In message , at 15:58:30 on Sun, 22 Jan
2012, John Levine remarked:
Why? If you get points for every purchase, why not charge everything
you can? That's what I do.

This does assume you have the discipline to pay off your cards every month.

Or get a charge card that gives points. But I'm still not in favour of
generating piles of paper and statement entries for what are in essence
petty cash transactions.

My wife got a free trip to Japan last years using the points from
those petty transactions. For that I can deal with a few slips of paper.

You must eat an awful lot of hamburgers. A trip to Japan is probably
worth at least $30k dollars of spending.
--
Roland Perry

John Levine wrote:

how does all this work with rental cars?

Presumably the same as it does with speeding citations. You get a
bill from the rental car company after the fact along with a hefty
administrative surcharge.

It's the "hefty administrative surcharge" I was concerned about.

In my actualy experience, the surcharge is $2 or $3. You can decide
whether that
counts as hefty, in the context of everything else you pay for a car rental.

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.

As far as the state-required liability portion, if you own a car, it may
be included in your own policy. Even though your own policy covers liability
of other drivers who use your car, it won't cover them when they rent
their own cars.

There is such a thing as a non-vehicle owner liability policy. It covers
the driver when he rents a car. It also provides medical if the insured
is struck by another vehicle as a pedestrian or bicycle rider.

It's $400 or more a year, and probably a good idea.

Graeme Wall wrote:
On 22/01/2012 09:11, Roland Perry wrote:
on Sat, 21 Jan 2012, Neil Williams remarked:

paywave credit cards. Although I always feel a bit awkward using a
credit card for such small purchases.

Why? I usually have a rule that if I can pay by card I do.

Because I know all the processing and billing costs have to be paid by
someone, and in the end it's the consumers.

Handling cash has quite a high cost as well, again, ultimately paid by
the consumers.

Cash has the extreme advantage of being intended as a universal purchase
medium so you DON'T need a credit bank or consumer identification card
or badge, unique to each merchant, that represents a credit card.

In message , at 16:21:56 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.
--
Roland Perry

In uk.railway Roland Perry twisted the electrons to say:
Do you mean the risk of counterfeit banknotes? This is something that
seems to have been overcome in the UK one way or another.

Though 1 in 36 of every #1 coins is fake according to some counts ...
--
These opinions might not even be mine ...
Let alone connected with my employer ...

In message , at 16:34:44 on Sun, 22 Jan
2012, Alistair Gunn remarked:
Do you mean the risk of counterfeit banknotes? This is something that
seems to have been overcome in the UK one way or another.

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

The people who claim this never seem to have any guidance on how you can
tell, so I'm a bit sceptical.
--
Roland Perry

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.

That rather surprised me. I have similar Mastercard credit cards from
HSBC in the US and the UK. The US card includes rental car cover,
like all high-end US cards do, the UK card doesn't.

R's,
John

In my actualy experience, the surcharge is $2 or $3. You can decide whether that
counts as hefty, in the context of everything else you pay for a car rental. ...

Perhaps it depends how many tolls you go through, and whether they
consolidate the bill. When I was in a hire car in USA last summer we
went through maybe five or six each way per day on a "road trip". We
were paying cash, but I was aware they had cameras to send bills to
people using the transponder lane without having a transponder.

In the US, some toll highways that have ETC also take cash, some don't. If
you blow through a transponder lane on the Garden State Parkway without a
transponder, you'll get a hefty fine in the mail, because that's a violation.
People without transponders are supposed to use the cash lanes available at
all of their toll plazas.

On the toll highways in Miami, on the other hand, the "toll plaza" is just a
gantry over the road. You can't pay cash. So in that case, what you get in
the mail isn't a violation, it's just a bill, and the surcharge is quite low.
I gather that in Florida, Sunpass has an arrangement with rental car companies
to report the tolls on their cars in close to real time so they can often
add the tolls to your bill when you return the car.

R's,
John

Alistair Gunn wrote:

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

That was an interesting segment on Fake Britain...

On Sun, 22 Jan 2012 16:20:52 +0000, Roland Perry
wrote:

In message , at 15:58:30 on Sun, 22 Jan
2012, John Levine remarked:
Why? If you get points for every purchase, why not charge everything
you can? That's what I do.

This does assume you have the discipline to pay off your cards every month.

Or get a charge card that gives points. But I'm still not in favour of
generating piles of paper and statement entries for what are in essence
petty cash transactions.

My wife got a free trip to Japan last years using the points from
those petty transactions. For that I can deal with a few slips of paper.

You must eat an awful lot of hamburgers. A trip to Japan is probably
worth at least $30k dollars of spending.

And it's not really "free": we all pay for it with inflated pricing.