Re: FN-FORUM: Charging for payments

date posted 9th January 2006 18:32

On Monday 09 January 2006 17:02, Damon Birch wrote:
> >For this scam to work they had to get your agreement to 'buy' a financial
> >service from them. 'pointing out' was not good enough - since the decision
> >on how they spent the money of the sale is up to them but they would
> >still need to pay VAT on the full amount.
>
> I though the High Court had ruled the scam was legal, where it was a
> separate company processing the payment, even if that company was owned by
> the same holding company i.e., M&S retail use M&S cc services.

We've been looking at this at my other job (big-ticket retailer)...

At the moment it's legal. Customs & Excise are trying to get the loophole
closed, but at that moment it's valid.

It isn't legal to charge more for credit purchases than for cash - this makes
sense, if you think about it - it's designed to protect consumers from people
who charge extra to buy on credit, or use it as a method to conceal a higher
markup.

Not sure what the position is with regard to "choosing to buy the service" - I
suspect that the line would be that you are buying the two products together,
both the concrete goods and the financial service.

Have to see what happens in the future.

Matt