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BRIBE:
n. Money or other inducement offered to persuade
someone to do the briber a dishonest or illegal service or
otherwise act as he desires. |
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THE
TRIANGLE OF DECEIT
AIR
MILES PROGRAMS ARE A FRAUD AGAINST BUSINESS OWNERS. IT MUST BE
STOPPED. RETAILERS MUST SUE TO RECOVER THEIR
LOSSES! |
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THE
BRIBERS:
Under this definition, and those
in every dictionary I have referenced, VISA, MASTERCARD,
AMERICAN EXPRESS, DISCOVER, DINERS CLUB and any other issuer
or participant in the Credit Card or Charge Card industry that
offers Air Miles, cash refunds, hotel discounts or other
inducements or gifts to encourage the use of their plastic
cards is clearly guilty of bribery.
Anyone who accepts such a Bribe (Air Miles)
is also guilty of Bribery, according to the dictionary and by
law (if my understanding of it is correct). In this case, it
causes an "injury" because it is part of the scheme that
deprives the Retailer or Seller of a portion of his
profits.
These bribes bring about a coordinated effort
by both the issuers and users of credit/charge cards to take
an unfair advantage of the sellers, or cooperatively to
defraud the seller. In other words, the Issuers
seek the active help of the Users through
deception, because they do not reveal that the true intent and
purpose of Air Miles and other inducements is to take
an undue and unfair advantage of the
Seller.
As one who has suffered this indignity and
counted his losses, I challenge them to refute me. I
hereby charge the Banking Community with an ongoing conspiracy
in a criminal activity that raids the profits of the
sellers by encouraging the use of plastic and discouraging
other methods of payment that would give the seller 100% of
the intended profits.
While perhaps not thought to
be criminal at this point, it is at least a violation of the
trust between the Retailer (or Acceptor) and these Banks
(Issuers), because it is to the benefit of the Issuers and to
the detriment (loss) of the Acceptors. It is a calculated
deception by the industry leaders and it robs the
merchants or sellers of their profits. (see example
below).
As the Charge Card and the Credit Card business
was first conceived, it was in the form of a triangle, three
willing participants in each transaction, when a plastic card
was used: the issuing agent (usually a bank), the credit or
charge card holder (consumer),and the Acceptor (businessman).
If the Retailer or Business Owners had refused to
participate in the endeavor, the Credt Card business would
have floundered right then and there.
Each of the participants had to trust the other
and work cooperatively, but the merchant was the most
important cog in the machine and took the greater risk,
because he was releasing his merchandise to the customer
before he was paid, and was accepting the word of the
issuing banks that they would pay him. He could continue to do
his business by cash or check, as in the past, but now he was
putting his fate in the hands of strangers, such as American
Express, Visa and MasterCard, trusting that he would receive
his money from them in a timely fashion.
Too often in those early days, that simply was
not the case.
As a matter-of-fact, it was always a worry
when we would receive our money from American Express, because
in spite of their promises payment might come in five or six
weeks instead of four. They then offered to pay us in
five days for a higher percentage of our profits, but
that usually meant seven or eight days. The three day
agree,emt cost a little more, but to A.E. it meant five
or six days.
They were probably loaning our out money
nightly on the float in order to earn fractions of
percentage points on it, taking undue advantage of the small
Retailers simply because they had the power to do so! When
these delays occurred, we were forced to telephone them again
and again to find out when payment would be received.
Ideally, each participant in a business
agreement will act honorably, but that seemed to be far from
the truth on A.E.'s part in the early days of plastic.
They took the largest percentage out of our profits, but were
the least responsible and honorable in dealing with the
businesses that had signed contracts with them; that was
my experience and also my fellow business owners with whom I
discussed such matters. We felt cheated by their
tactics.
Today the trickery is more blatant and
prevalent, both retailers and cardholders have a real bagful
of fraudulent tricks being used against them, such as: stolen
cards, altered cards, fraudulent cards, "returned goods"
scams, etc. And now, the Credit Card Issuers have their own
bag of tricks to deceive the Retailers. It's a dog-eat-dog
world out there, moreso in the credit card business than
anything I have experienced before in my life. Yes, Credit
Cards have spawned many a new industry in the criminal world
and handed the crooks an open invitation to theft, fraud
and cheating.
Not to be outdone, the leading Bankers in the
business seized an opportunity to defraud both the Seller
and Buyers as well, the conning of America and the World.
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When I began to think of the changes suddenly
imposed upon us, the business owners, by the Credit Card
Cartel, without our foreknowledge or our consent, I drew a
diagram like the above in the early nineties. In 1992 they
began encroaching on my business even more than they had in
the past, eroding my independence, and little by little they
were taking control of more and more of my profits.
They already were in virtual control of my
sales, because they made all the final decisions on refunds
and cancelations. If the sale was made by credit card and
there was a complaint, justified or not, someone sitting in
the bank,s office had the power to adjust it or change the
terms of the sale! That someone might be a young girl with no
experience in business, one who had no knowledge of the
transaction. That person could be biased and unsympathetic to
business.
As long as a sale was put on a Credit Card,
these unknown Arbeiters were literally in charge of those
sales for every retail business across the country!
The powerful banks that issued the cards had
their tentacles in the wholesale end of many businesses and
who could withstand this onslaught? Once they were in a
dominant postion with their Credit Cards, they moved right
ahead to suck more blood of the small Retailers. When you
begin stripping their hard-earned profits through subversive
schemes, you hurt those businesses. To me, they appear to be
schemers at heart, not legitimate Bankers, because nothing is
ever enough for them.
If 10% of were sales are on credit cards, they
wanted it to be 15%.
When they hit 15%, they wanted it to be 20%.
On and on it goes, until today they are extracting their
fees on 85% to 90% of the sales from many Retail
businesses.
And, we owe this to a very simple form of
bribery! Great balls of fire, if business owners can't see the
gist of their scheming, then they don't understand simple
arithmetic, percentages or business ethics.
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It's The Most Efficient Form of Taxation Ever
Conceived!
When you examine this clever system, you'll see
that even the U.S. Government isn't nearly as efficient in
collecting taxes as these companies are in extracting their
percentages from almost every dollar spent in the nation's
businesses today. Not only that, but they collect it first,
right off the top, regardless of Sales Taxes or Tax Leins,
etc.! Eventually, as they spread into other countries, perhaps
there they will find laws that will put the brakes on their
sleazey endeavors. However, at the present time, they:
Collect their money up front from the business
owners.
Make the decisions as to refunds in disputes,
not the merchants.
Without warning, they deduct any charge-backs
from the business owners' accounts, even if there are checks
written against the balance.
If it overdraws your account, YOU pay the
returned check or overdraft charges, and it goes as a mark
against your credit. |
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THE IRS
ADDS THE MDR COSTS ON CARDHOLDERS PAYMENTS.
MERCHANTS MUST
HAVE THE RIGHT TO DO THE SAME!
Could this be the key to whether or not YOU can
add the MDR percentage onto the bill for a client pulling out
a credit card?
Why is it that the contracts we have signed with
the Credit Card Cartel forbid us, the merchants, to add a
charge for the use of a card, but the IRS, especially, is
allowed to do it?
Is an exception like this fair? Does it void our
contracts, because of the fact that it is, in truth,
allowed? Can they treat some accounts differently than
others?
This is a question forlawyers to look into, to
investigate, because their greed to take over the collection
duties of the IRS and gain all that interest (versus the IRS
interest rate of 10%) might have opened up a real can of worms
for them. Think about it!
We, the merchants, cannot add the
charges, nor can we refuse a credit card when offered for a
purchase. Yet, IRS can add the MDR charges onto their billings
on a credit card. It that fair or is it preferential
treatment?
As a Merchant, you cannot
afford to accept Visa or MasterCard for merchandise that is On
Sale, because as the profit margin is diminished, the
percentage of your profit paid to the Banks for plastic
increases dramatically.
It simply does not compute.
The idea is to make a profit, even a small profit. It's
certainly not to give it away (or at least a large part of it)
to Citibank or Wells Fargo or American Express, that's not
good business in any sense of the word!
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IF YOU MAKE A 50% PROFIT: 2% MDR TAKES 4% OF YOUR
GROSS PROFIT.
IF YOU MAKE A 40% PROFIT: 2% MDR TAKES 5% OF YOUR
GROSS PROFIT.
IF YOU MAKE A 30% PROFIT: 2% MDR TAKES 6.6% OF YOUR
GROSS PROFIT.
IF YOU MAKE A 20% PROFIT: 2% MDR TAKES 10% OF YOUR
GROSS PROFIT.
IF YOU MAKE A 10% PROFIT: 2% MDR TAKES 20% OF YOUR
GROSS PROFIT.
The issuers of Plastic Bandits are
going to need a lot of good lawyers to defend their billions in
ill-gotten gains in the near future.
A CLASSIC ILLUSTRATION OF THE FRAUDULENT
WAY IT WORKS
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Copyright
© 2006 Howard's Views. All Rights
Reserved.
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