For more information on gear deposits, please read the renter-required reading on our How It Works page. This page describes our use of a cash discount system.

Cash Discount

All amounts charged from adding an item (for a physical good, digital good, or service) to your cart on this site and subsequently checking out on this website are charged through a typical credit/debit card processor similar to just about any other processor online. However, our deposits and some additional fees are charged through a cash discount program.

This means there is both a cash price (if you are local and able to pay with cash) and an online price for deposits, and that all charges charged from your card information that is given to us either over the phone if we call or online through our manual invoicing system for the deposit information will have a 3.5% convenience fee added to the total. While this fee can be avoided by paying cash, this fee will also be refunded in full along with the original deposit return amount owed back at the end of the rental. If we use this system to charge for other types of fees, manual extensions, or other payments with your express permission and/or in accordance with any terms and conditions you have agreed to with respect to your rental or purchase from us, this 3.5% convenience fee will apply unless the full amount is paid in cash.

What and Why?

Cash discount is a particular way or type of credit card processing. In Q2 2021, credit card companies stopped refunding their fees even when we refunded the customer. This meant all fees charged by the credit card companies were permanent, even if we needed to accept a return. For a rental business, this obviously wouldn’t have worked since credit card fees on the deposits are roughly equal to the rental amount itself. Therefore, upon refund, we would have been breaking even on the transaction, with no margin for any operating costs.

Thankfully, we discovered the cash discount program, through which we’re legally required to charge a separate transaction fee not included in the listed price, but also through which we must waive this fee if someone elects to pay in cash (hence, a cash discount). Most people are familiar with these programs at establishments such as gas stations. Our reasoning for moving to a cash discount program is not to charge our customers additional fees (after all, we do not get these fees, and they all get refunded anyway in proportion to any refunds we give on transactions such as deposit returns). But the reason this is special is due to the fact that these fees are eventually refunded in the event of a refund on the transaction — something that is no longer possible with traditional card processing. We thank you for understanding our decision to move to this new system that ultimately benefits everyone, even if the process is something new to get used to.