I'm glad it's not just me that has a beef about credit card companies charging additional fees for buying provincial lottery tickets online hete in Ontario. I had an argument with Royal Bank over this very matter just a week ago, and there was an article in the Globe business pages just today indicating that many other people have been outraged by it too.
When you buy a lottery ticket at a corner store, you can use your credit card for the purchase, just as you can for pretty much anything else. It's just a product like any other. If you try to buy a lottery ticket online, through the OLG website - as many people have done in recent weeks in order to avoid risking contracting the coronavirus in a brick-and-mortar store - you can also pay by credit card. But when you check your credit card statement at the end of the month (you do all check your statements, don't you?), you will probably discover a bank charge next to the OLG charge ($3.50 in my case, although it can be as much as $5, depending on the bank).
When I asked the bank about it, I was told that this was a standard charge for online lottery transactions, because they are considered "cash-like transactions". Cobblers, I retorted (in a nice way), it's just a transaction like any other. The bank, probably sorely embarrassed by the whole thing, did not argue, and promptly credited my $3.50 back.
And so they should, because this is a scam pure and simple, and should be knocked on the head as soon as possible.
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