There is a small food court in the Sears Mall here in Anchorage. For some strange reason, all of the vendors have signs up that state “If you ask for little or no ice in your drink you will be charged more”.
This just bugs me no end. If you want a specific amount of money for a specific size of soft drink, charge THAT amount! Grrrrrr!! It’s just such an almost dishonest take on things.
Soda is the cheapest thing and the biggest profit item restaurants have, why cheap out on it? And putting it that way is just annoying.
Banks - Why should I have to pay $1.50 to go to a human teller? I get - hate but get - the “convenience” fee for ATMs but I walk in your door and you ding me? It’s like paying cover for Earth’s dullest discotheque.
Plus they make a billion or so a year and then expect me to pay their tellers for them.
I’m confused by your last sentence, but I’ve never encountered a situation where you had to pay the 20%; assuming we’re both talking about automatic gratuity.
If you don’t feel that the service warranted 20%, speak with the manager. I have on several occasions, and the 20% was removed, and I tipped what I felt was deserved.
Heh. The security fee isn’t usually bundled because the airline doesn’t receive it. The $2.50 goes to the TSA to fund their screeners, equipment, etc.
The dreaded “10% restocking fee.” Because I know they’re going out and hiring a temp just to put the part I returned back on the shelf. This is not something they’ve hired regular employees to do. :rolleyes: BASTIDS! And it costs more to get that temp to put a $200 item back than it does to put a $50 item back.
“Convenience charges” for paying bills online. Online bill payment saves the company money-- no one has to be paid to open envelopes, process checks, etc., and they get their money from me faster. They can send me bills in e-mail, so no more postage or paper costs. Most of my bills can be paid online for free, and a few even give you a little kickback for doing so. A couple of them, though, charge from $5 to $15 per online bill payment.
Anyone rent a U-Haul recently? Look on the side of their trucks on the highway -
Still only $19.95!!1!!!11!!!ones!!!
Have you ever been able to pay only $20 (+tax)? Have you been able to get away with less than $150? (I sure haven’t. And I’m talking about ‘in-town’ moves.)
I’ve mentioned this before, but postage for magazine subscriptions. Have you noticed that in the last couple years, magazine subscription cards have offered great rates but then in tiny print added “plus $4* per year postage and handling”? *or whatever. Since when has a subscription not included the postage? That’s what a subscription means! If it costs $12.95 for the magazine, and $4 to send it, just tell me the subscription costs $16.95! Or are you afraid I’ll see that price and think it’s too much? No, you’ll just let me send in the card thinking it’s $12.95, and then bill me the $16.95 and hope I’ve forgotten.
And as **GawnFishin’ ** said, shipping. How much does it cost to mail a shirt? My mother-in-law wanted a silk nightshirt for Christmas from a catalog called WinterSilks. I ordered it and the shipping was $11.45! When I got it, I weighed it on my kitchen scale and it was FOUR OUNCES. I feel like at gift-giving time I’m over a barrel because what people want, they’re going to get, but I will never order from catalog companies unless they’re offering free shipping.
OK, maybe most “cyclists” do not purchase but other than my brother every “bike rider” I know has and uses the kick stand.
I would like to second the Ticketmaster convenience fees. A co-worker mentioned yesterday that he bought some tickets and they have added a convenience fee to the print at home option. There is now no way to purchase tickets from them that is not “convenient”.
My other one is my bank charges me $1.50 to get a mini-statement from the ATM. Really? I can go to a teller anytime and get them to print out a history of the account for free but if I have the ATM do it it costs $1.50?
At an, ahem, adult entertainment store I realized they had charge me $2 for some AA batteries used to test the merchandise (in front of me) to make sure it worked. And they only lasted for a day! She offered to leave the batteries in but worded it in a way that made it seem like a favor, not a sale.
I did receive goods and yes, I understand I should pay for said goods (the $2 batteries) but the sneaky way they did it was off-putting.
Unless I missed it, I haven’t seen the cell phone bill mentioned. Just pull that sucker out and try to make sense of how your “unlimited” $39.95 plan works out to $95.00/month. It’s not all taxes either. They use a lot of mumbo jumbo terms that make it look like taxes when in fact they are just padding the bill.
As for restocking fees, in some circumstances there is some justification. People don’t like to buy electronics if the box has been opened. As soon as that happens the store probably has to discount the product in order to move it. If the item is defective then a restocking fee is unconscionable. To hell with Circuit City (they will be out of business soon). When they fired all of their experienced sales people I, and a lot of others, quit shopping there and started the death watch.
You’ve been charged shipping on an item you bought in store!? Wow, where was this so I know never to go there.
It’s been said already, but I must mention Ticketmaster. “Service charges” & “convenience fees” adding up to almost half the price of the ticket itself! And you can’t even pick your seat, their system is so user-unfriendly. (Telecharge charges fees as well, but at least they are less than Ticketmaster and you can pick your seat.
Years ago I bought concert tickets at TicketMaster that included a “Parking Fee” on every ticket. What really griped me about this was that there were four of us going to the concert together, so the venue collected fees for (presumably) four parking spaces but we only used one.
This was free the first time I saw it in the 80s. Seemed reasonable to me, too: two of this country’s biggest banks got together to provide a service to their customers that would make it more convenient to those customers and also put the squeeze on the other banks. So, good business sense.
Then they put the fee in place. So that sucked sufficiently anyway. But it gets worse…
I drive to my suburb’s main street to use the ATM. I have to use the ATM, because they signed me up - back in the 90s, in the early days of shitty bank fees - to a promised fee-free account with the condition that I did everything electronically (would be $4 for a teller transaction). After I signed up, they reneged on their promise. Anyway, I drive to the ATM, and it’s fucking OUT OF ORDER. I can wait in a twenty-minute queue for a teller and be charged $4, or I can waste my own time and petrol driving to another suburb and trying again, or I can go to the other ATM and be charged a “non-bank fee”.
For fuck’s sake? Wot? If you must have that fee, at least have your software capable of waiving it if the sole ATM belonging to your bank in that suburb is out of order. You fuck up, so I have to pay?
A few years ago Charles Schwab sent an email saying I could get all the mail they send me sent to me online. This would save much in postage because they need to send me quite a bit of stuff.
I was going to throw them a bone and let them do this…because it would save them money…when I saw the gem that this would only cost me several dollars a month!
WTH? They should give ME a little money for agree to this, not the other way around!
No thanks…you can spend money mailing the stuff to me. I believe it is now free…but I still refuse because of the gall they had a few years ago. I won’t agree to it unless they give me something.
My internet/phone company charges an extra £3 per month for not paying by direct debit. I don’t like direct debits, I never know what will be in my account or if I will have enough to cover it, and if it gets bounced back the bank can charge me up to £35. So I have to pay £18 per month for my internet rather than £15 - well, my choice, right?
Except that I got a letter this week saying from September the non-DD charge will be £4. But what really pissed me off was the way the letter was worded. ‘Hey, do you want to save £48 a year?? We’re increasing our £3 monthly charge to £4, so sign up for direct debit now and save money!’
I don’t WANT to sign up for a direct debit as they’re crap for people on low incomes. And I’m not giving you my debit card details as last time I did that you took the £18 payment out SIX TIMES and my bank cancelled my card (and then you refused to believe you had done it). So I’m paying an extra £36, soon to be £48 a year for the privilege of not paying by DD - DO NOT BLOODY TRY AND TELL ME THIS MEANS YOU’RE SAVING ME MONEY YOU STROKING GITS!
I guess I’ve been going to the wrong parties or something, because I’ve never seen or heard of a bike without a kickstand. What the heck are you supposed to do when you want to get off of it?
The foreign exchange fee charged on my credit card if I use it in Canada. I understand the exchange rate, no problem. But then they charge me x% of each purchase as an “exchange fee”. Presumably to pay the hamster with the abacus who’s working out the math for each transaction.
All the odds and ends on my Verizon bill. Some of them that have the word “Federal” in them aren’t even from the government! :mad:
Dealer prep fees or advertising fees from car dealers. You idiots, you run a business, you’re going to have costs associated with doing that business. All that should be accouted for in the vehicle prices, not tacked on after a sale price is agreed to.