Resolved for 2008:
• The Transportation Security Agency should eliminate its pointless liquids and gels ban, which recently led it to reclassify harmless holiday pies as weapons of mass destruction. If it can’t manage to do that, our elected officials should do us all a favor and kill the agency.
• Fuel surcharges must be stopped. They should be illegal. If nothing else, they are dishonest. Unless they are ended, we’ll soon be paying fees for everything from our travel company’s insurance to rent — all broken out as a surcharge. No price will ever be final. (Check out the car rental industry if you want an idea of where all this is headed.) It’s time for the government to step in and end the madness.
• Hotels with nonsense fees should be boarded up. We’ve seen a rash of these dumb add-ons in the last few weeks. Just yesterday, I received word from a reader that a number of Choice Hotels properties, particularly Comfort Inns, have begun adding a $1 per-night fee for having a phone in the room. That’s right, it doesn’t matter if you use the phone or not. It still costs you $1. Please!
• And while we’re at it, let’s limit the number of bloggers and self-styled airline “experts” churning out marginally useful news. I mean, how many travel bloggers does it take to breathlessly report on the demise of MAXjet, a carrier that only .000001 percent of the traveling population ever heard of, much less could afford a ticket on? (The answer? Apparently, all of them.) Come on, people! At the very least, Technorati should offer an affirmative action program for travel bloggers with a more mainstream message. Where are all the bloggers who cover car travel, for example?
Sigh.
How about you? What are your New Year’s resolutions?
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
I tend to agree that something should be done about the “surcharge” mania… I’m not sure the government should “regulate” this though, other than to mandate/enforce “truth” in advertising. Obviously Surcharges are a way to pass the cost of gas/other expenses on to the consumer in a non-price impacting way, thus keeping the illusion of staying “competitive”.
So how do we send a message to these companies that this is bad business, maybe it is up to us travelers to make choices again, ask when booking… only book on airlines that are surcharge free???
What about all the airport taxes that people get charged… before you know it we’ll be nickel and dimed to death.
-Skip
I think that they are using the word “surcharge” to show to the public that this is not something they prefer adding on to the price.
These high fuel prices are caused by speculators who are bidding between each other to reap profits for their personal accounts. Knowing what is causing this surcharge might help the public place the blame for it on where it belongs. Maybe eve put pressure on the gov’t to stop the practice. Remember ENRON and them buying electricity back and forth solely to raise it’s price? Same thing here. Bring back the windfall profits tax and see fule drop.
I love the idea of banning the TSA entirely. Yes, I know, it would be terrible for traffic management up there, but really it’s a big sky. And do we really need to have the government paying pensions and healthcare and $10/hr to some girl out of High School to look at our plastic zippy bags full of our toiletries? Please.
Now if we can just get the rest of the world to go along with your resolutions…
Realistically, we’ll never see the TSA end, but I would love to see them trimmed down along with a complete dismantling of DHS. These organizations do little more than feed peoples fears–on our own dime. Furthermore, they have never addressed real threats (CIA, CBP, and FBI continue to do a good job of that), only the fictitious threats cooked up by the paranoid traveler.
I avoided the stab at the media in that last line because, really, I don’t think its entirely the fault of a few newspapers.
I agree to the surcharge comment that Bob gave–I think its a marketing tool to show consumers that it’s someone else’s fault that the prices are going up. However, I think there’s a two surcharge max, before a given industry begins to abuse it. After the fuel and maintenance surcharges, come the “employee coffee allotment”, “convenience”, “web site” and “administrative” surcharges.
My NW resolution has been for years the same: keep this resolution for next year too.
As for the surcharge govt interference: It should not be hard for the govt to force retailers to SIMPLY TELL CUSTOMERS THE #$%# FINAL PRICE. It’s simple: the price you slap on the product equals the amount of money the customer has to hand over to get the product. Including taxes, (sur)charges, fees, the whole f-ing deal. If you lateron want to spend your precious business time on specifiying the bill to the customer, and indicating that 20% of the price goes to other folks than you, than that’s your business.
Europeans are perplexed that the US govt can not simply make sellers put a final price on their products. This BS does not happen in Europe (unfortunately except in the airline industry).
@Jasper:
I actually do not like the European way of bundling the VAT into the final price. I prefer the American way of posting the item’s price and then adding the sales tax on at the register.
What this does is keep the taxation level transparent to the end consumer. Already, consumers can and do vote with their feet and shop in areas with lower tax levels (for example, L.A. county’s tax rate is 1% higher than the surrounding counties, so if you live in Woodland Hills, it’s easy to drive to Thousand Oaks to save $30 on a $3,000 HDTV).
If taxes were bundled into the final price, tax creep would be easier to ignore, and pretty soon we’d end up with the 25 % taxes found in Europe. Not the way I want my country to run.
As far as the rental industry goes: my jurisdiction added a 10% state rental car tax and a mandatory $4/day airport facility charge (actually codified into state law–the state was building a new consolidated rental facility). How do you make the “total estimated charges” legally binding when that same legal entity is the one that implements the new taxes and fees? (I’m not saying that I agree with rental agencies making up random fees like “vehicle licensing fees” or “transportation fees,” but there is a reason that nobody guarantees the total estimated charges. Actually, up until the Internet age, the final estimated charges were rarely quoted, as travel agents’ GDS systems are only set up to show the base rate.
I fall somewhere in the middle on this.
On the one hand, I *do* want to know the final price right up front and center, or at least the information necessary for me to work it out myself.
For instance%
I fall somewhere in the middle on this.
On the one hand, I *do* want to know the final price right up front and center, or at least the information necessary for me to work it out myself.
For instance, one restaurant I frequent here in Bangkok has a statement on every page of the menu there will be a 10% service charge plus a 7% VAT added to all bills. It’s easy for me to get at least a rough idea of the final tally before I ever even order. That’s okay with me.
On the other hand, the last time I flew up to Vientiane, Laos, I went to the small hotel I’ve always stayed for just over a decade on my frequent trips there. For years they held the line at US$18.00 per night for single occupancy and US$22.00 for double. that included breakfast, whether you ate it or not (which accounted for $3.00 of the rate) plus, for people traveling by air, pick-up and delivery at/to the airport. Again, whether you used the service or not.
Things had changed on my last trip. Now both the breakfast and transfers are optional (still $3.00 for breakfast, and $5.00 each way for transfers) — but the single occupancy rate now is $12.00, while double dropped to $14.00 And I like that; it leaves it up to me to decide whether I want to fork out the money for the breakfast or the hotel transportation (or both). Smart marketing, too, as Laos opens up more and more to foreign tourists.
But a buck for having a phone in the room? Maybe — IF there are rooms available WITHOUT phones that are identical in every way except a buck cheaper. It’s not the buck for me; it’s the gall behind the very idea. Maybe I should pay a surcharge for hot water in the bathroom? And how about a surcharge for wash cloths, towels, the bed linens, and let’s not forget some fee for periodic new wallpaper, or whatever. I can even imagine some bright, greedy spark deciding to start charging guests a dollar (let’s say) to use the elevator — per trip — and maybe a quarter to those who prefer to use the stairs. After all, either way, there will be customer-caused wear-and-tear.
Gimme a break. . . .