I came across a blog post today about how some small (and not so small) businesses are absolutely killing business and projecting a very ‘penny pinching’/mean attitude to their customers:
“…as I was checking out, I noticed a sign that said $5 minimum on all credit/debit card transactions. But…the movie is only $4. So this means, a person can’t come in and get 1 movie (which is what I would normally do) and pay with their card. I don’t even know how to spend $5. 2 movies is $8!
I suppose their logic goes something like this…our merchant account fees just raised by $.10 per transaction. We just can’t afford for people to swipe their cards for less than $5 anymore. Besides…maybe this will motivate people to get more than 1 movie. So, we’ll make more profit because we’ll pay less in fees, and rent more movies at once. Great idea!
Well, I think that’s a real bad plan. I doubt it’s going to motivate many people to get more than one movie — in fact, I think it will cause people to choose to just “skip it” all together. If it were me (and it probably won’t be, now that I know their new policy), I’d be ticked off, out of principle. And I very rarely carry cash. I would probably leave. For me, crappy credit card policies cause me not to do business with places.”
The post goes on to give some really good ideas about how they could have structured it to add value to the transaction, and the customer, and encourage/incentivise (rather than force) the customer to spend more money.
I agree with everything they say – I get really turned off by penny pinching policies like this too.
Full blog post is here: http://www.gravitationalmarketing.com/observation/2008/3/27/how-not-to-make-a-profit.html
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