LOL! You do realize that literally everything you buy has 3-5% extra baked into the price to account for the credit card FEES. You pay fees with every purchase you make unless you buy from a cash only place or Pinball Resource. The only reason the credit cards can afford to give you a little "reach around" with some miles or points is because they are taking you from behind for two or three times the "rewards".

Back in the old days they had to run your credit card through the machine with a carbon copy and paperwork to be filed. I can kind of understand 3% back then. In this day and age of electronic transfers, these fees are insane. The credit card companies could make a killing on 0.3% if they did away with the rewards and actually put a tiny bit of effort into stopping cards from being compromised.

True, you might as well. I receive tons of Hilton points from my Amex and cash back from my Discover. I use them as much as possible unless there is a cash discount. On the other hand I do understand that those rewards are somewhere around a third of the *fees* they are charging the me and the businesses for the use of the card. That cash back, skymiles, Hilton Points, etc, etc are a really, really bad deal in the long run. I would love to have a business where I do nothing all day but hand people one dollar for every three they hand me.

Yep it sucks, but that is the way things are. The 3-5% is built in to almost everything we buy because it is just simpler on everyone. Convenience has a cost.

I agree with this in part, but you are not getting it all back in points. Ask anyone who owns a business. The credit cards charge a fee for all credit card purchases. Plus they charge fees for the equipment, etc. To that business the added expense of taking credit cards is simply extra overhead that gets passed onto the customer by making all the items cost more. So yes, cash and credit prices are the same. They BOTH have the extra credit cards fees baked into the price to make things simple. That is kind of ironic at this point that people paying cash are in essence paying a credit card fee!

Fact is that the credit card companies don't want you to understand this. Those rewards they give you are small compared to the fees that you pay on every purchase. Like I said above, I do everything I can to maximize my rewards and I use credit for almost everything. It still costs me extra every time I buy something - except in a cash only business. Minimizing the cost is what counts.

https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/california-court-ruling-no-card-surcharge-law.php