I want to pay by card... Sure, thats £1.50 please.

We are told never to carry money if it can be avoided, never to keep large amounts of cash in our homes, never to take cash to a private sale (second hand car). We ARE told to use our cards, protecting our money with a 4 digit code. All good so far, great idea, go to buy a pack of cigs for £3, but there's a £1.50 charge for using my card.... WTF??? How is this legal?

Anyway.... I leave the shop without the cigs, go to the cashpoint to draw my own money out for free BUT theres a £1.99 charge for that becasue its an independant cash point... This should be banned - IMMEDIANTLY

its just one of many legal scams huge corporations use to squeeze as much money as possible from us.
this year i tried to renew my £300 year car insurance over the internet . i inadvertantly missed a box i should have ticked to say i'd had an accident. it was a pure and simple genuine mistake.
anyway the insurance company after another small dink looked into my claim and found in their eyes i'd fraudulently omitted it and cancelled my policy to the date of inception and refused to give me another policy. i had to go to another company and declare i had been refused insurance and tell them why. my new policy was £1127. i have a clean licence full protected no claims but they stung me more than for a drinkdriver i know. these b' stards are a law unto themselves

how on earth did we get to this point where we are everybodys cash cow?

i think if i'm going to pay a surcharge for spending my money in a shop in future then i'm going to start wondering how that giant mars bar ended up in my pocket. i shall call it my card surcharge rebate

Its the locally run premier to blame in my case, lifestyle, onestopshop amongst others are also guilty of this. I've started to boycott them in favour of ASDA as they do not charge, only problem is ASDA is not as convenient for me to travel to regularly.

Your car insurance is a joke, mine is the same. I had a non-fault accident and my premium went up £400 at renewal, I asked why as I had doubled my no claims (1 year now 2) they said it was down to the accident, I said it was not my fault and out of my control, they said that statistically I am more likely to be involved in a crash because of this. I mean what a joke... Well jokes on them anyway, I've got 9 points they don't know about lol.

I just paid £1800 to fully comp my 1L Suzuki Swift. Although that's partially because I'm 20 and I've been driving for less than a year but still. My excess is half what I bought the car for so I'll never claim, so basically I'm being forced by law to pay an extortionate price for a product I'll never use.

As for the card charge, there's an admin fee to process those kind of payments set by the suppliers of the machines, large businesses are more able to absorb those charges than smaller ones. I tend not to carry cash purely because I'm too lazy to so I just take it on the odd occasion I'm actually at a place that does charge for card.

well you better drive carefully now coz them points will surface if you have another dink ....i bet!!!

its all just a big money making game to them, selling details to no win , no fee lawyers at something like £500 a referral. which of course we are paying for. they also know what other companies you have had quotes from so set thier prices accordingly. if this isnt price fixing or manipulating the free market then i dont know what is.

how do we stop this going on?

£1800 is a lot i know but its alot cheaper then a lot of youngsters i know.
i'm 47 with 30 years driving experience , full no claims and a clean licence and yet here you are "only" paying £700 more than me.

See I'm not sure that's quite true. After one insurance company quoted me I went to another and even with their "15% introductory discount" it still came in as double. Went back to the first insurer and they kept with the original quote.

I don't see anything wrong with businesses making as much money as they can, that's the point of business, but I do think it's ridiculous how much I have to pay as a young, male driver. And before you quote the recent law change, yes females are starting to pay more but there's still a discrepancy. The difference is you don't see blokes blowing up about it.

Yeah but those youngsters are probably in Saxos or Fiestas which come with a reputation and are therefore in a much higher insurance group. I actively looked for something with a low insurance group and still got shafted.

When I was looking at just doing third party I once got quoted six grand. I say "six grand? I only bought the thing for £300! How can I pay 20 times the value of the car to insure it?"

"Oh well it's third party, you're not actually insuring your car, we don't know if you're going to hit a Corsa or a Lamboughini so that's why it's so high."

It's ridiculous, and how most young drivers afford it is beyond me. Fortunately I work full-time and get a decent wage but I've still had to borrow money off my dad for it.

ah! but they shouldnt have access to my dealings with another company anyway.

it is true as well because when i received a renewal notice i went and found it cheaper somewhere else , went back to my insurance company and told them. they said "o yes , you've had a quote from so and so , we can match that and when i got the details through they had wacked £400 on top. they said that after 3 months i would get £400 cash back as if its some wonderful deal they were offering. i said how about i keep the £400 you go f*** yourself. cue phone going down at other end.

i'm just shaking my head in disbelief.
makes me bloody angry

"well you better drive carefully now coz them points will surface if you have another dink ....i bet!!!" - Not likely, the car is going the journey in october, back to the peasant wagons for me, would rather nice clothes and new computer games anyway.

well my insurance is due this week and i havent got it. been out of work since feb now with not a single government benefit coming my way, as i dont qualify for ANYTHING. so i shall be on my bike soon.

I'm full time employment and I can't afford it mate, just a joke this countries government plays on us. If we lived in the US, we would not be having this discussion.

i'm not sure you can blame it on just this government. we have been dreadfully governed since the 60's at least.

If the banks carry on charging us to take OUR money out of the bank then the best solution would be to withdraw all our money en-mass and watch the bank's directors freaking out. The bank's business are based on savers' deposits which they lend out to pay for the running costs and interest on savers' account.....without savers' deposit they have no business in the first place therefore charging us, in my opinion, a ridiculous concept.

As for car insurance.....ah well......many moons ago my insurance was <200, then the 2nd year it was >400.....the insurance company says the first year was an introductory offer, which they never mentioned at the time. I then switched to another company for <200, then the 3rd year >400, again the same excuse. Oh dear....switched gain for <200 then the 4th year >400......again switched company for <200 and 1 month before renewal i decided to try another tactic....emailed the insurance company and explain what i did for the last 5 years.....made it clear that i am not paying any increases whatsoever because they are daft enough to pay out to every con artists claiming whiplash, etc......i got a renewal quote and my insurance was reduced by £20......genius.

You might claim if you kill someone?

If I kill someone insurance money is likely to be the least of my worries Molly.

"As for the card charge, there's an admin fee to process those kind of payments set by the suppliers of the machines, large businesses are more able to absorb those charges than smaller ones."

The adminb charge is about 50p, if I have to buy something from a small business (read corner shop) on my card I expect to pay the fee, if they try and charge more (and many aim for £1.50) I tell them to do one and go shop somewhere else. In the case of the OP the shop is profiteering off the admin charge.

I do not mind charges from banks I do not bank with. What bugs me is my own bank charging me if the goods I buy in a shop by card are less than £10 worth. Why charge me for buyng less than £10 worth?. Is my bank to start charging me for Direct Debits under £10? Or charging me for buying half-price cds and dvds from Amazon? What a con...

"What about Milk Thistle and its effects on glutathione"

Again, some milk thistle products have full licenses.

Andy the not oracle.....I have copied and pasted your words from another thread...you never answered my question....name the milk thistle products with full licences. I would like to stick them.

Oh and you are completely wrong about card charges...they are about fifteen pence for debit cards.

I was only pointing out that third party insurance is essential, and I would assume that's all you can afford at your insurance premium, but I totally agree with your point, money would be of no real matter.

I work at a merchant service provider, and its alot less than 50p per transaction, more like 10p or a set percentage of a sale.

Is it bad around your area Andy? Its terrible in Newcastle. Most of the cash points are independant and prey on clubbers' cards in the early hours, I'd love a cashpoint of my own in the area, I wouldnt have to work then...

"What bugs me is my own bank charging me if the goods I buy in a shop by card are less than £10 worth" - Your bank charge you? Or do you mean the shop? If it is your bank, which bank and for god sake spin switch cus thats a joke.

"its alot less than 50p per transaction, more like 10p"

Ah you're right. I was using the value we use at my work but we add a couple of additional bits to it, not to the customer, just to our own bookeeping. We add a bit to account for the time taken by whoever needs to process the invoices with the banks etc.

"Is it bad around your area Andy?"

Generally not to bad, every corner shop (3 of them) within a 10 minute walk of my house charges but there's a co-op 10 minutes away who don't. I've also got 3 cashpoints at work which are all free, if I go into town (Nottingham) most of the cashpoints are free but there are 1 or 2 nightclubs with cashpoints that charge, one of them charges 10% of what you withdraw!

Simon I have no interest in digging out years old paperwork for you and even less interest in posting it in a thread completely unrelated to the subject. If you want a list I suggest you complete a freedom of information request with the MHRA.