5 Evil Ways Companies Are Charging You For Doing Nothing

[Vinnie From Indy]

Several famous companies love nothing more than to concoct new diabolical ways to charge consumers ridiculous disguised fees for doing absolutely nothing at all. Honestly, we all might as well be throwing our money into a garbage can, because at least then we would actually be able to see where it was going.

#5. AT&T
Recently AT&T began collecting what they called an "administration fee" from their customers. They just added an extra 61 cents onto everyone's bill without telling anyone, because it is precisely that easy to do. AT&T customers received nothing extra in return except for an ambiguous phrase on their monthly invoice. AT&T, on the other hand, received an extra half billion dollars, because America is awesome.

#4. Overdraft Bank Fees
Banks are raising the cost of overdraft fees to absurd heights, because if you're going to smash your members into financial ruin, it might as well be the ones who habitually have negative account balances.

Exorbitant overdraft fees generated about $35 billion in the last year alone. And the higher the bank's overall revenue is, the higher their overdraft fees are -- at the end of 2012, the average fee charged by banks with revenue of around $25 billion was $35 -- that's 35 bucks every time you go so much as one cent over your account balance. And if you have multiple accounts in the same bank -- say, a checking account and a credit card -- the bank will automatically deduct payments due on one account from your other account. Meaning the bank will overdraw your account itself, and then hit you with the overdraft fee on top of that.



Read more: http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/5-evil-ways-companies-are-charging-you-doing-nothing/#ixzz2YBVS0vtp

[unblock]

1. most of these aren't really charges "for nothing", but they're still evil

mostly these are (deliberately) poor and/or delayed disclosure of the true cost of the purchase, with a key component being a deceptive, meaningless, or dishonest explanation of the surcharge.

if at&t wants to charge a bit more just for being connected, that's normal business, but they should just increase their regular monthly fee rather than continue to advertise plans for $39.99/month or whatever and ignore the $0.61 administrative fee when it's really $40.60/month.

same argument for ticketmaster, just say the concert costs $225 or whatever instead of $125 and only later tell you about the other $100 of fees.

my point is that the name of the fee isn't particularly important; if ticketmaster told you up front that the cost of the ticket was $225 and in small print said that this includes a "convenience" and "delivery" charge, etc., that would be annoying and cynical, but much less of a problem than the fact that they promote the ticket as costing only $125 when in fact there is no way to get a ticket for anything close to that price.


the one i'm really not sold on is the debit card, which for most purposes is a poor substitute for cash, and they charge you for the privilege. i suppose if it's a matter of handing you a check or a debit card, there's an advantage to the debit card if the recipient does not have a bank account and would have to go to a check cashing service and pay a fee there in order to get any use out of a check. then the debit card is better, provided that the debit card fees are less than the check cashing fees. but all in all, i find this a horrible product. to me it adds negative value.

[Paulie]

2. Biggest one is ATM fees

They put in the machines evaluate they were cheaper than people. So we paid for the buildout and still paying sometimes $5 per transaction. Crazy!

[TalkingDog]

3. Our Credit Union has ZERO ATM fees. And they are scattered about to be handy.

Yay credit unions!

[Paulie]

4. Even at third party machines?

It shouldn't matter where you use a card it just rips people off.

[TalkingDog]

5. The person's bank might levey fees. But Credit Union ATMS don't charge you to use their machine

And if you have a Credit Union Account you pay Zero fees. No charge at the ATM terminal, none when the transaction is accounted for at the Credit Union.

[hfojvt]

6. bah, they don't mention - trash, water, electric and gas

My trash bill is $12.50 a month whether I put out one bag of trash a month or 10 bags of trash per week.

My water bill charges a flat fee of $12.25 per month (and that has gone up by about 100% in the last decade) whether I use any water or not.

The gas company charges about $15-20 a month all summer, even if you shut your pilot light off. I have taken to shutting my gas off for the summer (even when I had a gas water heater). They still charge you all those minimums when they reconnect, but I still say I would rather pay that bill in November than pay it in April, May, June, July, August, September, and October.

The electric company typically charges a flat fee of $5 a month whether you use any electricity or not.

Granted, all those businesses are gonna say they have expenses like mailing out those (now paperless) bills and meter readers and such, but all businesses have expenses and overhead, but they get it back with sales. You don't goto a gas station and pay $3 just to turn the pump on (god, I hope they don't get any ideas). If you buy just ONE two liter bottle of Mt. Dew, they don't charge $3 plus a fee for each bottle.

I still say, that this type of pricing is simply a way to force smaller customers to subsidize bigger customers. And lately I have noticed a trend. When rates go up, the bottom rate will go up by 10% and the top rate will got up by much less than 10%. In my city the top water rates went up by ZERO percent for about seven years until I ran for the water board and was able to fight for the little people.

[JimDandy]

8. That's one comment I don't let slide

when I hear it. No matter how tired or burned out I am, I always engage the tax whiners by pointing out the benefits of sharing the cost of a good societal infrastructure (roads, mass transit, etc) upstructure (education, federal loans for students/small business/mortgages), and support structure (medicare/medicaid etc).

I know the old saw about it taking 7 contacts with a person to effect change (sometimes it's only a small shift), but I figure, even if I never see that person again, that my input could be one of those seven contacts needed to persuade them. It's possible and I'm an optimist!

[hobbit709]

9. ATT just charged me a one time $9 fee for turning OFF my long distance that I never use