Credit Cards have a 2 to 3 day period before the seller (Fry's obviously) recieves its money. I imagine that if a cashier is able to immediately see that they have a commission then it is because the funds are guaranteed by the CC company.
Since check verification does the same thing, guarantees a check is good (by the check verifier) then a cashier can see the commission immediately.
I can't imagine that a check verifier would single out a company and raise their price to use their service. The amount of volume in checks processed would be the consideration. If Fry's is doing as much business as touted on here, over all the stores, then there would be many checks, and less cost for verification.
These companies will guarantee a check. This means that if they say a check is good, and it bounces, they eat the cost of recovering the funds and Fry's still recieves its money. The companies that I have personally seen that went from non-check verification to check verification had no raised prices and these companies were small (think single owner corner gas station stores). They process less checks, and would be more prone to recieving bad checks, everyone needs gas. According to those owners, their profits increased.
As far as AmEx goes, there was a problem some 10 to 20 years back where AmEx decided on some things. Only AmEx's biggest customers got the benefits of the decision, and the smaller companies got shafted. This is probably more the reason why Fry's doesn't want to do business with AmEx. I could be wrong about it, but a lot of business owners from that time refuse to even consider AmEx. Those who want more information on the details, I will happily research it and post it here.
Posted on Apr 21, 2003, 9:17 AM from IP address 24.214.196.132