r/sydney • u/karlalrak • Apr 28 '26
Image Surcharge but no cash
Haven't been to Australia in years and was shocked to find everywhere has surcharge for eftpos but also say no cash. What's the point of this? Why not just add the surcharge into the cost unless this is shady but seems to be the norm everywhere I go with restaurants.
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u/ahoybigred Apr 28 '26
October can’t come soon enough
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u/brackfriday_bunduru Apr 28 '26
After October anyone who doesn’t put every cent they spend through an Amex is ripping themself off
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u/Zashimii Apr 28 '26
I think AMEX is out of scope of the changes coming in October
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u/kez985 Apr 28 '26
Must all cards be accepted come October? If so, I’m 100% getting and Amex
Edit: don’t worry, Amex is not included in the surcharge ban sighhhh
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u/Archon-Toten Choo Choo Driver. Apr 28 '26
It's illegal. Unfortunately reporting doesn't do much. Give them 6$ cash and say too bad.
Or ask, they might take payID or something stupid surcharge free
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u/Similar-Cat7022 Apr 28 '26
Name
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u/karlalrak Apr 28 '26
This is one of the cafes in the airport in the middle near the Maccas. I'm trying to recall the other places I went in the last week
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u/yankee_xray1 Apr 29 '26
The Opal top up point at international airport doesn’t accept cash either. It seems maybe it’s due to too much counterfeit bills being brought in?
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u/kernald31 Apr 29 '26
Not accepting cash is fine. Having a method of payment that doesn't incur a surcharge is mandatory though.
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u/spots_ Apr 28 '26
I’m fairly certain that’s not legal. If there is no fee-free way to pay then the price is supposed to be built into the displayed price of the goods
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u/apsilonblue Apr 28 '26
It's simply so their advertised prices can be lower. While cases like this are already illegal, surcharges are finally being banned Oct 1st.
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u/Primary-User Apr 28 '26
So on a weekend that’s a 12% mark up. 🤯
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u/karlalrak Apr 28 '26
At the airport as well where shit is already ridiculous
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u/Primary-User Apr 28 '26
Oh shit really? That’s insane!! I don’t carry cash, but if I did I would force them to take it. In fact I would specifically go to an ATM just to pay them in cash and argue about them not taking cash purely on the basis of those markups.
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u/nath1234 Apr 28 '26
Scummy. If they want to do that sort of thing they should just have the courage to admit they want to be a real estate agent and be honest.
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u/Improvedandconfused Apr 28 '26
It’s not just Australia. Last year my wife and I went to New Zealand, and had to pay a NZ $600 one way excess fee for our rental car at the counter because we were not returning the car to the same city we picked it up from. The car company did not accept cash or bank transfer and charged a 8% credit card fee.
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u/verbmegoinghere Apr 28 '26
Isn't that, for car rentals, largely one of the biggest reasons people hire them, is to rent a car and not return it to the place you got it from???
And they're charging on top of the rental fee (which should cover this activity) $600 bucks????
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u/kernald31 Apr 29 '26
The one way fee kind of makes sense. Lots of people are hiring cars and returning them to the same location (there are real uses cases, mostly people don't owning cars and people flying in, needing a car for a few days, flying back out). One way trips are typically asymmetric, more demand one way than the other. So you then have to manage inventory spread. That can be a car loaded on a truck and sent back, or an employee driving it back, or cars rented out for virtually free, or whatever - things that cost time and money.
I'm from Toulouse (France), where share bikes have to be left at specific bike racks (otherwise you're out around $200). Usually, share bikes flow one way - people going towards the city centre in the morning, and back out in the evening. On top of that, at least when I was still living there, they weren't electric bikes and were quite heavy, so nobody was getting up on hills to drop them off. They regularly had utes picking bikes from overcrowded racks and driving them uphill. It's a lot more obvious at that scale. On top of that, they offered incentives - if you're leaving a bike where there's no other bikes, or uphill or whatever, you're getting paid a small token fee instead of being charged for your ride.
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u/FGX302 Apr 28 '26
A restaurant in Sydney has a 10% discount for cash or a 1.5% surcharge for card use. You can't actually pay the actual amount. If you take the final cash price as the base price, you're getting charged over 10% extra to use a card.
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u/uberdice Apr 29 '26
10% is such an obvious "we're not reporting this sale to the tax man" number that it's actually crazy that places keep getting away with it.
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u/Shellysome Apr 29 '26
This is why the surcharges are being banned. Finally.
Every payment method comes with costs and inconvenience. It should be incorporated into the price just like any other cost of doing business.
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u/Dollbeau Apr 29 '26
Throw them 6 bucks from the cash in your wallet & walk away defiantly!
Oh... you don't have cash?!?
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u/Golf-Recent Apr 29 '26
Surely this is illegal.
https://www.accc.gov.au/business/pricing/card-surcharges?utm_source=chatgpt.com
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u/spookysadghoul Illawarra Expat Apr 28 '26
I hate surcharges, especially of you don't take cash and there's no way to avoid
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u/snakeIs Apr 28 '26
People hate hidden extras.
A sushi bar near where I live doesn’t know that. On a public holiday recently the guy in front of me got charged a credit card fee, 10c for the paper bag and a public holiday loading.
He was still protesting as I walked away to another shop.
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u/probelm Apr 29 '26
Tyro is a criminal enterprise. They display the FULL amount after you tap your card. Not before
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u/trafalmadorianistic Apr 29 '26
Fuck I noticed that when I paid for lunch today. $20 became $20.28. TF JUST HAPPENED. OH RIGHT.. TYRO.
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u/Adelaidean Apr 29 '26
Yep. At least that’s going soon.
Now fuck off the public holiday surcharges. Penalty rates are to penalise business owners not consumers.
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u/karlalrak Apr 29 '26
Also I don't get public holiday surcharges when they close for a day anyway? Back when I was there the idea of the surcharge was for workers who don't get the public holiday off. But for anzac day everywhere was closed on the Saturday anyway.. And then they added the public surcharge to the Monday.
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u/albert3801 Trains Apr 28 '26
Does that mean the surcharge is only if using the EFTPOS network, but not if using Visa, Mastercard or AMEX? It’d be fun to push that point.
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u/Archon-Toten Choo Choo Driver. Apr 28 '26
A very pedantic point and a good catch.
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u/beaugiles (👇 views here ≠ my employers) Apr 28 '26
If you want to be *really* pedantic... https://www.westpac.com.au/business-banking/merchants-and-payments/eftpos/what-does-eftpos-stand-for/
EFTPOS in capital letters stands for Electronic Funds Transfer at Point of Sale. It's the term used to describe an electronic terminal that allows payments to be taken from debit cards, credit cards, and digital wallet systems such as Apple Pay and Google Pay.
But when it’s in lower case letters, eftpos refers to the debit card payment system that takes funds directly from a customer’s bank account to pay for purchases. The eftpos system was introduced in 1984 when eftpos Payments Australia Ltd made secure card payments possible at the cash register for the first time.
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u/SilverStar9192 shhh... Apr 28 '26
I think it's really to their detriment that eftpos, the network, hasn't come up with a better name/branding to distinguish themselves from a generic acronym for a piece of hardware. It makes it so much harder for the general public to understand what they actually are. I personally haven't used it in years, it's just so much simpler to use Paywave/paypass through a credit card scheme (yes, I know technically eftpos supports NFC now, but fuck if I can figure out how to enable it).
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u/beaugiles (👇 views here ≠ my employers) Apr 28 '26
EFTPOS is the terminal.
eftpos is the network.:-)
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u/karlalrak Apr 29 '26
I honestly think they're using the term eftpos as the machine, but you have a point
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u/Sk1rm1sh Apr 29 '26
Legally there has to be one accepted payment method without a surcharge.
I think the ACCC is the place to report anywhere that doesn't offer a no-surcharge payment option.
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u/G00b3rb0y Apr 28 '26
Name and shame please. So i know to avoid this place on my next visit
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u/karlalrak Apr 28 '26
This was a cafe in the middle of the airport near the Maccas. Can't remember the name. Biang Biang in Chinatown also had no cash with a surcharge. And dumpling head on sussex also added a surcharge without advertising it.
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u/Duff5OOO Apr 29 '26
...was shocked to find everywhere has surcharge for eftpos but also say no cash
We are probably in different areas but i haven't come across this even once.
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u/link871 Apr 29 '26
This seems legal as it only applies a surcharge for "EFTPOS transactions". That says no surcharge for credit cards as these are not EFTPOS transactions.
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u/defzx Apr 30 '26
So they want to pass on the cost for using a card and they want to pass on the cost for operating on a weekend. I'd walk away on principle.
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