#233: It's All In The Details (Friday, June 17)

This week, a couple of my experiences made me realize that sometimes it's all about paying attention to the details. My regular lunch spot, a buffet place across the street from the office, usually charges $6.99/lb. That was last week. On Monday I went in, and the price had been subtly raised to $7.59/lb, 60 cents more per pound. No big sign, just an imperceptible change on one sign hanging from the ceiling.

To add insult to injury, this place requires a $5 minimum to use a credit card, so even if you wanted to control your portions and only get a salad (which generally weighs less), if you don't have cash you have to purchase $5 worth of food to charge it.

What's wrong with this picture?

1. It's illegal for merchants to require a minimum purchase for you to use your card, but alas, many of them do because they have to pay fees to the credit card companies. So the $5 minimum should not even be in place. I've threatened to report them to the attorney general a couple times when my lunch has been under $5, and they've let me pay with a credit card, but it's still unacceptable.
2. Even if the minimum payment requirement was taken away, the increase in price is still excessive. If you purchase a pound of lunch each day, that's an extra $3 more each week or $156/year, which is about half the cost of a plane ticket to the Caribbean.

My second experience happened when I was booking my hotel room for an upcoming trip. One hotel was $99, the other was $111. Going for the cheaper one is a no-brainer, right? But it turns out that the more expensive hotel was a 4-star, 4-diamond hotel located more centrally, while the other was a hotel chain that would require more cabs to get around. 

Sometimes it's all in the details, which is why it's so important to read the fine print.