Anyone else find ED Dental Care's ?1 card fees irritating?

[Beej]

I've been with East Dulwich Dental Care for about 10 years which is a pretty good sign that I'm generally pleased and even though I go elsewhere for my hygiene (I'm very picky), I do highly recommend my dentist Dr Bunmi for all other treatment.

BUT seriously. Why is it that whatever the cost of your treatment, whether a ?19.70 band A check up, or the full ?233+ shebang, they insist on adding ?1 onto every transaction made with debit or credit card? I mean, obviously there is a cost to the merchant, I get this, but to my knowledge this was changed years ago to a relatively small percentage of the transaction value:

"In simple terms the European Court ruling has put a cap on the amount a Card Issuer can charge the Merchant Acquirer for the Interchange fee. In the UK this is set for Chip and PIN transactions at 0.3% for consumer credit cards (i.e. cards issued to private individuals) and 0.2% + 1p for consumer debit cards."

So is ?1 really fair? I just find it one more irritating way to screw your customer. Anyone find else find this annoying or just me?

[Penguin68]

It is clear that a ?1 charge would equate to a bill of ?49.50 for a debit card transaction and ?33.33 for a credit card at the agreed terms (which actually aren't quite the charge to the end-user merchant but to the 'merchant acquirer' who may additionally pass fees to the merchant). So probably a flat ?1 fee means that, at the end of the day, costs are being recouped even though for individual transactions there will be winners or losers. Of course the merchant can't alter the fee for standard NHS treatment, where the charges are set out - although non NHS treatment can be charged anyway to take account of administrative costs. I suspect that if there wasn't a fixed set of charges for NHS treatments then the dentist would simply have set fees to cover costs, so you wouldn't see this 'additional' charge.

[Annie5]

Re East Dulwich Dental Care, has anyone else been told by the receptionist that the deposit they paid towards a treatment is not valid because it is longer than 2 months since they paid it? This happened to me recently. I could not find anything about this "rule" on display at their surgery or on any of their forms .......