase or hold stock and that he can sell an infinite amount of?

It makes perfect sense until you (as we've already pointed out above) factor in the costs debit/credit card transactions and bank cash fees. The card sales result in a loss after charges and the cash sales have a tiny margin once you take the cost of using bank cash services into account. That makes no sense for the stores especially if many customers are walking in and paying for a €10-20 top up with their debit card and buying nothing else.

GerardKeating

Five Lamps wrote: »

I'm all for profit but aren't those large organisations sending consumers walking into those stores to make a transaction that the retailer gets a cut of? A service that requires the retailer to neither purchase or hold stock and that he can sell an infinite amount of?

Not if the retailer is selling the service at a loss. For many stores, it does them 10.50 for 10 euro phone credit.

And there is "stock" of sort for the retailer, I would assume (but could be wrong) that there is some form of monthly rental for whatever machine they use to top-up the leap card.

Del2005

coylemj wrote: »

Shops who do Payzone transactions can't have it both ways - a lot of them don't like the low margin but operate the machine simply to stop their nearby competition from getting the business, the people who run the system should insist that there is no premium charged for topup transactions.

Or the people who run the systems should allow retailers make a profit on the sale so they don't have to add surcharges, the people running the system have cut the retailers margins to increase their own.

LEAP and all the other people who run these systems rely on small shops to give enough mass for people to use them but won't allow the shops any profit, if the shops stop selling credit then a lot of the companies won't have any customers or for LEAP go back to cash

Shelflife

Take the M50 Toll for example.

20 customers come in to pay the toll. all pay €6.All pay cash.

Each transaction takes approx 90 secs. 30mins later the retailer has €120 in the till -- happy days you might think.

Profit made on the €120 is €1.20 cost of lodging the money approx 40c so net cash profit is 80c. Cost of staff to serve them is €4.32.

Even if its just the shopkeeper there and no staff, its fair to suggest that the retaliers time is worth more than €1.60 per hour.

Fact of the matter is that these services were sold to the retailer on the basis that they would generate alot of footfall and extra business, this has not proven to be the case with many customers only buying the service and nothing else.

Attempts to renegiotate the deals have fallen on deaf ears and the surcharges have followed as well as retailers no longer offering the service.

Dont shoot the messengers, the fault lies with the big companies who are screwing the retailers.

Fred Swanson

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Shelflife

Fred Swanson wrote: »

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Why ? if a customer is happy to pay the surcharge rather than travel a 20 mile round trip why shouldnt the shopkeeper offer the service, if the customer doesnt want to pay the surcharge then thats fine too, they can make the 20 mile round trip to save 50c.

Cabaal

Fred Swanson wrote: »

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But there's no reason why,

Its like saying banks shouldn't provide bank accounts if they apply charges to them,

Nobody is forcing anybody to use such services, if they want to they can...if they don't want to thats fine too

Fred Swanson

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Shelflife

Fred Swanson wrote: »

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They can make money on it if they charge the surcharge, not everybody is on line or has a car or even has a bank account, so the shop charges a little extra to provide a service for those that want it. he makes a few bob and the customer is happy as well.

maximoose

punisher5112 wrote: »

Why not select auto top up on leap card then your never left with a zero balance or worrying about finding a shop to top up.

Don't you still have to find a shop to "load" your top up? Or Luas stop, which still isn't ideal.

Desperately needs an active online top-up facility.

Fred Swanson

This post has been deleted.

No Pants

maximoose wrote: »

Don't you still have to find a shop to "load" your top up? Or Luas stop, which still isn't ideal.

Desperately needs an active online top-up facility.

That's a problem I had with it too. When I first got the card, I used to top it up online. However, I'm an infrequent Leap user and eventually an online credit expired before I got a chance to pick it up.

What I do now is load up the card with whatever change I have in my pocket each time I pass a Luas ticket machine in the City Centre. That seems to keep it topped up.