Paying for gasoline with plastic could get pricier
Local drivers who buy gasoline with credit cards may soon find themselves paying more for their fuel than motorists who use cash.
Gasoline stations around the country increasingly want consumers to cover the fees credit card banks charge on each sale, as those fees consume most or all of station owners’ profits.
Peter Krueger, state executive of the Nevada Petroleum Marketers & Convenience Store Association, said he hasn’t heard of any Silver State stations charging separate prices for cash and credit, but he’s caught anecdotal rumblings that suggest his trade group’s members “are looking very strongly at doing that.”
“Retailers are caught in the same bind as everybody else,” Krueger said. “Gas prices are obviously high for the motoring public, but they’re equally high for the retailer who buys the gas. The margins they might once have enjoyed are just not there. People think, ‘If the price of gas is so high, somebody is making a lot of money.’ One ‘somebody’ is the credit card companies.”
The 12 cents to 13 cents Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover charge per gallon of fuel these days wipes out store profits, which run less than 10 cents a gallon, said Jeff Marshall, owner of the Trop Stop convenience store at Tropicana Avenue and Decatur Boulevard.
Marshall said he’d never set up differing sales prices for credit users, and he doesn’t know of any local stations asking higher prices for credit card sales. For one thing, Marshall said, most station owners prefer to cover all operating expenses in the price of fuel, rather than singling out specific fees and covering them separately. Also, stores that force consumers to pay more with credit could run afoul of merchant agreements with banks, which prohibit retailers from assessing card fees beyond the sale price.
As long as store owners don’t classify disparate prices as discounts for using cash, they’re following merchant agreements with banks, Krueger said.
Nevada’s office of consumer advocate didn’t return a phone call seeking comment on whether consumers increasingly complain about price differentials.
No Nevada laws ban the separate charges.
Laws do govern how stations advertise such pricing differentials, though.
Any price a retailer lists in his fuel pumps must appear on his station’s signs, Krueger said, so the store that offers cash and credit prices must advertise both to consumers in equally visible measures.
That’s not the case in all states.
Peter Jespersen of Setauket, N.Y., joined a growing number of disgruntled drivers earlier this month when the gasoline he thought was costing him $4.29 a gallon turned out to cost 10 cents a gallon more — because he was using his credit card.
The roadside sign at a Commack, N.Y., gasoline station had advertised $4.29, but he said he was irritated when he noticed a sign atop the pump informing him of the higher price for credit. When he looked back at the street sign, he saw the listed price was for cash.
“I hadn’t noticed that,” Jespersen said. “So it was unexpected. If you’re going to have a different price for cash and credit, I feel like it should be advertised on the street sign.”
Contact reporter Jennifer Robison at jrobison@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4512. Newsday contributed to this report.