This is a good point, but I think maybe a little misguided. While it is true that one CANNOT possibly enter into a legally binding contract for anything illegal, I am positive this is not the case in Houston, Texas or anyplace else. Every club I've worked for in several years has had the same reason for charging a fee over the price of dances when customers use credit cards: When a customer chooses to use his credit card to pay strippers for dances, he has to have the club process the payment for him. He 'bought' the dances from the dancer, not the club, but the club offers a sort of 'resale' service in which the dancer effectively sells her dances at a slightly discounted rate to the club, which the club in turns resells to the customer at a slightly higher rate, which is called the 'surcharge' or 'service fee' or 'processing fee' - but it is in fact technically a RESALE fee. When the customer signs the tab and credit card papers, he is agreeing to the fee in exchange for the club acting as reseller so he can pay for the dances with a credit card. Also, normally when a customer pays with cc for dances, the club must issue some kind of tangible product which they can give either to customer if he is just 'getting money to use for dances', or to the dancer if he already owes her for dances. That tangible product is what we call funny money - may vaguely resemble US dollars but in different colors and with the club logos, etc. If a customer already received dances and just needs to process the payment on his cc, he may never see the funny money, because it may be handed directly to the dancer (since the club is acting as her reseller).I think most of you are missing the point here. If it is illegal to add surcharges to cc in Texas( I have no idea if it really is). The clubs may have a problem. No amount of signatures, fingerprints, or blood samples can change that. A person can not enter into a legally binding contract for an illegal activity.
In the case of clubs that always have customers pay for dances through the bar, cash or not, the setup may be slightly different, but the effect is the same. The club of offering the sale of the service and 'buying' that service from the dancers at a wholesale price, then reselling it to customers at full retail.
Theoretically speaking, if an enterprising dancer wanted and was able to pass the application process and maintain a good account, in clubs where customers pay dancers directly for dances on the floor, she could set up her own merchant account and carry a small wireless cc processor to process her own cc payments from customers. Of course it may be much more difficult to convince customers she wasn't going to rip them off, since customers seem to trust dancers even less than clubowners; and she may have a higher chargeback rate than a club when customers see a charge on their statement from something called 'FIFI'. But there's nothing illegal about this, although maybe a bit impractical! Ha, imagine a bunch of strippers walking around with little cc machines strapped to their garters! Or better yet, a device where a customer could just swipe his card between her breasts, and if the charge is accepted, her nipples flash green (red for declined). Hehe, maybe my wildly vivid imagination is running away with me here......![]()
Anyway, the point is that the cc 'surcharge' isn't technically an illegal charge - it is a resale charge which has been widely accepted as common business practice all over the world for centuries. That guy doesn't have a leg to stand on. I wish I could be there to laugh at him!




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