Credit Cards, Redux (It is still not about you)

Yesterday, I wrote about my frustration that I could not find a small business that would sell me breakfast and let me pay with my debit card. I want to riff on that for a moment, if you don’t mind.

If you run a business, you have the right to decide up front how you want to do business. For many of us, the ability to make those sort of decisions was why we went into business in the first place. However, if you decide that you only want to do business with one eyed midgets that speak Rumanian, do not be upset when the chain store that wants to do business with everyone takes all your business including the Rumanian midgets.

There are hundreds of reasons for someone to NOT do business with you or your firm. I do not understand why you would want to add another one. In any shop I ever ran, I was more than happy to take any form of payment you wanted to give me, as long as I had a reasonable hope of being able to deposit it. My thinking was that it is always easier to sell to someone the second time than it is the first time.

You see, the business owner was thinking short term: He was looking at losing about 50 cents off a $7 transaction. However, that is false economy: Over the course of a year, I spend about $900 on breakfast in greasy spoon diners, and now none of that will be spent in any of those three places. He saved 50 cents, but lost $900.