When 'Card Only' Becomes 'Card Tax': The Sneaky Surcharge Scam
Spotted an interesting discussion online yesterday about the Barbie Café at Chadstone’s social quarter, and it’s got me thinking about one of those modern retail practices that really gets under my skin. Someone noticed they’re operating as card-only but still slapping a surcharge on every transaction - which, if you know anything about ACCC rules, sounds dodgy as hell.
Here’s the thing that frustrates me: we’ve somehow normalised being nickel-and-dimed at every turn. Remember when businesses absorbed their operating costs into their prices like civilised establishments? Now it’s all “convenience fees,” “service charges,” and my personal favourite - surcharges on payment methods that are literally your only option.
The ACCC is pretty clear on this stuff. If there’s no way to avoid the surcharge, it needs to be baked into the displayed price. You can’t advertise a $6 muffin and then charge $6.12 at checkout when cards are your only payment method. That’s false advertising, plain and simple.
What really winds me up is how this practice has crept into essential services too. Someone mentioned their rental agency tried to force them onto a fee-charging payment app, claiming their trust account was closing. These are the kinds of power plays that make my blood boil - using necessity as leverage to extract extra fees. Thankfully, Victorian rental laws require landlords to provide at least one fee-free payment method, but how many tenants know that?
The hospital café example really struck a chord with me. Imagine being stuck in a public hospital - already dealing with stress, illness, or visiting a loved one - and getting hit with unavoidable surcharges for basic food and coffee. It’s predatory behaviour dressed up as “business efficiency.”
What’s particularly galling is that many of these surcharges are pure profit grabs. The discussion revealed that Square’s processing fees are typically around 1.6%, yet this café is charging 2%. That extra 0.4% goes straight into their pocket, which the ACCC explicitly prohibits. Businesses can only recover their actual costs, not turn payment processing into a revenue stream.
The solution isn’t rocket science. Just build your costs into your prices like businesses did for decades. If your latte costs $5.50 to cover all expenses including payment processing, charge $5.50. Don’t advertise $5.38 and then surprise customers with fees at checkout. It’s dishonest and, more importantly, it’s often illegal.
I’m genuinely hopeful that the ACCC will crack down harder on this practice. Several people in the discussion mentioned reporting businesses and seeing actual changes, which gives me some faith in the system. The fact that businesses can be forced to prove their processing costs when questioned is a good start, but we need more proactive enforcement.
For now, the best thing we can do is call this behaviour out when we see it. Report dodgy surcharges to the ACCC, leave honest reviews mentioning illegal fee structures, and support businesses that build their costs into their prices transparently. Money talks, and if enough consumers push back against sneaky fee structures, businesses will adapt.
It might seem like a small issue in the grand scheme of things, but these practices chip away at consumer trust and fair trading. Every time we let businesses get away with misleading pricing, we normalise a race to the bottom where honest operators get undercut by those willing to hide their true costs.