Try buying airline ticket on a credit card... I think they were going to charge me about £70 in credit card processing fees (straight 5% percentage of the total £1400 air fare).
Credit card fees charged by the processors can be crippling for very small businesses. At the bottom end (very small businesses), credit card fees are typically £20 per month for the merchant account (plus other monthly charges and rental fees for equipment - plus one off setup charges potentially totalling £500).
Then for credit cards they also get charged 25p per transaction plus 5% of the cost of the transaction. Debit card fees are regularly a straight 45p per transaction no percentage (so can actually cost more in fees than a credit card for smaller transactions).
OK, so bigger businesses get better rates than these, but there is clearly no restriction on credit card fees, otherwise I wouldn't have been quoted £70 fees for my airfare! So whoever told you that was misleading you.
Many suppliers will charge you a credit card fee (or more to the point, will charge you for any transaction that isn't a direct debit). Some places don't charge for electron transactions, but do for debit & credit cards.
Tesco, on the other hand, would let me buy a 20p item on my debit card which probably costs them more in fees than they charged me, so are effectively giving me the item for free, once they've paid their fees, but they don't breakdown the cost, so it isn't directly attributed to my sale. As margins get cut though, I'd expect to see more places start to separate out fees so that the consumer has a choice of whether to use credit cards or not.
The other give-away on how beneficial it is to credit card companies to have you use their cards, is that there are companies who'll give you 1% cashback on every purchase you make on the card. They are making enough money to cover this perk, and all other operating costs and still make a profit! This is all at the expense of the businesses doing the selling (normally), since they are often the ones to absorb the cost.
Of course, nothing is free, so whilst it isn't itemised as a fee we are paying, everyone who uses a credit card is being subsidised by those who don't because the company absorb it by keeping the profit margins high enough to make it worthwhile. So we ALL pay extra regardless of payment method!
Some companies were recently itemising 2.5% of the bill cost on a till receipt to their "card processing company", (which I expect was just some tax dodge loop hole), but in those cases the charge was being itemised for you to show you the "cost".
The argument about high / cost low cost areas has no bearing on this. They are markets set by OFCOM and designed to increase competition and stop BT from monopolising the market, and give other companies a chance to install equipment and get a return on that investment. The low cost areas are the ones that were semi-recently deregulated to allow BT to compete again in the most hotly contested exchanges. Basically it costs PN more to buy your broadband, so they need to charge you more (well actually, BT charged the same for high cost areas, it is actually the low cost areas that have reduced in cost, allowing Plusnet to pass that saving on to the end customer).
It seems that TalkTalk insist on direct debit... and BT have charged a £1.50 non-direct debit fee for a long time.
You might not like it, but you do have a choice. You can use a payment method that doesn't cost lots in fees (i.e Direct Debit), or you can pay the £1.50, or you can leave Plusnet and find a supplier who doesn't charge this fee... (but that could get increasingly difficult, unless you go to a supplier who already charge a premium to cover this!)
Mike
ps sorry, I left my computer for lunch and when I cam back found this still un-posted on my screen! DOH! Not going to edit it though, so I post it as is, although several posts have now beaten me to it and I am seemingly just repeating what they've already said!
