on hold with amex fraud services

[Dauphin]

In the UK the merchants were covered for everything where the customer was present.

The issue was, merchants had to buy their own PoS machinery. Any change to chip and pin would incur a cost. A card issuer might want to move to offering chip and pin to win customers, but the card issuers all use the major card processing networks. They couldn't get it into shops without having a critical mass of customers that would mean a merchant had to upgrade to chip and pin or they'd lose too much business. And shops wouldn't move to the new PoS computers unless they were going to miss out on a huge proportion of cards. And customers wouldn't move to a chip and pin system that they couldn't use anywhere.

Which is why I think the market imperative isn't there for it to evolve naturally, takes a slight regulatory push. Which actually the card issuers and major processing networks welcomed because it increased their profits and most of the costs born by merchants and card issuers.

In that scenario, I think KH's earlier point of coasian equivalence was that if the cost of implementing the chip and pin fell on merchants, but implementation was a benefit to card providers, then card providers would pay the merchants up to the value of that benefit in order to get them to adopt the system.

[Flubber]

If he's saving 100K per year, then there's not much impetus to eat frugally and save 110K per year

QFT

I LIKE going out to dinner-- It sounds like KH does as well-- Whats the point of making good coin if you cannot enjoy yourself a bit?

[MikeH]

Unless it's cheaper to get some regulatory body make the merchants pay for it themselves.

[Flubber]

For a normal dinner I'm usually between 35$ and 120$ (for two, including drinks, tip and tax). Depends on the place, whether or not I'm drinking, etc.

Thats not that much . . . -- WE are usually in the 60-100 range for Mrs Flubebr and I at any mid-pice place we like-- If we go to the nicer places and have some drinks its usually over 100 and sometimes around 250--- Most expensive meal I had was when we did a chefs menu with wine pairings-- It was something like 8 courses and they had an all inclusive price of 225 per person

[Flubber]

Still no chip and pin over there?

WE have them in Canada-- still some places don't but in about 95% of businessess its what you do

[The Mad Monk]

QFT

I LIKE going out to dinner-- It sounds like KH does as well-- Whats the point of making good coin if you cannot enjoy yourself a bit?

[MikeH]

Dinner costs:

£20 to £200 a head for me and the wife including drinks. Which is $60 to $600 on KH's metric.

[The Mad Monk]

$20 on the low end for me, $75 on the high end.

[Flubber]

In the spirit of making Albie's head explode, I spend close to $100,000 a year on my credit cards. I also save over $100,000 a year.

In the spirit I thought Albie should know that when we do not have other paper on hand we start our campfires with an assortment of $5 bills

Cost of starting the fire $50
Toasting marshamallows with the family around a roaring campfire-- priceless

[MikeH]

$20 on the low end for me, $75 on the high end.

Unless it's a CG meet?

[MikeH]

$600 would be a special occasion, michelin star tasting menu + wine matches type thing.

[MRT144]

Wife and I don't go out for dinner very often, but when we do, it's mostly in the 50-200 dollar range. Lunch on the other hand...We go out to lunch a lot and we usually keep the bill under 25 bucks.

We sock away 10k a year, but my wife works part time and we go on 1 week to 2 week vacations every year.

[MikeH]

We don't go out much due to the baby but what's the point of saving if you can't enjoy life now?

[KrazyHorse]

We ran up about 80k of spending on our cards over the last 12 months...

[MRT144]

We ran up about 80k of spending on our cards over the last 12 months...

60k was spent on king bed size chinchilla sheets.