Price-Increases-As-Fees Start To Spread
from the they're-everywhere... dept
While extra unexplained "fees" are pretty common in the phone world, they're now moving over to the broadband side of the house. Broadband Reports has an opinion piece looking at the various fees found in your broadband bill, and how many of them really are (as you suspected) simply a way to raise the price without making an official price increase. For example, they look at SBC's "regulatory recovery fee" which just so happens to change based on the tier of service you're signed up to use. Of course, what SBC pays the government is fixed per circuit, so if they have to charge a fee, it should be constant. Plenty of other fees are clearly just a sneaky way of hiding cost increases, so they can advertise a lower price. As we noted recently, it's only a matter of time until such pricing structures are found in other businesses. Most business simply include the costs of doing business in the price they offer customers. Breaking out extra pieces and not telling the customer until after they've signed up is simply a way of tricking customers. How would you feel if the pizza you bought, in addition to the sales tax you pay, came with a property tax assessment fee, a electricity bill adjustment fee and a new dough delivery fee? These are all expenses that the pizza place has, but you expect them to be included in the advertised price, not tacked on at the end, only after you've agreed to buy the pie.
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Shun them
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Disclosing Fees
However, I think that if the company advertises a service or somebody asks the price, they should be quoted the total price including any fixed fees. Fees based on other fees should be disclosed as percentages; fees based on usage should have their basis disclosed ($0.05 per minute, $10 per gigabyte, etc.) -- and not in fine print.
I personally called Charter Communications asking for explanations of fees (PEG Recovery fees). They also explained that franchise fees were capped by law at 5%, and I saw that I was being charged 5.4%, so I raised some hell. We'll see what happens.
My wife works for a travel agency that assesses a $25 fee for airline tickets ever since the airlines stopped paying commission. When people ask for the price of a ticket, she includes the fee in the price (and I think she discloses the fee, too).
Of course, let's not blame just the communications industry here. The travel industry has their share of fees, too. Hotels have transient taxes (usually signficantly higher than sales taxes) and often required phone fees that they don't disclose in the price, airlines have airport fees that aren't listed in the fare, cruise lines have port taxes that aren't included in the price and so on.
And let's not forget car dealers with their title, tax, destination, blah blah blah fees.
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Price-Increases-As-Fees Start To Spread
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Re: Disclosing Fees
Airport concession fee recovery: 10.00 %
Vehicle licensing fee: $5.04 USD
Customer facility charge: $29.25 USD
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Re: Disclosing Fees
Someone should go around and add up all these fees and you'd see exactly how much corporations gouge out of the consumer, laughing all the way to the bank.
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Re: Disclosing Fees
I'll send that good old check, have fun with it.
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Re: Re: Disclosing Fees
For instance, my rewards credit card costs the average retailer $.25 just to swipe (whether or not they approve it) and 3% of each transaction. If I were paying my property taxes with it, that would come out to more than $75...
--Tim
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