This is de rigeur in payments; the brand guidelines for the big three credit card companies have similar things IIRC. They don't want you to say "Visa accepted here THOSE BASTARDS we prefer Amex" or otherwise interfere with their customer relationships while servicing your customer relationships.

There has been litigation around this routinely, including (IIRC) a US holding that says that merchants are allowed to say X is cheaper for them than Y if that statement is accurate.

Edit: that may have been reversed on appeal. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-26/american-...

Maybe it's only my anecdotal experience, but I've seen a lot more merchants lately flat out stop accepting expensive payment methods like Amex, and these were all merchants that I had previously been able to use Amex at before.

Amex is in a bit of trouble for a few reasons:

1. Competing card companies offer much better cards than they used to, and include benefits that only Amex used to provide. For example, Visa Signature and Mastercard's competing product offer return coverage, extended warranties, free rental car insurance, etc.

2. One of the main draws of accepting Amex was that Amex's customer base was more affluent than that of other card companies, but that is no longer the case, partly because of #1.

3. Amex lost the Costco deal. That's a loss of a great deal of credit card fees, and 10% of Amex cards were the Costco card.

The court case was also seen as a blow, but maybe not if it got reversed on appeal. In any case, there are plenty of other problems for Amex to worry about.

Oh for sure! I myself no longer feel like I'm getting as much value from my $450/year Platinum charge card with Amex and am looking to switch to the Chase Sapphire Reserve card, as it's a visa (taken everywhere), has a better rewards program, and provides far more services for that same $450/year annual fee.

I have yet to find any credit card that's worth paying a fee for at all. What do (did) you get for either of those cards that's worth more than $450/year, that you can't get with a $0/year card?

They reimburse me $200/year in airline expenses (I use Southwest primarily, so I just buy Southwest gift cards which get reimbursed, and use them for flights), reimburse me for global entry every few years, top tier status at Hertz, Hilton, and Starwood, free Boingo account, free access to Amex lounges in a few major airports, rental car insurance coverage, etc.

http://thepointsguy.com/2016/01/maximizing-amex-platinum-in-...

I'm old and busy; I'll pay for covenience in life, which is why I've kept the card up to this point.

EDIT: Almost forgot: I have had the need to pay for a friend to be airlifted out of a central american country due to a medical emergency, and Amex was the only card willing to auth a low five figure amount with just a phone call to pay the helicopter fee. I have yet to find another financial provider who'll do that.

I'll probably get them if I keep up my level of travel, the free tsa pre-check, airline expense reimbursement, and benefits at hotels (free spa treatments etc) alone pay for the annual fee.

There is a major high-end hotel chain that has a $495-fee card with similar benefits to those stated for the AMEX card above. And if there are two ways to get something like that, there's probably a third.

fwiw the lounge access on the CSR card is nowhere as good as the amex, as you have to pay for anyone travelling with you. The CSR is comparable, but there are definitely trade offs.

I can't comment on the selection quality, but the Priority Pass which comes with the CSR is good for yourself and one guest. I've used is several times with my partner and no fees were charged.

This is good to know! Thank you!

Just a generic piece of life advice here: you can call up your credit card company and get the annual fee waved, for degrees of difficulty generally south of e.g. getting a bank to waive an overdraft fee. They want their plastic in your wallet if you have a premium card; the most direct incentive is interchange and/or interest and the other one is "We probabilistically pay $X00 [+] to find a new customer of uncertain quality; this bird-in-the-hand is of known quality; let's keep them happy."

[+] Cost of customer acquisition in credit cards is $250 on the low end.

> Just a generic piece of life advice here: you can call up your credit card company and get the annual fee waved, for degrees of difficulty generally south of e.g. getting a bank to waive an overdraft fee.

Interesting. Would you consider it feasible to do so for a card you don't have yet (i.e. obtaining a new card without its associated annual fee), or would you only consider that plausible as an existing customer of such a card?

And does that apply to the large vendors (such as Amex or Chase), or only to smaller ones?

Most people who do it call after they're already using the card. The waivers are generally one-off but some people get a one-off waiver like clockwork every year they ask for it.

I am unaware of any CC issuer in the US of any size or segment which, as a matter of policy, refuses all requests of this matter. It comes down to policies and often a judgment call by a line cSR.

I've got a Gold Amex and a Chase Sapphire, and both pay for themselves each year. Between the monthly/quarterly recurring charges associated with running a startup off your credit cards, travel, and monthly expenses (groceries, gas, etc) we get way more in kickbacks than our yearly fees.

The important thing is that we're not going out of our way to justify the cards, we're simply operating our household expenses the same way we would be on a $0 card.

The difference is we use our points to buy everyone in our family pnice Christmas gifts, can get pre-sale access to shows/concerts (that is admittedly underutilized now that we have three kids), access to airport lounges, double up on hotel points, get discounted airfare upgrades, and things like expense categorization in the web portal. We get frequent discount offers for things we normally purchase, instant alerts for weird transactions that I can handle from my phone.

For us it pencils out. For someone or a family without the recurring expenses we have and doesn't travel very often, it wouldn't be worth it.

This is going to sound like an advertisement but I don't know a better way to state it.

Chase reserve is 300 back in "travel" expenses which include parking/tolls/flights/uber. Assuming you have any of those expenses, it's a 150 card. Redeeming points is 1.5x more value if done through the reserve, travel/restaurants give 3x points. If you spend 4k a year on restaurants/travel, you'll break even.

So why get it if I have to spend >4k to break even? Because there is (was?) a 100,000 point signup bonus worth 1000 dollars cash or 1500 dollars in flights/more if transferred for a ticket. I'll break even on the yearly fee just from flights that I'm taking so it's 1000 dollars for "free".

If you're a chase ultimate rewards user, you should have the csr for the 1.5x redemption. If you like free money, you should have the csr and meet the spending requirement for the bonus.

By fiddling with credit cards, I'll save over 3k this year while traveling. There are people who do far, far more.

People already listed some of the perks, but: in general you choose a card based on things you already are doing (flights, hotels, etc.) so that the perks of the card are worth as much or usually more than the annual fee you pay to keep the card.

For people who travel a lot, for example, an annual travel credit + Global Entry fee covered + lounge access + redeemable points from spending on the card provides much, much more than $450 in value. Back when I flew more than I do now, several of the available cards had returns for me well above the cost of their annual fees.

> What do (did) you get for either of those cards that's worth more than $450/year, that you can't get with a $0/year card?

I have a Barclays Aviator (old US Airways, now American Airlines) card, and although it has a $195/yr annual fee, I get $100 back for renewing my Global Entry card. This is in an addition to free checked baggage on American Airlines flights and group 1 boarding.

I usually fly enough that it pays for itself with the bag fees alone. The extra 1 year warranty on purchases has also saved me as well.

The other nice thing about Barclays is that as far as I know they're still the only issuer of credit cards to US customers which will actually do chip-and-PIN (as opposed to chip-and-signature on every other credit card in the US). Which means when you're traveling you can use that card at places which only do chip-and-PIN.

Sapphire reserve gives you at least $1,500 up front if you spend $4k in first 3 months, and you get at least 4.5% back on restaurant and travel for a card that costs $130 per year assuming you use travel credit and global entry.

For many people traveling and eating out, the 4.5% will easily cover the $130 expense and so you easily make up the yearly fee.

There are several $0/year cards that give you back 2% on every purchase, so in comparison Saphire card gives you 2.5% on travel/restaurants and -0.5% on everything else.

That's why I don't use sapphire reserve for stuff other than travel and restaurant.

I pay for my amex and it pays for itself within the first couple months of each year. Great points structure and the fact that they pay airline baggage fees makes it a no brainier.

My last several apartments have all allowed me to pay my rent with a card. Which is nice, because it's been easy to hit the spend thresholds of premium cards and kick in all the good benefits.

Since I switched a while back from flying American to flying Delta, I looked into getting Delta's branded card, which is Amex... except my current apartment doesn't take Amex for rent payments. So I'd be unable to hit the thresholds to make the card pay for itself.

So that's the big three credit card companies disrupting PayPal, basically.

Well, if I can't "mischaracterize PayPal as a payment method" then how can I "treat PayPal's payment mark at least at par with other payment methods offered"? Their use of "other payment methods" would imply to me that they consider PayPal also to be a "payment method" though I suppose they might want to call it Bob instead.

I can just see it now: "PayPal is not a legitimate payment method! If you doubt this, see their Terms & Conditions where they explicitly state that you may not 'mischaracterize PayPal as a payment method.'"

Someone did a really crappy job of phrasing.

>> Someone did a really crappy job of phrasing.

Legal work is an area of life where one should not apply Hanlon's razor by default. Not one comma or period in that work went unscrutinized by highly compensated executive talent at PayPal and any ambiguity you find is deliberate. Assume malice.

This can't be understated.

My wife is a mid-tier firm attorney in (a field). Any contract generally has a low-level associate take a pass at the material, which she then scrutinizes, polishes, etc. and then shares with her supervising attorney, who also scrutinizes and polishes. This is then shared with the client, who has their own staff to scrutinize, who are relevant executives, content experts, and often in-house attorneys of their own.

Several iterations of this cycle are the bare minimum. Because this process involves low-tier associates being taught by upper level attorneys, the "basic" stuff that top experts take for granted gets scrutinized and explained, as well, so even the parts you think of as "stock components" are being carefully looked over and considered at length.

There isn't a single word in those contracts that hasn't been reviewed by at least a half-dozen experts.

I'll note that what we're all reading is not changes to the User Agreement - it's a summary of coming changes. I went looking, and as far as I can tell the actual revised agreement is not currently available on PayPal's website - only the agreement currently in effect and this summary of coming changes.

In fact, we do not get to see the actual changes to the legalese until they go into effect, or that's how I'd read the current agreement (emphasis added by me): "We may amend this user agreement at any time by posting a revised version on our website. The revised version will be effective at the time we post it. If we change the user agreement in a way that reduces your rights or increases your responsibilities, we will provide you with 30 days’ prior notice by posting notice on the Policy Updates page of our website."

So apparently we get to see vague and/or possibly misleading summaries and make our decisions based on those, but we do not get to see the actual text prior to deciding. I originally had hopes that we'd get to see it around the end of February (~30 days before it goes into effect), but the statement I italicized above indicates that we don't.

It's still an ambiguous construction in the middle of a standard form contract, which is bad news for whoever drafted the contract in many legal systems. And from my experience of lawyers, highly paid or otherwise, incompetence is just as plausible an explanation for their bad work as anyone else's.

I think they mean mischaracterising PayPal in its capacity as a payment method, rather than mischaracterising PayPal to be a payment method.

"you agree not to mischaracterize PayPal as a payment method"

English is not my first language, does this mean that by calling PayPal a "payment method" i mischaracterize it? (is it a .. payment service .. whatever?) Or does it mean that I agree not to "mischaracterize" PayPal in general because I don't like it? (then why would I offer it)

Your english is good. It's very unclear what it means as the sentence can be parsed different ways. That suggests that either their lawyers are incompetent and shouldn't be let near a contract, or they are are competent and therefore are intentionally trying to fool their customers.

It's probably incompetence though since this can work both ways. If PayPal tried to bring legal action with this clause, the first defense one would look at is to simply respond, "Where did I say it was a payment method? The clause says I can't mischaracterize it as a payment method, and I didn't."

In any case as it reads most simply it says you can't call PayPal a payment method. I doubt that's what they really meant to say.

It can only be parsed different ways under incompatible assumptions about whether PayPal is a payment method.

If it actually is a payment method (as their lawyers undoubtedly take as a given), then it limits mischaracterization to aspects of PayPal that do not involve its character as a payment method.

Only if you already believe it is somehow "not a payment method" does the other reading make any sense.

I also interpreted it as "PayPal is not a payment method" when reading. Legal statements shouldn't rely on out-of-contract context to parse

IANAL, but it's not exactly "out-of-contract." The term "payment method" appears 49 times in the User Agreement[1].

Having said that, a quick skim suggests the term is used inconsistently. Sometimes it refers to PayPal as a payment method, other times it refers to the information you enter into PayPal (ie credit card, bank account, etc) as payment methods. This is because PayPal is both a payment method itself and a wrapper service for many payment methods. For example:

  Your PayPal balance, if you used your PayPal balance as the payment method or a bank account as the payment method, once the money clears the bank.

So while it is confusing, I don't think you'd get very far with the "PayPal is not a payment method" interpretation.

1: https://www.paypalobjects.com/webstatic/ua/pdf/US/en_US/ua.p...

That is not correct. When one contracting party is in a superior position, courts consistently rule against the drafter of the agreement when there is ambiguous language. It's a long held legal principle taught in contract classes at law school.

Glad to hear that.

They ordinarily don't. A normal contract - and most EULAs, even - include explicit definitions before a term is used repeatedly.

e.g. The party receiving payment ("seller") shall...

This one didn't.

I was confused by this language too. I think it means that in the context of PayPal being a payment method, you agree not to mischaracterize it in any way.

English is my first language and I find the wording confusing as well.

Part of it seems to be saying you can't charge people extra fees to use paypal.

I know sellers sometimes try to do the same thing with credit cards, charge extra fees to credit card users.

Could I try to get around this by offering two "different" (sharpie a red dot on the bottom of the lamp) items, one you can purchase with paypal and another you cannot. Can Paypal require you to accept paypal on everything your business sells?

I usually just do the opposite. I mark everything up knowing that somewhere a cut will be taken.

If you have to pay me cash, then I just make more on that transaction.

If you're able to sell something at the same rate with an increased price, you should've been doing that before you heard about the credit cards' cut.

You're forgetting the convenience factor that the payment service creates in the market.

Let's say I sell trinkets for $10/each online. They are nice trinkets, but no one really needs my trinkets. No one is going to send me a money order in the mail for a single trinket for $10. Basically, there is no online market at all, unless I can make it easy to buy my product.

But if I charge $11/each and accept Paypal (or credit cards in general), I now have a real market for my trinkets. People like my trinkets, so they will gladly click on a Paypal icon and send me the money that way.

Now my trinkets are somewhat popular. A couple times a year someone stops by my workshop and asks to buy a trinket in person. I still charge them $11.

I read that regarding all your PoS that Paypal is about to enter into direct competition with e.g. Apple Pay and others.

Also, I read that they will raise costs soonish.