I’ve just booked two “free” flights to Italy - final cost £200 ($400)!
Well, turns out the actual seats were indeed “free”, but man do they load on the extras!
The fees include:
cost of flights: £0
airport tax: £80
hold baggage: £32
check-in fee: £32
infant carriage: £32 (that’s fair enough)
car seat carriage: £16
credit card fee: £32
So you pay $65 for the privilege of checking a single bag each in the hold, which also means you have to pay another $65 to check-in at the airport (rather than online); then it’s another $32 to pay with a credit card (rather than small change, presumably)… etc etc
It still works out cheaper than any other carrier, mainly because the airport is 10 miles way rather than a 150 mile round-trip to London (plus parking charges).
Shit, I got charged a $4 “teller fee” when the ATM was busted. I go up and complain and they say, “Well, since we didn’t SPECIFICALLY tell you the fee was waived, I’m afraid it stands.” Yeah, I walked out with a check for the entire balance in my hand.
My own is parking fees for events. How the fuck do you expect us to get there then? That’s like getting your bill at a restaurant and find out you were charged for the fucking chair.
Change “Tile Saw” to “GPS Unit”, “Laptop” or “Digital Camera”, and change 1-2% to 1-5%, and you’ve got the store I work in.
Fortunately, it stops being my problem in a fortnight as I’ve resigned, but otherwise I agree with you completely and have been pushing for a 10-15% Time-Waster/Re-Stocking Fee for ages on all returns over $100, with an exemption for exchanges on identical (or near enough) products.
Ever have to have any part of your car’s exhaust system replaced? Sure, the muffler is $59.95. Oh, but you need a new tail pipe too. Of course there are hangars, and clamps, and labour that also comes into play. But the thing that pisses me off the most is they charge for oxy-acetylene and other consumables that are part of the fucking job in the first place! So, your 60 dollar muffler ends up being $250 in the end.
The guys I really feel sorry for are the brave souls that service our ATMs on McMurdo Station in Antarctica. I think they charge more than $65 for travel time.
Shipping and handling.
The shipping I get, but it costs extra for you to actually handle the product? You didn’t think about that when you set the price?
Wow, everyone talks about rip-off Britain but from these stories it seems we have it quite good (Ryanair and Ticketmaster excepted, of course). I have never been charged “delivery” when buying an item in a shop that I’m going to take home with me, “convenience fees” are rare, and most restaurants that stipulate a service charge specifically say it is optional.
Yeah, the parking thing gets me too. Similar to an earlier poster’s experience, there is a concert venue around here (Nissan Pavillion) that charges a parking fee on every ticket. Ride with friends? You pay to park. Take a cab? You pay to park. Ripoff.
The **Air and Space Museum ** also has a bunch of gall. Free admission! ($12 to park). Hell, no matter how you slice it, that ain’t free. (At least they collect at the lot so the price is per car, not per person.)
I went in with a couple of friends and bought a partial season ticket package from a MLB team. We opted for the additional fee parking option. It so happened that it was the year that the players went on strike during the season (the infamous split season). I went back to the stadium ticket window to get a refund for the tickets we couldn’t use due to the strike. They refunded the face value of the tickets. When I asked for a refund on the parking charge the ticket window got slammed in my face. True story.
I’ve never been charged a cover charge for a RESTAURANT. I understand them for clubs. They have to make SOME MONEY instead of letting you go in, sit and listen to the comedy (or dance) and not buy anything thereby making no money off of your attendance.
It is indeed more common for clubs (and restaurants) that provide entertainment, but some restaurants do charge covers without providing entertainment. This is more common in Europe.
Yep, and that’s why a restocking fee is sometimes waived when a customer buys another whatsit. Someone upthread complained about a restocking fee for a printer. The store has no way of knowing whether the customer used that printer for one job and then returned it, claiming it was defective, unless the customer asks for another printer of the same make.
I used to work in a dress shop, and we had to institute a policy of no exchanges for cocktail and formal dresses. Too many women were “buying” a dress for a special occasion, returning it for credit (we didn’t give refunds) which they’d use on everyday items. It wasn’t worth inspecting every dressy item and then arguing with the customer over obvious signs of wear. And we’d get people who wanted to buy stuff for Halloween, wear it, and return it.
I think that a restocking fee would have curbed this practice enough that we could have offered credit for returns on these items. We did offer credit on everyday items (jeans, work slacks, t-shirts, etc.).
Hang on, I thought they’d been told to quit doing that shit? by the government? Their card fees are always what used to piss me off the most. I can understand surcharging credit cards, but they used to charge you an extra fee even if it was paid for with a debit card - which since it’s a website meant there was no way of avoiding the fee. Bastages. Over the last few years I’ve found that by the time they’ve finished adding all their shit it’s usually only a few quid less than using an airline, rather than their bus-company-with-wings, so I only ever use them if I really need to get to some tiny place out in the sticks near an airfield no one else uses.
Yes, they could- oh I don’t know, maybe- plug the damn thing in and see if it works? Instead, I bet they charged the fee and then re-shelved the item so the next guy got a defective item, so another fee, and so forth.