Maybe Airlines Should Take A Page From Telcos: Pretend Extra Fees Are From The Government
from the oxygen-fee-anyone? dept
For years, we've pointed out how various telcos get away with adding extra fees to increase the price of service without technically "increasing the price." The sneakiest of these add on those fees with names that make them sound like they're required by the government -- even though they rarely are. A few times, we've asked how those sorts of fees might be applied to other businesses. Of course, we did so as a joke, using it to show how ridiculous some of those fees really were. However, it appears that perhaps it wasn't such a joke. Reading this NY Times article about all the new fees that airlines are charging passengers, it has to remind you of the sorts of fees seen on your telco bills lately. As far as I know, I haven't seen any airlines disguising fees as gov't taxes yet -- though it may just be a matter of time. Of course, the airlines are doing their best to ignore the criticism of things like charging $7 for a pillow or $2 for some water -- but as political cartoonists are noticing, it may not be long before people expect to be charged for oxygen masks or use of the bathroom.
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I don't know...
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Dont drink the water
It is recommended that you not drink their water.
Apparently, when they run out of bottled water, they fill up bottles from the "tap". And testing of that tap water has revealed it to be not so clean.
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"Taxes"
so, technically, airlines may have been doing this before the telcos made it such a lucrative racket.
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And in Canada, this starts lawsuits
However, last year, a class action law suit was filed for misrepresentation. It seems that the fees had nothing to do with government and are a cash grab.
Now the telcos are more clear about why the fees are there.
More detail is here: http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/258049
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Advertising
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