[_wo6a]

I used to work at a retail outfit that used the really old-fashioned credit card system involving carbon paper slips and handwritten amounts, which would be entered into a credit card processing system at another location at a later time. We could have essentially charged whatever amount we wanted, and this was fairly apparent to anyone who paid via credit card. And yet, out of every thousand people who go to pay with a credit card, I could probably count on one hand the people who express any serious concern about this fact.

Businesses have an incentive in maintaining their reputation and not getting into trouble with payment processors, and I generally think people assume any business approved by a payment processor is probably sufficiently low-risk to give a credit card.

[notatoad]

any business approved by a payment processor is essentially zero-risk. if you ever get an unauthorized charge on your credit card, it is trivially easy to have the charges reversed.

[TylerE]

and I wonder how many of that handful would realize that paying by check has even larger issues?