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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

Totally disagree. As a customer, I should not have to pay more or less for an application depending on what phone or computer I use to buy it. This would be like charging the customer more when they use an American Express card to buy your product, just because AMEX charges merchants more.

At some point, you have to just admit that as a business you have certain costs that you have to pay to operate. This mentality, that business costs must be borne by customers, is what's leading to all these ridiculous hidden fees and charges at other businesses.

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> just because AMEX charges merchants more.

There are many places that do not even accept AmEx specifically because of their fees. Charging more based on card use has always been a thing until the card companies used their cartel like persuasion to not allow that. However, I'm starting to see stores offer different prices for cash/debit than credit. I thought I remembered this being made allowed again, but it's early still.

You as a user feel like you should be able to buy whatever whenever with whatever mode of payment. That's very convenient for you even though you're the one that has decided to use that particular mode of payment even though you know your mode of payment is an absolute pain in the arse for the merchant. Not having you as a customer is a perfectly valid point of view from the merchant.

I'm actually OK with businesses deciding to not take a certain kind of credit card or them going cash only. Fine, go ahead and lose me as a customer. Just don't nickel and dime me because you're too cheap and stubborn to accept the tiny gross margin difference between one card and an another.

Think of it as a discount in the other direction.

Hidden fees remove any consumer-side pressure on credit cards to lower their costs.

It also creates perverse incentives for cards to pass part of the merchant fees back to the consumer as rewards or even cash. Here in the US, 2-3% cash back is typical, driving consumers to prefer credit over other payment methods.

Meanwhile, merchants are forced to bake the fees into the retail price, causing the paradox that those who pay upfront end up spending more for the same goods.

If Amex started charging 30% fees you'd definitely see people charging customers more.

I agree up to a point. Credit card fees are pretty low, overall, so a business deciding to charge me a few percent more if I pay with AmEx vs Visa feels like they're just being petty. But with the App Store, it's a significant chunk of the purchase price -- a business wanting to pass on a 30% increase in their costs seems reasonable.

It's a ~43 % increase, not 30 %. Apple takes 30 %, so you would have to increase the price by ~43 % to cover it.

You absolutely will eat the extra charges, the question is will you bear the brunt directly with a behavior targetted at you uniquely or will the company just raise the cost of the product for everyone and have everybody pay more even if they get a fat pay day when they don't end up paying the platform overhead tax.

> At some point, you have to just admit that as a business you have certain costs that you have to pay to operate.

Alternatively, you could take Apple's example and charge people an arbitrary amount for the privilege of accessing your business and leave the certainty of certain costs for the shmucks.

> This would be like charging the customer more when they use an American Express card to buy your product, just because AMEX charges merchants more.

I 100% believe this should be the case. It's unfair to merchants to take away an arbitrary percentage of their profits depending on which card you want to use.

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