[Aditya_Bhp]

Unnecessarily blaming Skoda and its dealer. This thread should not be in the car section at all, instead should be in the Finance section (Shifting Gears)

American Express, along with Diners have poor acceptance globally. There should always be a VISA/MasterCard credit/debit card ready as a backup.

PS. Such poor quality threads have made TeamBHP, a laughing stock on social media. It is time, moderators filter out unnecessary threads and posts. (Even this post if necessary)

[agambhandari]

Originally Posted by Aditya_Bhp

PS. Such poor quality threads have made TeamBHP, a laughing stock on social media. It is time, moderators filter out unnecessary threads and posts. (Even this post if necessary)

I don't think that's going to happen as this thread was made by a moderator by taking out the posts from the octavia thread and moving to this new thread for better visibility (basically the exact opposite of what you are suggesting )

I agree, worrying about amex acceptability is pointless.

[Samrat]

Amex credit card charges a comission of approx 3.6% of the payment value to the dealers. Major reason why many merchants do not accept Amex and Diners.

[Tuborog]

Originally Posted by WorkingGuru

What if the merchant claims that their machine doesn't accept ?
Also I highly doubt anyone can compel any Merchant to accept payment by card.

Well, you can call up Amex customer care and report the merchant and refuse the payment. It is very long process, so nobody does that
After you report, Amex sales team (dealing with merchants) reach out to the merchant to understand and solve the problem. Merchant is not allowed to suppress a specific type of card.

Originally Posted by M5_fan

Not accepting AmEx is just a cost saving method (aka stupidity) by Indian Merchants (especially premium ones).
The commission on Visa/Master is 1.8-2.4% while that on Amex varies between 3.5-4%.

All about money, honey!

Amex vs Visa/MC is not that large a diff as is generally believed. In several cases, Amex might be cheaper than Visa/MC.

Originally Posted by Altocumulus

AFAIK Amex charges 5% commission while others charge 2% on payments.

No merchant is charged 5% in India by Amex. If a merchant is claiming, he is lying.

Originally Posted by Ragavsr

No clause in the contract prevents a merchant from denying to accept a particular variety of card. The contract states that customer who pays by card must not be discriminated against. If the merchant denies to accept the payment , the clause can't be invoked.

Anyways, the one sided agreement clauses that prevent extra charges are unacceptable. Any bank trying to attempt to enforce such a clause will and should be shown the middle finger by the merchant and should move on with a different service provider who could care less.

If the customer wants the convenience of paying by card, he/she should pay for it.

RBI does not allow merchant to charge extra on card transactions in India. This link might help:
https://www.kotak.com/en/knowledge-c...nsactions.html

[Ragavsr]

Originally Posted by Tuborog

RBI does not allow merchant to charge extra on card transactions in India. This link might help:
https://www.kotak.com/en/knowledge-c...nsactions.html

Well, tell me how do paytm and IRCTC or utilities like TNEB charge extra on card payments.

RBI gives out many guidelines which the bank's themselves don't follow most of them. RBI guidelines prevent banks from creating negative balance on account by levying minimum balance fines , yet every bank does so including Kotak, and some banks even send recovery notices .

It is hypocritical of kotak to even put out so called educational articles . Let's me be clear, no one gives a damn about RBI regulations . I don't see any wrong in rhe merchant passing on transaction cost to customer. If the customer wants the convenience of paying by card, he/she should be prepared to pay those charges.

[neeraj0272]

Any merchant is free to decline any finance instrument anytime except those mandated by the Govt of India.

Also this whole discussion brings up a point which I deem important. Companies include commissions payable to these finance instruments like cards or paytm etc in their product or services cost which customers like me who pay by cash or cheque/netbanking etc also have to pay involuntarily. Sometimes we get discounts to this effect if we ask for and sometimes seller charges extra for card payments.
As these commissions and taxes like GST applicable on these commissions are not actually a part of the price of the product/service offered, these commissions should be billed separately with a different HSN code.

for example

A car costing basic price 10,00,000 + gst 2,80,0000 on it would come to 12,80,000. Car company would want this price realization. Now card payment commission @ 3% will be a huge 38,400 which car company will add to 12,80,000 and it will also add 28% on rs. 38400 and hence it will declare MRP of car as 13,29,152. This Rs. 49,152 is an unreasonable burden on customers paying by cash/bank. Also this amount of 49152 is not an actual part of the cost of the car but cost of financing the payable amount. As GST act mandates HSN code for every product/service, this financing cost should be mentioned separately with discrete HSN Code in the bill otherwise its a contravention of GST act.

and someone is complaining about a card not being accepted!

[abhishek_hch]

Originally Posted by CircleOfLife

Answer lies in 60k booking accepted by Skoda India at dealer for retail offer tie up between Skoda India and American Express. When organisation can accept for booking for car then why not pass it for SMP.

Your anger is extremely misplaced and quite unnecessary.

As someone who has closely worked with Credit Cards all his working life, here are my two cents - When you swipe a card, the merchant doesn't get full payment but a part of it. Usually, mechant has to forego 2-5% of the payment amount (you may be aware of it). AmEx being a charge card, where you have to pay out your due in entirety and do not have option to revolve earning the bank interest - I guess the only avenue available to AmEx to make money is interchange and I suspect they charge a higher percentage for it. So Skoda is comfortable to pay that extra when it sees a 30 lakh transaction coming through in lieu of a hefty interchange on 60 thousand transaction. While for smaller payments, it may just wipe out a significant portion of the available margin. There are other transaction network related issues also.

Skoda has also rightly declined your offer to pay extra above your total bill to take care of the interchange as it would be violative of RBI guidelines as posted in this forum (as also the fact that I doubt anyone would gladly cover that high an interchange).

Also, as you have a plethora of options to chose from while making the payment and decide which mode and which card to use for which transaction to maximise your reward point, so has the merchant. The merchant can also decide what to accept, what not to accept to maximise his returns.

As I said in the beginning, your anger is pretty misplaced and unnecessary. In a world where we have more digital payment options than we need, chose any other acceptable one, make the payment and move on. Selling the car on this count would be rather not intelligent!

[CircleOfLife]

Originally Posted by abhishek_hch

Your anger is extremely misplaced and quite unnecessary.

As someone who has closely worked with Credit Cards all his working life, here are my two cents - When you swipe a card, the merchant doesn't get full payment but a part of it. Usually, mechant has to forego 2-5% of the payment amount (you may be aware of it). AmEx being a charge card, where you have to pay out your due in entirety and do not have option to revolve earning the bank interest - I guess the only avenue available to AmEx to make money is interchange and I suspect they charge a higher percentage for it. So Skoda is comfortable to pay that extra when it sees a 30 lakh transaction coming through in lieu of a hefty interchange on 60 thousand transaction. While for smaller payments, it may just wipe out a significant portion of the available margin. There are other transaction network related issues also.

Skoda has also rightly declined your offer to pay extra above your total bill to take care of the interchange as it would be violative of RBI guidelines as posted in this forum (as also the fact that I doubt anyone would gladly cover that high an interchange).

Also, as you have a plethora of options to chose from while making the payment and decide which mode and which card to use for which transaction to maximise your reward point, so has the merchant. The merchant can also decide what to accept, what not to accept to maximise his returns.

As I said in the beginning, your anger is pretty misplaced and unnecessary. In a world where we have more digital payment options than we need, chose any other acceptable one, make the payment and move on. Selling the car on this count would be rather not intelligent!

It's not as simple as you have put forward. When an organization get into tie up on retail offers with partners there are lot of other factors in play. Brand value etc, else Skoda would have tied up with all the banks and given offers.

Do you know which other plethora of options does Skoda accept? Does it support atleast below?

1) Wallet
2) UPI

Are there 2-5 % charges for UPI too? . From a customer perspective as long I am able to pay for one service at the same merchant with same card then I should be able to do the same for other services. I wouldn't got a hotel and expect that they will accept a card at the restaurant and not for room booking. Either make it uniform or just leave it.

For 10 days Skoda customer care only came back with answer we are working on it. So my question is what was Skoda working on for 10 days? The way these folks handle customers is no where near professionalism. They won't commit to written reply unless pushed.

Larger question is just not AmEx but if I as a customer have to run pillar to post to get small things sorted out then that's not my cup of tea. There is no question of intelligence here.

Last communication on the phone from dealership was Skoda hasn't integrated the Amex gateway. There was no mention of any charges related issues. If there is one I will let Skoda comment on it.

[abhishek_hch]

Originally Posted by CircleOfLife

From a customer perspective as long I am able to pay for one service at the same merchant with same card then I should be able to do the same for other services. I wouldn't got a hotel and expect that they will accept a card at the restaurant and not for room booking. Either make it uniform or just leave it.

Last communication on the phone from dealership was Skoda hasn't integrated the Amex gateway. There was no mention of any charges related issues. If there is one I will let Skoda comment on it.

Though desirable, I think (not sure) that there's anything which obligates the merchant to accept card for everything or nothing at all. No regulation can be one sided!

I had mentioned in my reply that there could be network related issues also, I did not want to get into details of it. Could very much be the reason.

Frankly, this isn't something worth chasing for so many days. The merchant also has the right to chose and has limitations with respect to the payment modes, respect that. I am sure there's a common ground for making a digital payment, please exercise it. This seems rather long drawn and I would again say completely avoidable!

[WorkingGuru]

Originally Posted by Tuborog

Well, you can call up Amex customer care and report the merchant and refuse the payment. It is very long process, so nobody does that
After you report, Amex sales team (dealing with merchants) reach out to the merchant to understand and solve the problem. Merchant is not allowed to suppress a specific type of card...

When the business hasn't accepted Amex card, where is the question of refusing payment?

Theres no such "very long process". If by payment you mean one buys & pays by another card and reports transaction to decline the payment, then that is patently illegal.

A customer can't compel/expect any business to be obligated to accept payment from a specific type of card. Whether they call themselves a premium brand, or otherwise.

OTOH, name calling a brand as "crap" on a popular platform, for something that they're NOT obligated to do is actionable in itself. I guess the one of the few things preventing action is the goodwill that the community has painstakingly built for itself.

[Sahil00090]

I was going through my AMEX card offers and I saw an offer on Skoda car booking. Attaching the screenshot for reference.

I am amazed how AMEX is running an offer on Skoda and Skoda is declining to accept AMEX.

P.s. I understand this is an offer for car booking but Skoda dealer rejecting AMEX payment is still not acceptable especially when AMEX is running an offer.

[V.Narayan]

A credit card is not legal tender like a currency note. A vendor or any one you owe money to is well within his rights to accept or not accept a credit card for any reason whatsoever.

Whatever happened to take it on the chin, kick him on the shin and move on.

[tejas08]

I see a lot of hyper reactions on the thread with regards to the original poster complaining about dealer not accepting Amex Cards.

In this case, I am with the original poster. There is a specific tie-up between Skoda & Amex for discounts on Rapid, Octavia and Superb. The same can be seen on Amex as well as Skoda Website.

Despite this, if a dealer says that Amex is not accepted (For whatever reasons maybe) and the Manufacturer too siding with the dealer, then its clear that the Manufacturer seems to not care what happens at dealership levels and that the dealers will be taking the car owners for a ride every now & then (During Sales, Service or any other business).

[asit.kulkarni93]

Once my dad insisted I tank up both our cars with his Amex. He rarely uses it because it is rarely accepted anywhere . Full tank for both the cars was around 7.8k and yet again the Amex didn't work at Shell. Finally had to swipe my visa credit card.

The only wrong Skoda has done here is the delayed response. I know well established businesses who dont accept Amex. Some businesses especially franchisee based businesses work on lesser margins and I don't blame them for not accepting cards which charge 2x comission. Although this should have been communicated to you well in advance.

Talking about Skoda India, things have changed since Zac has taken over. Obviously the dealers remain a sore point. 20 years of Skoda in India has taught us to look beyond the dealers. When you can't change the problem, you change the problem.

[AZT]

Had given my car for some accident repair at Tata service centre. Even they didn't accept Amex. Every Amex user is pretty much used to card being not accepted now Haha