Roland Perry wrote:
at 16:21:56 on Sun, 22 Jan 2012, Adam H. Kerman remarked:

Considering that people often pay $10/day for the rental company's
overpriced insurance, it doesn't seem very hefty to me.

If one has a gold card or better from the credit card company, that
includes insurance for the collision damage waiver portion of rental
company insurance.

For USA cardholders and rentals in USA, perhaps. There's a whole bunch
of people for whom neither applies.

Interesting. Not even American Express?

If credit card companies in your country aren't competing on services,
how do they distinguish themselves so you'll obtain theirs?

How much would non-vehicle owner liability insurance cost in your country?

Nobody wrote:
On Sun, 22 Jan 2012 16:20:52 +0000, Roland Perry wrote:
at 15:58:30 on Sun, 22 Jan 2012, John Levine remarked:

Why? If you get points for every purchase, why not charge everything
you can? That's what I do.

This does assume you have the discipline to pay off your cards
every month.

Or get a charge card that gives points. But I'm still not in favour of
generating piles of paper and statement entries for what are in essence
petty cash transactions.

My wife got a free trip to Japan last years using the points from
those petty transactions. For that I can deal with a few slips of paper.

You must eat an awful lot of hamburgers. A trip to Japan is probably
worth at least $30k dollars of spending.

And it's not really "free": we all pay for it with inflated pricing.

Not to mention bloated bodies and flabby tummies. But poor diet is
good business for hospitals.

For USA cardholders and rentals in USA, perhaps. There's a whole bunch
of people for whom neither applies.

Interesting. Not even American Express?

Nope. I checked, my UK Amex card doesn't have car insurance.

If credit card companies in your country aren't competing on services,
how do they distinguish themselves so you'll obtain theirs?

The compete on plenty of services, just not that one. US credit cards
all suck because none of them include trip cancellation insurance,
like all UK cards do.

R's,
John

In article , (Roland Perry)
wrote:

In message , at 16:34:44 on Sun, 22
Jan 2012, Alistair Gunn remarked:
Do you mean the risk of counterfeit banknotes? This is something that
seems to have been overcome in the UK one way or another.

Though 1 in 36 of every #1 coins is fake according to some counts ...

The people who claim this never seem to have any guidance on how you
can tell, so I'm a bit sceptical.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-10774366 looks helpful.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

On Sun, 22 Jan 2012 17:15:49 +0000 (UTC), John Levine
wrote:

If one has a gold card or better from the credit card company, that includes
insurance for the collision damage waiver portion of rental company insurance.

For USA cardholders and rentals in USA, perhaps. There's a whole bunch
of people for whom neither applies.

That rather surprised me. I have similar Mastercard credit cards from
HSBC in the US and the UK. The US card includes rental car cover,
like all high-end US cards do, the UK card doesn't.

UK motor vehicle insurance seems to have turned against anything
amounting to insuring drivers rather than vehicles in the last few
years, possibly because of the uncertainty of what somebody might be
driving when not using their own vehicle. My own insurance used to
cover driving other vehicles (but not for damage to that other
vehicle) but that feature was dropped about 15-20y ago.

In article ,
() wrote:

In article , (Roland
Perry) wrote:

In message , at 16:34:44 on Sun, 22
Jan 2012, Alistair Gunn remarked:
Do you mean the risk of counterfeit banknotes? This is something that
seems to have been overcome in the UK one way or another.

Though 1 in 36 of every #1 coins is fake according to some counts
...

The people who claim this never seem to have any guidance on how
you can tell, so I'm a bit sceptical.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-10774366 looks helpful.

Also http://www.royalmint.com/Corporate/f...oundCoins.aspx.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

On 22-Jan-12 10:26, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
Graeme Wall wrote:
Handling cash has quite a high cost as well, again, ultimately paid by
the consumers.

Cash has the extreme advantage of being intended as a universal purchase
medium so you DON'T need a credit bank or consumer identification card
or badge, unique to each merchant, that represents a credit card.

What are you talking about? Major payment cards are accepted by
thousands, if not millions, of merchants all over the world. They are
arguably more universal than cash, which is mostly limited to a single
country or group of countries.

S

--
Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking

On Sun, 22 Jan 2012 19:16:38 +0000, Charles Ellson
wrote:
driving when not using their own vehicle. My own insurance used to
cover driving other vehicles (but not for damage to that other
vehicle) but that feature was dropped about 15-20y ago.

Mine still does.

Neil

--
Neil Williams, Milton Keynes, UK

On 22-Jan-12 09:23, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 09:08:00 on Sun, 22 Jan
2012, Stephen Sprunk remarked:
Many US retailers push for card use because they believe the labor and
fraud costs of handling cash are higher.

Do you mean the risk of counterfeit banknotes? This is something that
seems to have been overcome in the UK one way or another.

That's a risk in some countries, and even in the US many merchants won't
accept bills larger than $20 (though the risk is obviously the same
whether someone counterfeits a $100 bill or five $20 bills), but that's
not the real problem. Modern currency is very difficult to counterfeit
well enough to pass even a cursory examination.

Or is it employees pocketing the cash.

That's one of the problems; most retail theft/fraud is committed or
abetted by employees, not customers acting alone. If employees don't
handle money, they can't steal it.

There's also the time it takes to count the customer's money and, if
applicable, make change. This is particularly bad in the US since taxes
are not included in the price, so the total due is rarely known before
the order is rung up. Processing a card payment is faster, especially
if it's below the merchant's floor, meaning merchants can handle more
transactions with less labor.

Finally, there is a non-trivial cost to securely storing and
transporting cash to the bank for deposit and to keeping enough coins
and smaller notes on hand to make change.

S

--
Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking

On 22/01/2012 17:20, John Levine wrote:
In my actualy experience, the surcharge is $2 or $3. You can decide whether that
counts as hefty, in the context of everything else you pay for a car rental. ...

Perhaps it depends how many tolls you go through, and whether they
consolidate the bill. When I was in a hire car in USA last summer we
went through maybe five or six each way per day on a "road trip". We
were paying cash, but I was aware they had cameras to send bills to
people using the transponder lane without having a transponder.

In the US, some toll highways that have ETC also take cash, some don't. If
you blow through a transponder lane on the Garden State Parkway without a
transponder, you'll get a hefty fine in the mail, because that's a violation.
People without transponders are supposed to use the cash lanes available at
all of their toll plazas.

On the toll highways in Miami, on the other hand, the "toll plaza" is just a
gantry over the road. You can't pay cash.
That is what I saw over the Garden State Parkway and that is what
imagine all toll plazas will eventually look like.