Hacker News Reader

Comment by FalconSensei | Hacker News Reader

if there's no difference in price, I'm paying card, simple as that

yes. i pay all my CC bills on time and don't incur any fees. So it's no-brainer to pay using card as I get cash-back plus perks like dispute/warranty protections etc if something goes wrong.

The dispute protection is no joke. Once 10 years ago, I bought something from Kroger with a debit card. A few hours later, the merchant charged a whole bunch of random amounts to the card until the total climbed above $1000 and I blocked the card. It took the bank quite some time to get the money back. Thankfully I wasn't living on the edge and didn't have rent due around that time period or else that would have been a much more devastating event. Never have to worry about that nonsense with credit cards.

About 10 years ago I had a similar situation for $500-1500 with my debit card which was pickpocketed in Chicago. I was lucky, Chase put the money back in my account within a couple hours of me calling. Legally I think they could have waited much longer, but they made me whole the same day.

I was a college student, traveling, and generally carried low balances. I was very thankful that Chase handled it the way they did.

They’ve also likely made far more than that in overdraft and monthly fees from my chronically low-balance accounts which often didn't have direct deposit going into them so I’d have monthly fees for the sin of simply “having less than $5,000 and no direct deposits that month”.

It wasn’t the merchant someone placed a skimmer on that machine. It happened to me, but only for $100…my bank caught it instantly. I used a debit card at Home Depot, and an hour later my bank contacted me knowing that I did not purchase sneakers at a Steve Madden store an hour away (I was actually impressed with whatever fraud-detection software they were using) After that I was very wary about using debit cards, but felt better once most had chips on them.

One of the more helpful-to-consumers uses for cellphone and app location tracking

I bought my last phone with my amex and literally dropped it on a rock no more than 6 hours after taking it out of the box. Completely shattered and bricked the screen.

Amex has accidental damage coverage for 30 days after purchase, and they fully reimbursed me for the $300 repair. Very happy about that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com