In message , at 17:46:32 on Sun, 22 Jan
2012, Adam H. Kerman remarked:
Considering that people often pay $10/day for the rental company's
overpriced insurance, it doesn't seem very hefty to me.

If one has a gold card or better from the credit card company, that
includes insurance for the collision damage waiver portion of rental
company insurance.

For USA cardholders and rentals in USA, perhaps. There's a whole bunch
of people for whom neither applies.

Interesting. Not even American Express?

If credit card companies in your country aren't competing on services,
how do they distinguish themselves so you'll obtain theirs?

In recent times, from one card to another it's either the interest rate,
or being linked to a Frequent Flyer programme (my Amex gets me one
whatever British Airways miles are called this week per pound I spend).

Going from plain to Gold to Platinum rarely brings any extra benefits,
other than it being loosely linked to the credit limit, but even that's
not guaranteed. One of my plain cards has a limit just as high as any of
my "Platinum" ones. It's more like getting metallic paint finish on a
car than anything financial.

However, most customers are unadventurous enough to only get a card
linked to their checking account.

When cards were a novelty (back in the 70's) the way they got people to
adopt them was by giving highly discounted merchant accounts to gas
stations, so that people got used to making regular purchases with them.

How much would non-vehicle owner liability insurance cost in your country?

It's an unknown concept. Insurers vary their premiums vastly depending
on the vehicle you are proposing to drive, and they'd have to assume
everyone bought that type of insurance because they were about to drive
a high performance car that would be virtually uninsurable under a
normal policy.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 17:59:22 on Sun, 22 Jan
2012, John Levine remarked:
US credit cards all suck because none of them include trip cancellation
insurance, like all UK cards do.

That's news to me! I've never heard of trip-cancellation insurance being
bundled with a UK credit card, although some bank accounts bundle
holiday insurance (which generally has exclusions for business travel)
and one of the benefits of such insurance is a limited amount of
cancellation insurance. But if you (eg) cancel because a relative died,
you'll find that failing to disclose the relative's medical history to
the insurers in advance will probably trigger an exclusion clause.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 15:36:16 on Sun, 22 Jan
2012, Stephen Sprunk remarked:
Major payment cards are accepted by thousands, if not millions, of
merchants all over the world. They are arguably more universal than
cash, which is mostly limited to a single country or group of countries.

There are also millions of merchants who don't accept credit cards. And
plenty of folks in far flung countries who'll take dollars in cash.

But for buying big ticket items in expensive shops, a credit card is
more widely accepted than random foreign cash, I agree.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 15:52:29 on Sun, 22 Jan
2012, Stephen Sprunk remarked:
There's also the time it takes to count the customer's money and, if
applicable, make change. This is particularly bad in the US since taxes
are not included in the price, so the total due is rarely known before
the order is rung up.

And especially in a "Dollar" store where everything actually costs $1.08
(or whatever). Although when I was in Walmart in the summer they had
several items in "special offer" bins in the aisles that were clearly
priced to be an exact number of dollars after tax.

[Do "Dollar" stores typically accept cards?]

Processing a card payment is faster, especially
if it's below the merchant's floor, meaning merchants can handle more
transactions with less labor.

Finally, there is a non-trivial cost to securely storing and
transporting cash to the bank for deposit and to keeping enough coins
and smaller notes on hand to make change.

Those are the elements which make up the "1%" (rather than "0%") quoted
as the typical cost of accepting cash, versus the "2%" for cards.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 22:14:34 on Sun, 22
Jan 2012, " remarked:
That's a risk in some countries, and even in the US many merchants won't
accept bills larger than $20 (though the risk is obviously the same
whether someone counterfeits a $100 bill or five $20 bills), but that's
not the real problem. Modern currency is very difficult to counterfeit
well enough to pass even a cursory examination.

Most people in the Eurozone are reluctant to accept 50-euro notes. I
think that they were even planning to pull the 500-euro note.

On the other hand, the Swiss will accept ludicrously high denomination
banknotes without turning a hair.

There's also the time it takes to count the customer's money and, if
applicable, make change. This is particularly bad in the US since taxes
are not included in the price, so the total due is rarely known before
the order is rung up.

Why is that, I wonder? I think that is also the case with the GST and
PST in Canada.

As well as making everything appear cheaper, there's the issue of sales
tax varying from county to county. You can easily drive a mile and find
sales tax is 1% higher or lower. Stores (and let's face it, most are
multiples) tend to want to advertise and mark goods at a consistent
price, which can therefore only be the pre-tax price.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at
05:11:30 on Mon, 23 Jan 2012, Neil Williams
remarked:
That's because VAT is standard across a country. In the US there are
thousands of taxing districts in every state, each with it's own
adder to the base rate.

Presumably only one applies to any given shop?

I know of shops which straddle a State Line, and I've no idea what
happens there! It must be quite interesting living in a town that's half
in one State and half in the other. No doubt they have some kind of
local policy regarding various jurisdictional issues, although I've
heard of problems arising when two vehicles collide in one State and the
wreckage slides into the next State.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 20:04:35 on Sun, 22 Jan
2012, Stephen Sprunk remarked:
there's something really comforting about knowing that the price
shown on the tag is actually the exact amount of money you'll have to
fork over.

Indeed. On my first trip overseas, that was one of the most welcome
aspects of shopping: you know exactly what you're going to pay. This
also encourages round-number pricing ($40 vs $39.95)--something that is
pointless under a pre-tax pricing model.

Burger King have a [USA] nation-wide offer of $1.99 at the moment.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 12:35:23
on Sun, 22 Jan 2012, remarked:

Though 1 in 36 of every #1 coins is fake according to some counts ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-10774366 looks helpful.

Thanks. The four coins I have here seem to check out, but I'll look any
others until I find a suspicious one.
--
Roland Perry

Neil Williams wrote:

On Sun, 22 Jan 2012 19:16:38 +0000, Charles Ellson
wrote:
driving when not using their own vehicle. My own insurance used to
cover driving other vehicles (but not for damage to that other
vehicle) but that feature was dropped about 15-20y ago.

Mine still does.


Mine too.

In message , at 10:30:08 on
Mon, 23 Jan 2012, Bruce remarked:
driving when not using their own vehicle. My own insurance used to
cover driving other vehicles (but not for damage to that other
vehicle) but that feature was dropped about 15-20y ago.

Mine still does.

Mine too.

Most UK car insurance policies will cover driving someone else's car
(and always have. But it's very likely to be third party damage claims
only.

It is alleged that when insurance companies assess the risk for a
driver, one of the reasons for asking their occupation, and having
different tariffs, is because there are correlations between certain
occupations and the likelihood of borrowing other people's cars (and
causing havoc).
--
Roland Perry