The same act is legal in one state and forbidden in the next, which is a large part of why it reads as ordinary cost recovery to some shoppers and as a bait-and-switch to others. Surcharging credit card payments was broadly barred in the United States until a 2013 class-action settlement with the card networks let merchants in many states start adding it. The patchwork it produced has never tidied up: the Durbin amendment to the Dodd-Frank Act keeps surcharges illegal on debit cards, so the identical tap can be free or not depending on which card is in your hand; Colorado repealed its own ban in 2021 while Kansas considered one and declined; and New York passed a law requiring merchants either to disclose a surcharge fully or to stop charging it. Disclosure is the practical flashpoint, since a shop may have no sign at all, or one posted somewhere other than the till, so the customer meets the fee at the moment of payment rather than at the moment of choosing. Hence the shape of the polling: a majority would make the fee illegal outright, but twice as many again would settle for it simply being folded into the shelf price.