No tags yet.
No More Hidden Credit Card Charges From 2018
From January 2018 the UK government, under an EU directive, will force companies to scrap their ability to charge additional fees for consumers using their credit and debit cards to pay for their services. This means that you will no longer have a nasty surprise at the checkout page with charges of up to 20% from some unscrupulous companies.
This is not all good news however as many monetary watchdogs and experts are saying that these companies that charge you for using credit cards will simply add the percentage to the cost of your bill before checkout. So whilst you may not have any more nasty surcharge surprises, the overall cost may well be the same if not a little higher in order for the profit margins to stay the same.
This scrapping of charges already occurs in many countries, for instance, Italy, Germany, France and Portugal have already forced companies to stop charging customers for using credit and debit cards, but consumer watchdogs have seen an increase in base prices in these areas to cover the fees...so no benefits have been made to the consumer apart from knowing what they will pay pre-checkout.
At least while the UK remains a member of the EU you will have the pleasure of knowing what you are paying before reaching the final screen of your checkout process and it will enable consumers to gain a better understanding of comparison between products and services with the extra level of transparency. But who knows what may happen to this law when the UK leaves the EU in 2019?
