I just read several articles about Visa, Mastercard, and AMEX not accepting sales from online tobacco retailers. Looks like they are really going overboard now. How is this going to affect Mr.SNuff and Nicotine Rush after thier move overseas. I just ordered from Nicotine Rush last night using a pre-paid Visa, but how long till they ruin that too? I’m really fed up with these bastards. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9800E3DD1E3FF937A35757C0A9639C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2
Hence the rise of E-Checks. EDIT: Visa, Mastercard, AmEx, Et. Al. have every right to restrict what you use THEIR card for, it’s their business. Soon enough E-Checks will be the main mode of Internet purchasing for Tobacco.
Yup…seems like we’ll be forced in that direction before too long. it’s bad enough having the moronic government telling me what to do, but now the credit card company gets to tell me how to spend my money as well. Oh well…at least for the time being my prepaid cards are still working. I’m seriously considering recruiting for an uprising, not that it would do any good
It is your money, but it is their card, they are providing the service. Trust me, I hate the CC companies as much of the next guy, but at the end of the day they are a service provider and I have to abide by their rules.
@chris, the way I see it is that I pay my bank for the services they render. I invest my money with them, I keep a cheque account, savings account and several investments with them. I’m doing this out of my own free will. I’m spending my own money whenever I use my debit or credit card. The credit card (VISA) I use was offered to me by my bank, I did not ask for it. If they should ever tell me how I should spend my money, I will tell them to go to hell. I don’t owe them money, they owe me. So I will dictate, not the bank. I do not use internet banking because of all the fraud. Very dear friends of mine had all their accounts wiped clean not long ago because of internet banking. They had to close both their businesses and go and find jobs else where. The husband is bancrupt now. This is an aweful lot of shit going on. Seems as if the intention is to kill the goose who lays the golden eggs.
I’m not arguing that the money in your bank is yours to use at will, this is the beauty of E-Checks. However your Debit/CC, while it is your money, is still being transfered through VISA. VISA is giving you the convenience to use their service for purchases. It is the same with PayPal, it is a service for your convenience. None of these things are rights. With E-Checks, you are back in the drivers seat. You can send money at-will, since it is the same as writing a check, just paperless. Your bank cannot tell you how to spend your money.
Damn I had made mention in Dave’s e-check thread that I thought I’d heard rumblings about this. deep sigh of resignation… followed by a grumble of “daft bastards”… While I appreciate that the issuing banks are providing a service and hence are within their rights to decide how that service will be used it’s still such a load of rubbish. If you consider the goods and services that can be paid for with a credit card without question, oh I don’t know, porn and such as example, but to raise a stink over tobacco… deep sigh
I really can’t see how a credit card company could legally interfere in legal commerce anyway. I think that’s even in Magna Charta.
well over here it applies. Different kettle of fish in the US
what is their motivation? false morality?
O.k. It looks like I owe a but of an apology. I failed to notice the tiny date of the article in the link I was sent…this is back a few years. I sincerely apologize for overlooking it. I humble myself in preperation in the oncoming curses. However, in some other tobacco forums there are discussion that this is currently be discussed to be resurrected. I apologize for miss the tiny date on the link, it was not my intention to mislead anyone or be sensationalist. I will now accept any name calling and scolding deemed necessary
Hey at least no one thought their parents might be dead. About two or three years ago my parents went on vacation to alaska they gave me the wrong return date so when I called them at home and got no answer for two days. I thought lets check out the newspaper see if there is some reason for the delay. The year before at about the same time of year (month and numerical day)a couple about the same age as my parents as well as from the same state and county died in an accident. For the few seconds before I saw the year of the article it caused a little bit of a panic. Just saying it could always be worse.
@ the nose knows: you should be drawn and quartered for that lapse. getting us all worked up like that as though our plate weren’t heaped high with bad news everyday.
By now we should notice that whenever some silly road block is put in the way to force us to live in some predictable formulaic way, we find a way around it. It is impossible to truly force humans to operate as robots. No worky.
The big tobacco companies probably paid off the credit card companies so they wouldn’t allow credit card purchases of tobacco. A small price to pay to keep their brick and mortar tobacco monopoly, as more and more of their profits were being lost to the growing internet tobacco trade.
More likely the pharmacy industry paid them. More or less, they already do, indirectly (Procter & Gamble´s Mr Clean appeared in a Master Card commercial).
I know that Mr. Snuff has gift cards you can buy!!! So my legal mind is thinking that you purchase gift cards from Mr.Snuff then buy yur tobacco!!! Might just be a neat little loophole!!!
I buy MasterCard gift cards at my federal credit union $200.00 a pop. I use them instead of credit cards for online tobacco purchases and anything else I want. I leave the credit cards at home don’t need them. I can purchase up to $1000.00 gift card and it only cost a $3.00 service charge.
This seems to be an American-specific thing? I just got off the phone with both Royal Bank (VISA) and Bank of Montreal (Mastercard) and neither of them have any issues with me charging a tobacco purchase to their cards. They say if I have trouble, it is the vendor or the vendor’s payment gateway system that is at fault. So, Canadian VISA and MC seem ok, which suggests to me that there is something else going on that is very nation-specific. E-checks, on the other hand, appear to be an issue for me, as none of my banks or credit unions offer this service. I can email money somehow, once I set it up (pay to an email account??) but no “electronic cheque” - the banks have already told me to pay bills electronically using their electronic transfer service, but that requires the vendors to be pre-registered in the bank database. The database is full of the typical credit card, utilities, etc. type of “vendors” but certainly no snuff suppliers. Geraldo
Geraldo, you are correct, it is a gateway issue. The cards companies themselves have not made this rule. This seems to be a running misconception. This is why some places will accept a US CC and others won’t. I don’t understand much beyond that.