This is no ordinary credit card
posted by Paul
Today when I tried to pay for petrol with my Discovery card the petrol attendant informed me that there was a problem and that they could not process the transaction. I ended up being forced to use the ATM at the filling station - and being late for an appointment... grrr... technology!This card isn't a normal credit card. I can't use it to buy dinner, a fine set of glasses or even a candle holder. All this piece of plastic is good for is to buy petrol or diesel.
South Africa must be one of the few countries where you cannot buy fuel with your ordinary credit card. How disastrous it must be as a tourist to find out only once you've filled up your rental car's tank that the filling station won't accept your credit card.
Since we can't use traditional credit cards to purchase fuel, we have to either carry wads of cash around with us, draw money at the filling station's ATM, or use one of these special "garage cards".
6 Comments:
Well I'm glad you've highlighted this about paying for petrol..
Something we didn't know but will now know for when we come back to SA as we will be hiring a car for the next trip.
Well, it turns out that you can buy petrol using your credit card, but they will put a 5% surcharge onto the total. The reason for this is that the petrol price is regulated by government and that merchants have to pay 5% of the selling price to the card issuer.
Charging different prices for cash sales and credit card sales is illegal in South Africa, except for petrol purchases.
@trevor - now that's really interesting. What you're saying makes sense to me, but I've really never heard of this. I'll have to give it a try next time I fill up and report back.
Garage cards attract interest from the moment you swipe them, not like traditional credit cards which give you up to 55 days interest-free. If you're correct then (depending on prevailing interest rates) I wonder if there's a point at which it's cheaper to use a credit card and pay the 5%.
Well reading what 'Trevor' has said perhaps we should only think about paying cash for petrol when we next come to SA....we're paying R16.80 a litre now for petrol in UK so to have cash to fill up will not seem too bad for us compared to the prices in SA.
that's interesting. got to take not when going to SA!
Hmm, I've never noticed the extra 5%, but yes you can by petrol on Credit Card at some petrol stations (i.e. Constantia Village Engen).
The reason this problem exists goes back to the days of petrol rationing. Laws were put in place so that petrol couldn't be bought on credit. (We are also very limited in the amount of fuel we can stockpile).
The banks introduced Garage Cards (with interest, as described above), to get around the limitation of buying petrol on credit. Somehow this has all still stuck (probably because it's beneficial to everyone involved).
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