01 March 2009

Nickle & Dime

Ever felt like you were being nickled & dimed to the poor house?

Maybe it's just me, but lately, I have been noticing a lot of charges/fees being tacked on to the various things I do/have/experience and it is starting to frost my cookies.

Last week, I flew to Oklahoma for a supplier audit and when I turned the rental car back in, I noticed on my bill a minor fee for Frequent Flier Recovery Fee. It appears that if you link your frequent flier account to your rental car contract, they will charge you a recovery fee for the service (what service?). I called the rental agency and the airline to get this clarified and got a line of crap. I guess I have not noticed it before but it is supposedly becoming the standard. We are already charged fees for 1st/2nd bags, in flight meals (thanks, American!), pillows/blankets, and, now there is one idiot out there who is proposing to charge you to use the bathroom while in flight. Since my company pays for this trip and all of this is reimburseable, I really shouldn't complain but it really irritates me when they try to milk every cent from their customers.

The cable bill's up $5.00, my credit union is starting to charge for printing a hard copy of my statement, the cell phone bill has all sorts of new fees/surcharges, all sorts of new "little" fees. Maybe I am just being overly cranky this morning, but it just irritates the crap out of me.

4 comments:

terri said...

I know! We just got a notice that a fee is being charged on our oldest's savings account because he's exceeded the alloted number of transactions within a given cycle. ("The Feds require a limit on the number of transactions in a given cycle.") They don't tell us what the number of days in a cycle is. There were about 3 transactions in the past month resulting from me transferring funds to his savings and him withdrawing those funds. Needless to say, we were not pleased.

Abby said...

Yeah, it's a conspiracy.

I sometimes think that, especially with travel related fees, the car rentals, hotels, airlines, etc. tack on fees because they figure people won't care if it's for business travel and the company is reimbursing them.

meleah rebeccah said...

Yes, it seems as if everyone is getting nickel and dimed out of everything. Our bills are going up, but no extra money is coming in. Its is absolutely frustrating.

agg79 said...

terri,

Yea, bless those bankers. I'm sticking with my credit union, but they have similar limits.

Abby,

That is so true. They figure to tack on these fees and business travelers will pay it without much thought. The problem comes when you travel on your own dime. I hate it when a simple overnight in a hotel costs you $20-30 extra in taxes/fees.

meleah,

Amen!