Credit Company Launches Attack on Gun Lovers, Refuses To Process Orders in Gun-Related Purchases
This is one anti-gun effort that’s already backfiring.
Some gun-related businesses have been left in the lurch after the credit card processing firm Intuit abruptly decided not to process payments for the companies’ products, apparently because Intuit thought it was helping gun deals directly, according to a New York Post report published Monday.
Even when the payments were for non-gun products like T-shirts, or participation in gun-safety classes, Intuit declined to process the transactions and returned the money to the purchasers, the Post reported.
One of the companies that was targeted, Gunsite Academy in Paulsen, Arizona, was told Inuit took the action because it “mistakenly believed firearms sales were being made directly to customers,” according to the Post.
According to a May 18 article published by The Truth About Guns, Gunsite Chief Operating Officer Ken Campbell said Intuit’s credit card processing arm, Quickbooks, had decided it was “immediately ceasing all business with them. Why? Because they sell and promote firearms.”
Apparently, Intuit is unaware that gun sales of the kind Gunsite deals in must be handled through a business with a federal firearms license – in other words, these businesses don’t deliver guns to individual doors like pepperoni pizzas.
Intuit, like every privately owned company, has a right to decide who it will do business with, but according to The Truth About Guns, Intuit’s decision left the companies affected by it in the position where they weren’t getting paid for products and services that were already rendered – even if the customers themselves had made the payments that Intuit didn’t send on.
“QuickBooks/Intuit refused to release the money from credit card charges currently in process from sales that had already made,” the Truth About Guns reported.
“Instead, Intuit stated they would refund those monies to the credit card holders. That means revenue for everything from pens to five-day level 250 pistol courses had just became door prizes, provided free to people who had the benefit of the training and took home products, all courtesy of the Intuit’s largesse.”
Intuit did not return New York Post requests for comment. the Post reported. Comments by the company’s spokesman published with the Truth About Guns didn’t address the primary concern, that gun sales are handled through businesses with federal firearms licenses, not direct deliveries.
The company was checking into sales that weren’t related directly to guns.
Whatever the reason for the Intuit decision, it’s gotten a storm of criticism on social media – and drawn threats of potential boycotts of the Intuit-owned TurboTax tax return software.
.@Intuit, WITHOUT WARNING, stopped processing credit card payments because sales were gun-related. "As a result, the businesses had to scramble to track down customers to get them repay their bills." https://t.co/WMRppa1Xjg
— NRA (@NRA) June 11, 2018
This happened at Gunsite for everything, including tshirts and logo cups. Intuit also accused them of illegally selling guns to kids, which they don’t do. A disgrace. https://t.co/iXIR6R62qr
— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) June 11, 2018
https://twitter.com/LJSpagnoli/status/1006225333060714496
What’s a good replacement for TurboTax?
— 𝓟𝓪𝓽𝓽𝔂 (@Patty1z) June 11, 2018
https://twitter.com/barack_oli/status/1006228747287236608
Now, it just might be possible that Intuit knew it was going to provoke this kind of reaction by cutting off gun-related businesses.
(It could also be a pre-emptive legal defense, but if it were that, the company could just as well have told that to The Truth About Guns almost a month ago.)
But the tone of many, many comments on social media indicate the company might have pushed itself right into a social controversy where it didn’t belong.
And that makes it an anti-gun effort that could backfire very, very badly.
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