Anyone here that work/ed in/for a post office/shop? I have a question that’s been bugging me and I need that itch scratched. So the local corner shop is also a post office. Not that I’d describe it as such, it’s a manly little 0.5m2 cube next to the tills. Anyhow, if you pay for anything from the shop, booze for example. They put the payment through the post office as a cash withdrawal, take the money out the post office till, and put it into the shop till. Very rarely will they let you use contactless to pay for things from the shop. It has bugged me as to why. Is it just to get out of paying the card processing fee’s? Is it allowed by the post office for them to be doing that?
Interesting. Could be something as simple as they get charged for transactions at some small rate and the post office doesn't (or does but it's eaten by them and not the shop owner), so they put it through as that and take the full sum in readies instead. Could be they get some daft commission rate for post office transactions or the like? Sounds like a pain in the arse though, being kept about waiting while they grind their character up to max level using a transactional glitch.
I’ve seen them do it for transactions less than £2 though, just struck me as odd. And I’ve never seen any other post office/shop do it.
So the post office "payment" is actually a cash withdraw. Will that incur a fee if you were to pay using credit card?
Brrrr, I personally wouldn't buy anything from that dodgy shop. May be doing something "barely legal" with VAT. No contactless or credit card, unless it's very good reason or benefit to me (eg. 10% off), I'll take my business elsewhere.
Asked my partner who works in one of those, and the only conclusion she can come to is if the shops main machine is down they'll use the post offices...
