Credit Card Surcharge in Veezi

[Ryan Gallagher]

But on the original subject,

I much prefer the concept of "cash discounts" over "CC upcharges". Reward the preferred processing mechanisms, don't give the appearance of punishing non-preferred.

There are even other discounts you can incentivize with too if you feel like promoting or rewarding certain things.
1. Bike in Discounts
2. Public Transit Discounts
3. Emergency Responder discounts (PD, FD, EMS).
4. Military Veteran discounts.
5. Buddy up with another area business?... last stop discounts when a customer on the same day?
6. Birthday discounts?

Most of these would be old school "box office" discounts... almost none of it is really provable or easily implemented via online ticket purchases I would expect, especially 3rd party ticketing platforms.

Assuming of course your contracts permit such flexibility.

[Randy Stankey]

Most of the places I worked didn't have a bespoke military or public service discount but I was always in the habit of punching up a child or senior ticket when the situation warranted.

Other times, the General Manager would use the code word "people" when he saw certain customers. If a well known or special customer came to the counter, the GM would say "He's people," meaning that I should punch up the cheaper ticket.

If somebody who I knew was "people" came to the box office and asked for the manager, I would just send them in. They would come up and ask, "Is so-and-so here, today?" I'd say, "Yeah, he's inside," then just wave them through.

[Dave Macaulay]

Many small cinemas I deal with are "cash only" but they have a non bank ATM in the lobby where they add a service charge that goes to them. I don't know how much those ATMs cost or if the surcharge just covers it vs making a profit, but it is a popular way to avoid getting a CC/Debit payment system at the box office and concession. There's usually a real bank's ATM nearby if patrons want to avoid the service charge.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Cash v.s. card/phone/NFC seems to be a regional thing, although I think that ever since that pandemic thing, things have changed globally. Where the Netherlands were pretty much a cash-less affair pre-pandemic, in Germany, it was quite usual for any small shop or outfit to not take any form of "digital payment". Even at large chains, paying a small sum at checkout via card was often frowned upon. I still even remember being scolded at, at a big truck stop for wanting to pay my 10 euro something with card, probably mostly because the "friendly" lady behind the counter didn't know how it worked... I also remember a few years back, a cashier at a big German grocer, looking at me with considerable amazement when I paid contactless... She had to get a fellow cashier over to check if I actually had paid for my stuff...

While the pandemic certainly has changed stuff and nobody nowadays looks funny at me if I want to pay my 2 euros something with card, for a few "Brötchen" at the bakery, Germany remains one of the few "bastions of cash" in Western Europe. In the Netherlands, I often feel like the strange one, if I want to get rid of the pocket of small change I usually accrue over time... Actually, I start feeling old when I'm the one still pulling out my debit card instead of my phone to pay for something...

I think one major difference between "America" and how stuff generally works over here is that over here, almost everybody pays their small ticket items with a debit card rather than using a credit card. I would never pay for a movie ticket with a credit card, only if all other payment methods would've somehow failed. A debit card doesn't come with all the perks and also a debit card transaction cannot be easily reversed. As such, the transaction rates for those kind of payments can be kept low. And even credit cards around here usually don't come with all the perks those American cards come. Most credit cards around here aren't even real credit cards, but charge cards, so there is almost no interest to be made for those credit card companies. I think those factors help in keeping the transaction costs down and increase the incentive for merchants to accept those kind of payments.

In handling cash, you also have to factor in all the costs you're making. Obviously, if you're running the place essentially alone, like Frank does, those costs are "only your own time", but if you're dealing with employees, you're also looking at other factors, like storing and collecting that cash, including the very real possibility of someone stealing money, fraud and whatnot. Also, by handling relatively big sums of cash, you're making yourself a target for robbery. Ever since banks have started to fully automate their handling of cash, criminals have started to target other, much weaker targets that handle cash and/or expensive goods.

[Mike Blakesley]

I’ve noticed our credit card percentage is climbing. It’s over 70% of our sales some weeks. It used to hover in the 40-50 range.

[Jack Ondracek]

If somebody who I knew was "people" came to the box office and asked for the manager, I would just send them in. They would come up and ask, "Is so-and-so here, today?" I'd say, "Yeah, he's inside," then just wave them through.

After roughly 55 years in this business, I find myself wearing an increasingly curmudgeonly attitude about these things.

People tend to associate intangible products with 'low-to-no cost', which everyone here knows is far from the truth. I ran into the same problem with radio advertising, where a lax trade-out policy could easily cut into your cash flow.

Naturally, the approach usually goes one-way.

I had a substitute UPS driver, whom I'd never seen before, pull up with some packages, and ask for some free passes. I said, "Sure! Can I have some free shipping?"

At a tire store, a counter clerk made the same ask. I said, "You bet. Where do I sign up for the free tires?"

In both cases, these guys looked like I'd hit them in the face.

On the other hand, A local orthodontist, who served my wife and 3 of my kids, asked if he could trade his services for a gift card, dollar-for-dollar, which he gave his kids to use whenever they wanted. In his mind, it helped motivate them to hang out where he knew where they were. I jumped on that offer. It took several years for them to run that card down, but my family came out with great teeth!

The risk with occasional admission gifting, where nothing comes back in return, is that your "friends" get used to the discount very quickly, and expect them in perpetuity. It's amazing, how fast some of them will disappear, if you ever pull the freebie.


Other personal eyerollers for me:

"reasonable profit". What is that, exactly?

"pay their fair share". Another moving target that can be used until it's actually defined, which it never will be.

Back to card fees... bake them into your normal prices, like all your other expenses, and move on.

[Randy Stankey]

At Mercyhurst, there was a doctor who donated money to the school. He was a nice guy who didn't over use his privilege but, when Dr. Guelcher came in and asked for the boss, by name, you just waved him through. The same thing happened at the Tom Ridge Center. There were donors and others who would occasionally come by. If they were "people," you'd be a fool if you didn't just let them go through.

As to the ideas of profit, yes, it's a moving target but one still has to consider what's fair and what isn't. I've got a pair of photos, hanging on my wall that I had printed from slides in Cibachrome. (Ilfochrome.) Let's not debate whether they could compete with the likes of Ansel Adams. I think they are nice and so do others who see them but I'll be damned if I can sell them for a fair price. It cost me about $200 apiece to have them printed and another couple hundred to have them mounted and framed. Just the photos, alone, easily cost $500 each. Consider the gallery fees of 40%. The gallery fees made it so that I'd have to charge $1,000 each but I'd only take home $100 at the end of the day. Is that fair profit? I'm just a local photographer who likes to go out and shoot photos of sunsets and things. I don't presume that I deserve to get as much as a well known, career photographer but I think $100 profit is more than fair. Even at that, I probably lose money! Still, I can't sell those prints, even if I sold them privately for $500, a price which would barely cover my cost.

Let me make it clear. I don't think I've made "The Great American Photograph." I don't think I deserve to rake in top profit. In this economy, I don't expect to get it. On the other hand, don't you think I deserve to decide on what is "fair profit" and stand my ground to get it? I do! I don't think I'll ever sell those photos for the price I need to get, just to break even. Unless lightning strikes, they'll hang on my wall until doomsday.

That's what "fair profit" means to me.

[Harold Hallikainen]

I think "fair profit" would include a reasonable wage and a reasonable return on investment. If someone thinks you are making an excessive profit, they are free to go into the business themselves and reap the rewards.

[James Wyrembelski]

I had a substitute UPS driver, whom I'd never seen before, pull up with some packages, and ask for some free passes. I said, "Sure! Can I have some free shipping?".

Reminds me of the previous owner here. Anytime someone would ask about discounts, typically seniors, he'd reply with: "Yep, same one the gas station gives you".

I miss him

[Steve Guttag]

Fair profit is all relative, isn't it? There are some things were yeah, it only costs you "x" to make it but it cost 1,000,000X to get to the point that you could make it for X. If you don't recoup the investment, you can't make "Y" and so forth. That is the nature of many pharmaceuticals. For every success, there are a bazillion failures or attempts. And, even with successes, you can get into trouble down the line where some undiscovered side-effect costs you a fortune...never mind all of the people that benefited.

Merely "making your own" isn't an option because patents can prevent such ventures. "Generics" are going to be cheaper because they don't copy the failures...only the winners. I'm not defending pharmaceutical company's pricing structure as they clearly have shown that they will gouge whenever possible but we'd have to define what is gouging and "reasonable" profit on a mature item too. Patents are supposed to expire so that once the inventor gets their return on investment, society (which, ultimately, is what grants the patent so that people will put forth the effort to invent/make things) can benefit, long-term.

The perception of value is often in the eye of the beholder but they rarely consider everything that went into the value. It didn't cost you $20 to print a ticket (if a paper was even printed)...but the studio gets its massive cut, the landlord wants money, the government wants money, pesky employees want money...the plumber, electrician, the seat guy the technology that keeps costing money and by god, the person running the business (and takes all of the worry if things are going well) should be able to make a decent living too. There is a lot that goes into a movie ticket. But they'll compare it to a month of Netflix.

[Jack Ondracek]

Some great points here, regarding profit, and (I think) a better one about including costs.

A lot of you understand that it's not just your years of experience that you're expecting to get paid for, when you do field service and installation work. It's also the cost of the test equipment, tools and these days, your stock of spare parts you have to invest in, in advance, in order to arrive, credibly qualified.

Like the cost of a snack bar cheeseburger, there's a lot that should go into working out your rates... and not just what you think you deserve per hour.

Randy makes a good example about his pictures, but I wonder if he did that work with the initial idea in mind he'd sell them for a profit. Maybe he added all that extra value, at least partly, for personal satisfaction as he admired the work on his wall.


I own a 1964 Piper Cherokee. It was originally owned by the theatre owner I grew up working for. An unmodified stock model would be worth, maybe, $16 - $25k today.

Since I bought the plane, I've:

Replaced the lights twice... from original incandescent to strobes to LED
Added Lexan wing tips and "school-bus-type" flashing lights. I'm highly visible at night.
Replaced the timed-out engine.
Replaced the constant-speed prop with a new one, which the plane was modified for before the original owner got it
Replaced most of the panel with new instruments
Added GPS , dual nav-coms and ILS instruments
Added auto pilot
Added 4-place intercoms, which the plane didn't have.
... and some other miscellaneous goodies.

As you can probably guess, I've invested several more times what this plane is worth, turning it into something I enjoy, and can afford to fly.

I will never be able to sell it for anywhere near what I have in it... as an aircraft appraiser confirmed when I had it valued , pre-divorce.

So... the picture story does make sense, so long as you know what you're getting into, going in.

[Randy Stankey]

I've always liked photography ever since I was a kid when my father handed me a K-1000 and said, "Don't break it or I'll break you!" Having my own darkroom was a long-time dream. I inherited my uncle's darkroom equipment and a collection of vintage cameras from my father-in-law.

On the photos, they were taken of sunsets over Lake Erie. One was shot in 1984 when I was in high school, taking photography class. The other was taken, nearly at the same spot, in 2012. The first is a fisherman sitting on a jetty waiting for a catch. The other is of two kids, playing at the water's edge. They are all in silhouette, against a colorful sunset over the water. That's the reason I had them made as Ilfochrome prints.

Did I make photos with intention of selling them? Kind of yes. Kind of no. In around 2010, I joined a local art clique that sponsored gallery events for its members. Photos on display were always offered for sale. I entered some photos in a local art show and won some prizes. I sold a couple-few prints on my own. One of the local gallery owners invited me to put some of my stuff up in his place and I sold a couple there.

Selling photographs was meant, basically, to finance my own hobby. "Own your own darkroom for fun and profit," as the cliche goes.

Y'know, I think I have a book with a title to that effect somewhere in my collection of photography books!

[Steve Guttag]

Now we're comparing pictures to tickets. I think there is a distinction there. A picture/painting is a unique work. It isn't that a picture cannot be duplicated but that would bring up a different set of values (who owns the negative and ultimately, the copyright of the work of art). For unique things, that is in the eye of the beholder. It may cost you $5,000 to create a picture (adding in perhaps permitting, additional labor, lighting...who knows)...and everything else that goes into presenting a picture in what you might consider its optimal appearance. If I look at it and think...sheesh...I'll give you fifty-bucks. You might be insulted or, more likely, we don't see eye-to-eye. There are an unlimited amount of things that other people find VERY valuable that would be completely lost on me...and I'm sure vice-versa.

Now, moving it back to cinemas, if I serve you a 32Oz Coke. There is but so much value-add I can put into that (getting the brixing right, ice to drink ratio, chilled lines (Brad, I'm sure, has a list of beverage requirements). As a consumer, you know what that amount of soda costs in various places. At some point, you feel, even with the captive place of a cinema, it is a bad value or you're getting "robbed." Prepared food gets a little more nuanced. The movie itself is the same, regardless of which theatre or if it is seen in the home. The value-add a cinema can bring is their projection and sound...and, in my opinion, it can be a significant value-add. There ARE some theatres that will draw more than others because of the show they put on. Another value-add is exclusivity. If you cannot get it in the home, and you do want to see the movie, the price at the cinema doesn't seem as far fetched...there isn't another comparison for the movie. Scarcity creates value. The big check on that is if you do have prices that leave the patron feeling that they had a poor value for their time/money, they will not come back or so limit their outings to save money such that it hurts overall business. It is a delicate balance.

[Jack Ondracek]

Steve, I think your points are valid. However, there are exhibition veterans here, who, with some justification, will tell you a presentation is only correct if it is projected in proper ratio, masked correctly, lit per standards and presented in the sound format it was recorded for, with correct volume, equalization and acoustic factors, and watched at ideal distance and viewing angles... in other words, exactly the way it came out of the studio. You could not improve, or "add value" to perfection, but you could certainly short the patron by offering less, which, most cinemas, home theatres and smartphones do, in one way or the other.

Thankfully (?) most patrons don't know what "perfection" is, and the average brain adapts to mediocrity fairly quickly.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Jack, please keep in mind that many of those "standards" aren't really the "unobtainium of exhibition" but rather the minimum standards of operation. I'm perfectly aware that perfection, which is probably something heavily influenced by my own ideas of what this perfection is, probably isn't attainable, but I'd rather not call the bunch of SMPTE, DCI, whatever specs some vendors dreamed up, and whatever else is out there "perfection".

While people's brains may adapt, not everybody is ignorant and I'd say that the state the industry is in shows it perfectly. Mediocrity is exactly what's killing this industry... the lack of any real good movies, worth seeing in a proper theater is one of them. Sub-standard presentations that, in those people's minds, barely justify the premium they paid for seeing the movie in a theater rather than in the comfort of their homes is another one.