US local phone numbers, English:
Master card
800-627-8372,1,1
Visa
800-847-2911,1,4
Script:
I’m calling to urge you to immediately end your new policy that unfairly targets the adult content industry, making sex workers even more vulnerable. I’m also asking you to sit down with stakeholders- specifically sex workers and adult content creators- to develop solutions that ensure equitable access to financial services, create stability, and reduce harm for sex workers.
And what‘s an underpaid, outsourced call center agent supposed to do? This will do nothing. Stop buying shit with their services.
Don’t know why you’re being downvoted. This IS how you stop it.
For every person who’s civically aware enough to choose not to there are 10 people out there who don’t know or don’t care enough to do the same.
What are we realistically supposed to do? Fax dollar bills to people?
Stop buying things. Go to your bank and withdraw cash. Write checks.
Catch a goose and catch an octopus. Wring the ink out of the goose, pluck a feather out of the octopus, dip the feather in the ink, and write a check like they did in the good old days.
Who the fuck takes cheques? Hell, some places don’t even take cash any more.
People are so angry in here that they didn’t catch the obvious sarcasm.
My mother asked me the other day “does $LocalGroceryStore still take cash?”
I looked at her like she had five heads and said, “yes”
It’s mostly small places that don’t. I think they started during covid so they didn’t have to physically take anything from the grubby customers, and found they didn’t lose much (if any) business over it.
Cash still costs money to handle, either for the time or wages of taking it to the bank, or paying somebody to collect it every day.
I guess it helps that contactless payments are now ubiquitous. Practically everyone has a phone, and readers like SumUp and Square can be had for a few quid.
But then there are places that still only take cash, because it’s easier to hide that from the tax man.
Recently, I’ve actually found the opposite to be true in the US. Smaller places prefer cash because they can avoid the CC fees that they get charged for every single swipe. Many places have a sign at the register that they add an additional ~3% to the bill to cover fees which it can be avoided by paying in cash. I’ve started using cash over the last year to avoid the additional charges, especially for takeout.
We had a card surcharge ban bought in a few years back. The shops aren’t allowed to charge extra, and unless you’re employing family members or not declaring the cash (and for a lot of small takeaways, it’s probably both of those) it probably works out more expensive to handle the cash.
That makes sense. I wish we had that here, but I’m happy they at least are required by law in my state to tell people about the surcharge.
Then stop buying things.
Welp I guess I don’t have bills now. No electric bill, no water bill, no car loan, no phone and internet bills, nope. Captain_aggravated says so.
Your utilities won’t take checks. Sure.
Mine sure the fuck don’t. They will just turn your shit right the fuck off and claim you never paid them since check is not listed as an acceptable payment.
That’s correct. Some of them don’t.
If they seriously ONLY take credit cards and can’t be paid via bank draft, cash, personal check etc. you should be talking to your government.
They suppose to say they need more people to work because they get more calls because of executives decisions.
I think the reasoning is something like this: these companies employ such call center employees for a reason, either they legally have to for one reason or another or they’ve determined that in some way, it is more profitable to have the capacity for people to call them than not. If the call centers are swamped, then they still cost the company money, but their benefit to the company is reduced, because the “real” calls can’t get through in a timely fashion. As such, it’s in the company’s interest to avoid having people spam them, and if the policy those people want changed won’t really cost the company anything to change, then just doing that might be the most profitable option for them.
“just don’t use money bro”
There aren’t any other options than credit cards in the US to pay without cash?
Here are the options:
Some online places accept bank transfers, but that’s mostly for paying regular bills, not anonymous checkout.
There are some fringe ones like money orders (basically cash), cryptocurrencies (very rarely accepted), and Venmo (mostly just food trucks, fairs, and small restaurants).
the card NETWORK is the part at issue; not the type of payment
the same is roughly true for europe and the rest of the world too: payment processors facilitate transactions over various card networks which communicate between banks
a single payment probably involves at least 6 different business facilitating the transaction, and only a couple of them are your bank, and the business you’re paying
There are only 4 credit card networks in the US, regardless of the credit card brand: Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover. Anecdotally Visa and Mastercard are by far the most commonly used and accepted, but I couldn’t tell you why, beyond it often being the default debit card issued by banks.
Lower fees.
I can offer a clue.
Discover was Sears’ in-house charge/credit card. It got spun off by itself but a lot of companies never really started accepting Discover.
American Express, their whole thing is exclusivity. It’s the card you use to pay at fancy places. They charge merchants more in service fees, so a lot of places just don’t do business with them.
It’s funny to me that AMEX is supposed to be the fancy card considering that we accepted it at the rural Canadian grocery store I worked at as a teenager. We also accepted Discover.
A really great gag in Futurama is that American Express survived 1000 years, but still no one accepts them for payment.
It was Discover.
Damn, my mistake.
Fry was too much of a shlub to have an AmEx card.
What happened to diners
cardclub?No, even our debit cards use credit card companies for the actual processing
Ditto for PayPal, ApplePay, and Google Pay.
Gold bullion?
From what I can tell, they’re just trying to replicate what the religious lobbyists did to cause this situation in the first place, so they’ve shown that this works.
They tell their manager. That’s it. Enough of them tell their manager, that manager has to tell their superior. It goes upwards from there.
Their managers are also call center employees who will filter that noise out. That’s one of the reasons to employ a call center.
Then how did Collective Shout cause all of these companies to do what they want with ~1000 phone calls?
Because of a risk of suing. There is no such risk when removing content, but adding content can lead to that risk…
who would sue who? who is being harmed? the crazies sure can’t: what harm have they suffered by mastercard facilitating transactions between 2 unrelated parties?
I’m not saying it from the perspective of collective shout, not even that they would be the ones suing.
I’m saying if a payment processor allows in illegal content, they are in the wrong legally.
While if they rescind some legal content’s availability because of potential risks, they’re not wrong legally speaking.
That’s what my comment was about, in replying to the one above it.
Collective Shout themselves did not need to sue anyone, the threat of outside legal action was enough to make the payment processors cold sweat. That’s why they did it. And that’s why petitions and counter-campaigns don’t have the weight of what collective shout convinced them of…
Because there’s always the hypothetical scenario, what if one of the removed games was actually illegal in some form, and by reinstating it in a new decision the payment processor opens itself up to being sued?
That what if is on execs’ minds.
They couldn’t even win
My dude I am not your enemy I am just stating a fact. Downvoting me is brain dead.
I hadn’t yet (I might now tho) because I understand what you’re trying to say even if that argument is actually nonsense. It’s not even like evangelicals could use a different payment system to replace these companies after they lose from running out of money or getting ignored completely because they can’t actually sue these companies. Especially not for this.
This is clearly another attempt to control steam because other methods failed. 1000 anything couldn’t get visa/PayPal etc. to do something unless they were already in on it. The only reason flooding them 10-100x in calls and emails won’t work is this apart of their grand master plan to get murdered by horny neckbeards. Seems right up Thiel’s alley
I’m not saying it from the perspective of collective shout, not even that they would be the ones suing.
I’m saying if a payment processor allows in illegal content, they are in the wrong legally.
While if they rescind some legal content’s availability because of potential risks, they’re not wrong legally speaking.
That’s what my comment was about, in replying to the one above it.
Collective Shout themselves did not need to sue anyone, the threat of outside legal action was enough to make the payment processors cold sweat. That’s why they did it. And that’s why petitions and counter-campaigns don’t have the weight of what collective shout convinced them of…
Because there’s always the hypothetical scenario, what if one of the removed games was actually illegal in some form, and by reinstating it in a new decision the payment processor opens itself up to being sued?
That what if is on execs’ minds.
Until their manager has to explain to his manager why they are unable to get their regular calls handled. He’s not gonna filter that out.
This all started with a phone call campaign. It can be reversed with one