More Stations Offering Gas Discounts For Cash Paying Customers
STURBRIDGE (CBS) -- He tapped the nozzle as if to squeeze out every last drop.
Then Francis Dauphinais looked at the sign on the pump offering a 10 cent per gallon discount for cash after he'd paid with a credit card. "Oh I don't appreciate that at all," he said.
Dauphinais is complaining about two-tiered pricing Village Mobil in Sturbridge and a growing number of other gas stations use to offset credit card processing fees.
"They also pass it on, indirectly, to everyone else," asserted Dauphinais.
That's not how the service station dealers put it, however. The owner of Village Mobil said she offers a 10 cent per gallon discount for cash sales.
WBZ-TV's Ron Sanders reports.
She explains that banks charge 2 ½ percent to 3 percent per gallon to process credit card transactions while the average dealer makes a flat-rate profit of 12 to 15 cents per gallon. So the more gas goes up, the more money she loses on credit card sales.
"In the 2008, when gas was $4 a gallon, I paid $85,000 dollars worth of credit card fees. Then I instituted the cash/credit pricing in 2009 and I only had to pay the credit card companies 60 grand," said Tania Laliberte, adding that means her customers saved $25,000 dollars last year.
Dorothy Herlihy of Webster preferred to pay cash. "I try to save my pennies wherever I can," she said.
Jon Bisceglia of Shrewsbury looks at the discount for cash more as a premium for credit cards. "I think it should be the same because we all carry credit cards nowadays. We all do everything with debit cards, credit cards. Very rarely do I have cash in my pocket," said Bisceglia.
Tania Laliberte, whose family has been in the gas station business 40 years, said her preference would be to sell gas at one, single, lower price for everyone which would allow her customers to save money and her to make money. But she thinks more stations will be moving to two-tier pricing as gas prices rise.
In case you're wondering if a debit card transaction counts as cash, it does not.
Matt LeLacheur, executive director of the New England Service Station and Auto Repair Association said dealers that have two-tiered pricing treat debit cards the same as credit cards.
