I canceled my Discover account today. I will no longer accept Discover as a form of payment (ever).

Apparently, Discover has this ‘policy’ that they have arbitrarily decided to enforce: You must first ship the products paid by a Discover card before you can receive payment from Discover. I say “arbitrarily” because there are an awful lot of merchants that do not do this. In my case, I cannot do this, it’s not even reasonable. In fact, it’s stupid and risky beyond belief.

Current cannery ship times are anywhere from a few days to a few weeks or even longer for a freight order. This is worsening too as the canneries get busier and busier. They do not notify me in advance when they are ready to ship, they simply can’t. This would create a gigantic management nightmare for both of us. In fact, nobody does this in the real world.

If I’m lucky, I’ll receive a tracking number which tells me when the order has shipped. Only one cannery refuses to send tracking numbers because I think they’re basically lazy and can’t be bothered, everyone else manages to send them to me just fine.  Discover is lazy too — they didn’t even bother to call me for a week, letting Discover card charges stack up.  Meanwhile, I’m filling and shipping orders that aren’t even paid for.

I also ship out a lot of products myself, having brought in quite a bit of inventory. If we’ve got it (and usually do), it ships fast. But according to Discover, I’m supposed to ship first, then charge the Discover card (and hope nothing goes wrong). Even the canneries don’t operate this way, I’m sometimes charged weeks in advance of the order shipping.

In the real world, you pay for your products first. Then they’re shipped, or special ordered or whatever. This protects you and the merchant. By accepting payment, the merchant has an obligation to deliver. By making payment, he knows you’re not going to flake out and leave the merchant hold the bag. You simply have to wait until they are available and delivered. Discover doesn’t live in the real world apparently.

Once, PayPal pulled this same stunt on me. The sent email indicating the payment I received was all well and good, so I transferred this into my bank account. I then went ahead and shipped the product. Suddnely, PayPal said “Whoops, something is wrong with this payment” and yanked the money out of my bank account. Guess what? I’d already shipped the goods and had a hell of a time getting paid by the jerk who caused this problem.

This is exactly what Discover is asking me to do. This risky exposure is absurd and not worth it. As they say, whatever. Discover this you idiots — take a hike.

None of the customers I contacted today could understand the bizarre behavior demanded by Discover. Neither can I. I suspect that they are having financial difficulties and are trying to lessen their exposure. They may also be trying to protect their brick-and-mortar stores from Internet sales. This may be the real reason too.  I think what they are doing is stupid and defies common sense.