Credit Card Processing Fee Not Legal in Texas
You may have heard about a settlement last summer with retailers and credit card companies that would allow a business to charge you a credit card processing fee. At the end of January, that became law. Of course, many businesses will continue to believe it is just the part of doing business and you might not have the cost passed on to you (in the states where it is legal to assess the fee).
While this may be valid in many states, TEXAS is NOT one of them. In fact, the other states are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, New York and Oklahoma have some sort of law either limiting or restricting these fees. Recently I have been told that some pet sitting businesses in Texas, including some in The Woodlands, are charging you not only a fee, but sometimes even more than the 4% maximum of the transaction (if you happened to live in a state that allowed it, which again Texas does NOT).
In the state of Texas, the only entity that can charge you a credit card processing fee is the government (for example, for property taxes or other fees). It is not just for businesses located in Texas. No business, including those in other states, can charge a resident of the state of Texas a credit card processing fee. Retailers in the United States cannot assess these credit card processing fees to buyers in other countries either.
We promise to stay on top of laws that might affect businesses and our customers. We value and appreciate you.
To read more about this, visit Visa’s web site at: http://usa.visa.com/personal/using_visa/checkout_fees/index.html
To read more about this from the State of Texas Office of the Attorney General, please visit their site at:
https://www.oag.state.tx.us/consumer/credit_cards.shtml
If you are a resident of Texas and have been charged a credit card processing fee, please use this link to register a complaint. https://www.oag.state.tx.us/consumer/complain.shtml
Cleaning Your Pet’s Teeth
February is National Pet Dental Health Month. People shy away from doing this with their pets, but it is just as important as brushing your teeth with the same risks to their health as it is to yours. Here is a great instructional video on how to go about doing this. It’s never too late to start.
Why You Should Scoop The Poop
In changing over the “going-green” consciousness, the top reason I am finding people do not scoop their yard of dog poop is to let the sun break it down naturally. Actually it is quite the opposite. Ecofriendly dog owners should be picking it up.
The poop contains viruses, bacteria, and other microbes. They will end up in your/our water supply. A heavy rainstorm and water-outlet run-off will end up in the water table. Any water that flows into a sewer goes into a body of water without being treated. Imagine a deer coming up to drink from the stream where your dogs’ waste now resides. Kids might also play in these bodies of water and they are notorious for not being germ conscious. They think, “its water, therefore it is clean.”
Putting it in the garbage is also not an eco-friendly idea as it will wind up in a landfill somewhere. You could use biodegradable bags that are compost friendly. You can always just come home and put the poop in your toilet. Your poop is good enough to be there, so why not your dogs? It then can be treated in the same fashion as human waste.
The Environmental Protection Agency has classified pet waste as a dangerous pollutant, a classification made over 20 years ago. The CDC confirmed that dog poop can spread parasites. Even if the poop is picked up, eggs linger for years. So your dog, your dogs’ toys, your kid, and even you could come into contact with it and risk getting a parasitic infection.
People think dog poop is a great fertilizer. It’s actually toxic to your lawn (just look at the grass and the discolorations), having a high amount of nitrogen. It also likes to form cooperative relationships with other harmful bacteria like E. coli.
If the health side of the equation doesn’t move you, there are communities taking this a step further by imposing a ticket to anyone who lets their dog poop without picking it up. Fees vary per community, but upwards of $1000 can be common.
It might surprise you that in Texas, a state that is heavily Republican and Republicans scream over governmental interference in private lives, an apartment complex in Plano, Texas is keeping track of the dog poop DNA to match it up with your canine. It is not the first community to do it. Some places in New Hampshire and Florida have been doing it for a few years now. The apartment complex in Plano gave residents a time period where they needed to come in and have their dogs swabbed and DNA registered (for free). If your dog has pooped and the DNA matches, you can be fined $250.
We are part of a global community and even though you believe that what you do in your yard should be your business, when it comes to water it is a shared resource. What affects one affects all.
