What consumers can do when 'minimum purchase' card rules are bent?

While most merchants who accept credit cards adhere to the terms and conditions set forth by credit card issuers, there are retailers who violate credit card issuer agreements. It's up to the consumer to know when those rules are being broken, and to decide whether to make a fuss about it.

Why do merchants break the rules?

Why do some merchants engage in credit card violations? Do they not know the rules, or do they intentionally break them? Some violate the rules to make money at the expense of uneducated customers or to recover merchant fees imposed by card issuers -- both of which are violations of credit card issuer regulations, according to American Express, MasterCard, and Visa credit card operating procedures. (Discover keeps its merchant agreements private.) In other cases, some merchants may be truly ignorant of the rules associated with the cards they accept. Refer to the box below to see what is and what isn't allowed.

Regardless, in the same way cardholders pay interest rates and annual fees and cannot defer card use fees to the merchants with which they transact business, merchants pay fees that cannot be passed on directly to individual consumers. Merchants who attempt otherwise are in violation of credit card regulations and may be reported. In many cases, such violations can be charged back to the vendor by contacting your issuing bank and documenting the incident. "Although MasterCard does not maintain direct relationships with merchants, if a consumer feels a merchant is in violation, the consumer should contact the issuing bank. If that issuing bank reports the violation to MasterCard, we would then work with the merchant's acquiring bank to bring the merchant back into compliance," says Barbara Coleman, MasterCard spokeswoman.

No minimums, no maximums

One of the more common violations, Visa customer service says, is when merchants try to impose minimum or maximum charge requirements on transactions paid with a Visa card. Some rules are not as straightforward. For instance, although asking for supplemental identification is a very common and perfectly legal merchant practice -- vendors are within their rights to ask for identification and proof of a name and signature -- the customer is under no obligation to honor this request, and the vendor cannot make this request a condition of the sale.

As for tacking on fees to credit card purchases, according to a Visa spokeswoman, "To clarify Visa's rules, merchants are not permitted to charge cardholders an additional fee for using a Visa card. However, service stations and other merchants are welcome to offer discounts to consumers who pay with cash or use their debit card with a personal identification number (PIN)."