Just a heads up, you should probably fix your title before someone makes a shota joke.

it’s almost been an hour… they shota fixed it by now

For a dollar not sure it could be anything else. Alcohol is expensive.

Years ago, when imposing a minimum credit card purchase was not allowed, I had the following exchange:

Me: I’d like to order a second beer.
Bartender: Sorry, we’ve already called last call.
Me: Okay, I’ll just close out my tab then. Here’s my credit card.
Bartender: You’ve only have the one beer, and we have a ten dollar minimum for credit card purchases.
Me: Cool, I’ll have that second beer then.
Bartender: But we’ve called last call.
Me: ….
Me: Listen, you can pour me a second beer and I’ll meet your minimum. Or you can ring me up for the one I had. Your choice. The alternative is I just leave.

They rang me up for one.

Am I too European to understand this? This minimum shit is stupid and should be illegal

I think it is here too but people still do it.

Lol I almost did.

I could see it being a way to get rid of flavored liqueurs that have been sitting around

It isn’t illegal, but it’s against the TOS for every major cc company. If you see this shit you should report it.

That sounds a lot better than what I was thinking.

? I encounter this in Europe regularly.

Shot glasses are usually pretty small and peanut m&ms are relatively large, $1 for what probably amounts to ~6 m&ms sounds like a rip off.

There are european countries that have made the practice illegal.
There are countries that said you should always, without extra costs, allow digital payment.
Funny enough, they bypassed cards then and went for things like payconiq, wero, apple pay, google wallet, ... to bypass the costs of card readers haha

Which part exactly? The store owner can refuse service to anyone for any reason, I really doubt there's an enforceable agreement that requires them to take transactions simply by have a card pos system.

bars are a ripoff. $4 a drink during happy hour, for the cost of one good evening I can just buy a bottle and drink for a week.

$10 is the amount generally outlined as the acceptable minimum. What information are you relying on? Can you provide a source for that?

They absolutely must accept a card presented for any amount. It’s part of the TOS with every major cc company. This is the bar trying to shirk the service fees on small transactions, but it flies directly in the face of what the card issuer tries to guarantee, “accepted everywhere”. If they find out a business is refusing their cards when they don’t hit a minimum, they will warn the business, and if they keep doing it, will no longer do business with them. That’s a big reason some bar are cash only, all the cc companies cut them off. (Also tax evasion, obviously)

Edit: welp, I just did a little research, and while that USED to be true, it’s now allowed as long as the minimum is no more than $10. As of 2010.

Everything always gets shittier.

I wish a bottle lasted me a whole week

Shota, cota, wota

I've definitely encountered this in Germany recently.

Ya drink the shota you futa bill.

They generally have to pay a fee per digital transaction, and I once saw it was 0.55€ for a transaction I did, so I can definitely understand that they don't want to lose money on small purchases.

The alternative would be to require extra payment for digital transactions, or to increase prices for everyone (even more).

Buy olive oil.

Visa and Mastercard are horrible companies. For smaller businesses.

1. If your transaction numbers are low they charge a flat + percentage
   So like 0.55 EUR + 1.2%. Stores in this tier generally try and keep a minimum spend, because you buy 1 EUR and mastercard charges 56c. From 44c you have to pay for product and make a profit. It's stupid.

2. You can opt for plans that don't have flat fee, so it's like 2.25% percentage only.
   Useful if you move a lot of small value items like a small convinience store.

3. But if you're a chain of convinience like SPAR, they can get custom deals.
   SPAR had a tiered deal, transactions below 1 EUR, they charge 0.4%, below 4 EUR it was 0.9%, below 10 EUR 1.5% and, above 1.9%
   This would never be possible for smaller shops.

4. Every transaction enriches some foreign country as they take the cut. Homegrown system like wero should be dominant, cheap and stays in local economy.

Also I'd like to note, I've been out of touch of Europe for a while so my opinions and knowledge might be dated, but this is solved problem in ASIA, PayNow, Prompt Pay, UPI etc exist and are fantastic solutions for small businesses.

Even better buy castor oil.

Eyy welcome back. You were gone for a while. Missed your snarky comments man. All good?

Local companies in Germany also have a min.limit on card payments like EC?
They arent everywhere but they exist.

Ignoring ToS agreememts, I am on the side of the shop owner. It's a bit annoying for me but fuck big finance

Nothing to do with being European. I see this occasionally at small businesses here in Austria, such as tobacco stores.

Visa/Mastercard rules say that you can't refuse to accept payment with credit cards if you accept them in general. They are pretty adamant about that rule and even have secret shoppers to confirm such cases. The 10$ minimum is only allowed in the US and territories, the rest of the world does not have this exception (https://www.visa.com/en-us/support/visa-rules#6153bdb1)

You shouldn't. The 10$ minimum transaction is only valid in the US and territories. Report them, this violates their contract with every credit card payment provider. On top of that it's illegal in many countries.

It's not illegal yet, but it violates Visa/Mastercard TOS. Extra charges for using a credit card are illegal EU-wide.

Germany is planning for next year to put into law the right for the costumer to choose which payment method he wants to use, without any limitations. This is also being used to make sure that at least one european digital payment service has to be accepted to break the stranglehold of US companies Visa/Mastercard - a very important step towards general security for the european economy.

And in an unexpected move, the EU is going to make accepting cash payments mandatory - currently you can exclude any payment method with your TOS.

Make mine a double!

You're not paying for the booze, you're paying for space and time in that spot. It's so expensive to keep the doors open. All the licencing and insurance. Wages, rent. It all adds up so quickly. I worked at a modest sized place for a few years and got to know the business side of it. It was at least 7k a week through the till to break even.

Edit: to all the bar haters out there; find a spot without TVs or blaring music. You may be surprised by how nice it can be just chilling and having some drinks. So many bars are just sensory overload. A nice quiet drinking hole is worth its weight in gold.

Yeah, I'm clearly gonna report local shops for stealing a couple of Euros a day from MasterCard/Visa. Bootlicker

Which is why young people aren't drinking anymore. The space etc is simply not worth the prices.

Maybe it was sparkle m&m? They are not cheap

Bars in general I just don't get, like you want to be outside/in public, with people you don't know, to buy food that's double+ what it costs anywhere else, to have like 2oz shots and pretend to be 'wasted', the bathroom looks like a highway rest stop, they play bad music, you can watch people who can't play pool get mad at other people who also can't play pool...

Oh and places that claim to be 'clubs' and just give the illusion of being upscale and exclusive but it's the same thing behind the veil. A 'cover charge' to receive nothing at all? You gotta be out of your mind. Running iTunes on a laptop does not make your music 'curated' by 'DJ Drippin'. And if there's a 'dance floor' it's all horny stumbling people who think they can dance.

And then you get the bros that are like 'getting blackout drunk and finding out you plowed 3 chicks is my definition of a great weekend' like dude you blew $800 last night and there was a pool cue sticking out of your ass when you woke up. Explain how this is so great. 'it just is bro, you just need to try it, experience it, bro'. Whatever you say, bro.

Everyone I know that wants to drink just hits up Walmart or Costco first, grabs food after, and goes home to chill with said food and liquor. Even when we were the target demographic, just.. why.

Bars when they pick the literal most dogshit music to blast

No. It's a deeper change than that. Young people also aren't just grabbing some alcohol and hanging out at each other's apartments/houses drinking, at least not as much as prior generations.

...or maybe they're just not inviting you.

The post is in English and using $ specifically, so I'm unsure why they said it's against TOS. I get that the commenter was European, but they were basically asking if this was a legit thing that they didn't know because they aren't from here. They didn't ask "is this true in Europe", so I feel like it's misleading to suggest it's against TOS unless you're specifically suggesting "for Europe it's against TOS but it's fine in the US".

I mean, I don't know if I'm part of the trend or not as someone in his mid 20s who rarely ever drinks, but many of my mates don't drink at all, and when we hang out there's little alcohol, we also tend to play online games etc a lot. Going to a bar sounds quite bothersome and unnecessary tbh. But I don't know if I'm too old to be part of this trend.

In any case, I see little conceptual value in bars, at least to me. I can buy alcohol for stuff we do at home if I even want to drink (not often).

I would have rang you up with a tip.

fellow alcoholic, it's an aspiration not a benchmark.

understanding why it sucks doesn't make it suck any less.

Sure, if you cleared it with the customer first. Otherwise your just a thief and an asshole.

Maybe you just have the wrong bars in your area? I don't go as often as I used to but for me going to a (bistro) bar or a brewpub offers a nice change of scenery. Sitting outside watching other people strolling by gives you something else to talk about. Or when the weather is crap, I'll sit inside sipping some dark craft beer I can't buy in the supermarket.

When we hang out someone's home conversation tends to dry out after an hour or so and we just end up playing board games (which is fine too).

Even better, buy a mini chainsaw, realize it doesn't come with bar and chain oil, go to your local auto shop and realize the minimum size sold is a gallon of bar and chain oil...

MnMnMnM