Sexytime

So with all the things I love and admire about Americans and their way of life, perhaps my biggest peeve/wonderment over here is the increasing number of ways they will find to charge you for something. I don't know whether to admire their ingenuity and creativity when it comes to inventing up new and exciting ways to extort a dollar out of someone, or be thoroughly pissed off with it.

Let's look at the recent renewing of my vehicle registration for the first example. I see that the registration itself costs $58, yet I was surprised to find I was being charged over $75 in total. How was that happening?! A quick look at the breakdown revealed this:

WINDSHIELD STICKER $58.50
REG FEE-DPS $1
REFLECTORIZATION FEE $0.30
CNTY ROAD BRIDGE ADD-ON FEE $10
AUTOMATION FEE (LARGE CNTY) $1
MAIL IN FEE $1
SERVICE FEE (NON-REFUNDABLE) $2

A reflectorization fee?! Come on...who invents this shit? As I was told, this money goes towards "a very cool 3M developed film that has a license plate validation code in a circle (about 2 inches diameter) repeated down the middle of the plate. You can see it if you are looking along the centerline of the car and have sunlight behind you".

Whoopdee doo. And in return, I have to pay for this unwanted shit? I'm sure the people in the registration office can justify each and every fee with some jargon filled reasoning, but let's be real about this: all of the above are nonsensical charges that some white, middle class fatboy simply created in order to cream an extra few dollars off people. A ten dollar road bridge add on fee? A $1 automation fee?! What nonsense!

Then we come to Ticketmaster, who will charge you almost $10 for a "convenience fee". That's right, because they make the tickets available online on their website and thus saving you the hassle of having to drive down to the location's box office and wait in line, they automatically charge you almost $10 for each ticket for the "convenience". Now this may sound fair to some, but then you are purchasing 5-6 tickets online for a family outing, and are hit with $9.50 of "convenience charges" for each ticket, your little outing can quickly get very expensive. Oh and by the way, if you do want to try and avoid the "convenience fee" and go directly to the box office, you'll still be hit with a "booking fee" directly in it's place...so save your gas!

How about the banks? If you go as much as 10c overdrawn, you'll be stung with $35 "NSF fees", or $2 "ATM fees" every time you use a non-home bank cash machine.

When I make my car payment online, I am charged an additional $10 "transaction fee".

When I book a trip through Travelocity or some other travel site, I am charged almost $45 worth of "administration fees", "booking fees" and "processing fees".

And the best one of all over here has to be what has come to be known as "valet parking". Now, the original concept of valet parking actually made sense. Many large restaurants or hotels may have their parking facilities a fair distance away from the building. For example, most hotels in Las Vegas have their parking underground, and it's certainly a "hike" to get back to the hotel after parking your car in the lot. And so valets were created to do the donkey work for you...they would park the car, retrieve it, do all the running around in between, and you would reward them with a tip for the convenience.

Now however that was been bastardized. Perhaps this is only a Texas thing, or maybe even just a Houston thing. But how many times have you recently been to a smallscale restaurant or local bar to find "enforced valet parking", in which (rather than risk being towed by parking elsewhere) you are pretty much forced into surrendering your car to an employee, who will then literally drive it 10 feet into an empty parking spot and charge you $5 for the privilege! Just another sordid way for the establishment to cream a few extra bucks from you.

It's a sad state of affairs, and obviously is never going to change. In fact I think it's only going to get worse. Does anyone else have experience with this? Has anyone else ever encountered a cheeky yet creative way that Corporate America has tried to rationalize stealing your money?

Duncan Roberts

Agreed. I always feel a little ripped off when I see the laminating fee when getting a new drivers license in Ohio. I could kind of understand if they still laminated the DL's, but they don't!

MsElui

christ i may be being stupid but isnt this EXACTLY the kind of post you were moaning about yesterday?

Your obviously bonkers - im staying the hell away from you!

Sexytime

Well that didn't take long, did it. Stick on topic please.

I'll also have to charge you $15 for an inconvience/rude posting fee.

tamms_1965

But she is right. They need to make up these fees though to cover costs.

I saw on the news last night that in order to keep up with the rising cost of jet fuel, airlines will be adding 'fees' or increasing fees for such things as extra baggage, extra leg room, flying your pet, etc.

Duncan Roberts

Still doesn't explain why I have to pay $1 (or $2) laminating fee when the license isn't laminated!

tamms_1965

That one is strange. I guess it's a holdover from the old days when licenses were on thick paper and you could pay to have it laminated. It was $0.50 for my first license to be laminated. They should change the wording or get rid of it.

RoadWarriorFromLP

The electorate has a strong aversion for tax increases, and there are sometimes legislative limits on the level of taxation. In some cases, taxes can't be increased without public referendum.

Hence, the abundance of fees, surcharges, etc. Because they aren't "taxes", they can tack them on without the same drama and approval processes that tax increases require. Politicians can look their voters (you) straight in the eye and claim that they didn't raise your taxes.

The government gets its money, you get a sticker with the necessary reflector-shiny substance stuff, and everyone's happy. So stop yer bitchin', and have a nice day.

HoosierDaddy

It's all about choices:

Ticketmaster
Like you say - find your nearest retailer/outlet that saves you $10 in gas money and time to circumvent buying tix online.

Banks
These fees are listed when you open your account. Keep your money under your mattress instead.

Travelocity
You're at their site 'cos you want to save a few bucks. I suspect you're still saving money (after their fees) over booking with an airline/hotel direct. If they had a "NO PROCESSING FEES" policy then they'd add the $45 on the front end..... I get tired of people moaning about the fact that low cost carriers 'nickel & dime' them with baggage, food and seating fees as they never mention that they still saved money over the legacy airlines and usually with a more direct route.


The consumer at the end of the day doesn't have to finalise anything they don't want to.

Sexytime

That's all well and good, but from mandatory valet parking to bogus "administration fees" every time you so much as want to wipe your arse, I would argue that this greed is becoming more and more common. It's easy to say "well don't open a bank account then" or "well don't go the restaurant then", but that's not practical in everyday life. Fact is, there is no way to avoid the increasing volume of meaningless charges and fees so that some CEO can fatten out his retirement portfolio.

I find it interesting that these "fees" are on the rise, around the exact same time that gas is suddenly rising in price and food is being rationed. All around the same time the baby boom generation is hitting retirement. Don't try and tell me this isn't some ploy by the wealthy to cover their arses.

Leyther

I am really annoyed with this, not in general because I can come to the rational of other banks charging non-customers to use their services. However here in Denver I am with Compass Bank (the only bank which would allow me to open an account without a SSN) and their cash machines even charge their own customers to make withdrawals and to get a mini-statement but yet I can either walk into the bank and do all of this for free (surely this is more hassle and time consuming for them than for me to it myself at the cash machine) or I can travel the extra five minutes to Chase Bank and again, do both transactions for free. Go figure.

Giantaxe

"read my lips, no new taxes"... of course all these "fees" often have the identical effect as a tax!

anotherlimey

I recommend you stop moaning or repatriate yourself, you clearly can't cope as well as me.

scrubbedexpat097

Please will you stay on topic.....this is not about the OP moaning it is about being ripped off................not that it would happen here or in the UK...

tonrob

No, it was about everyone else being a bunch of moaning *****.

Oh no hold on - that was yesterday...