Will the industry with the worst fees please stand up and take a bow?
surcharges
When Walter Nissen signed up for a British Airways Chase Visa card recently, he though he’d be jetting off to London after earning just 50,000 miles.
The sooner, the better.
Fees on top of fees. It used to be the kind of hyperbole with which I spiced up my columns. But now, thanks to American Airlines, it’s real. The airline this morning introduced something called a Boarding and Flexibility Package that allows you to pay a fee and get priority boarding, offers a $75 discount [...]
In part two of their interview with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Christopher Elliott and Charlie Leocha explore the new tarmac-delay restrictions for airlines and pending rules for the disclosure of surcharges, such as baggage fees, that have spread through the airline industry.
Deloitte’s Simonetto: “It’s easy to view this as the big, bad airline taking advantage of travelers”
Mike Simonetto is the principal and global leader of Deloitte Consulting’s pricing and profitability practice. With airlines and other travel companies testing our willingness to pay fees, I wanted to ask a pricing expert like him why travel companies were doing this and where it’s all headed.
If you think fees are outrageous here in the United States, may I suggest a European vacation? Minisha Kochar recently visited Spain, where she rented a car through AutoEurope. Before her trip, the company quoted her a “guaranteed” rate of $818. Needless to say, that’s not the rate she found on her final bill.
When it comes to fees, never underestimate the car rental industry’s creativity. If you do, you might miss the six percent surcharge that Avis slipped on Monica Huchro’s bill last week.
If this isn’t a bait-and-switch, I don’t know what is. Jonathan Yarmis thought he was getting a $375 a night room rate at the Hotel Bauer in Venice, marked down from $537.
If you’re tired of being nickeled and dimed to death when you fly, you might want to be in Miami on May 12 and 13. That’s when hundreds of executives will gather at an industry conference to figure out how to grow the $3.5 billion in so-called “ancillary” revenues they expect to collect from us this year.
Are the car rental companies taking a page from the airlines’ playbook, when it comes to fees and surcharges? Charles Locher thinks so. First, Hertz billed him an extra $26 for gas and fuel service, even though he had prepaid for both. Then another car rental company socked his friend with a $120 “interior cleaning” charge, even though the vehicle was returned in good shape.
They make us pay for our first checked bag. They invent new fees. They slap outrageous fuel “surcharges” on to the price of our ticket. Why? Airlines say it’s because fuel costs are out of control. What nonsense.
They may be a little late to the game, but then again, the first skiers who will probably be hit by these fees won’t see them until this summer (winter in South American ski resorts like Valle Nevado and Cerro Catedral). But a group of skiers is protesting the planned second-bag surcharge that United Airlines and US Airways have announced, hoping to enlist scuba divers, golfers and parents with strollers to their cause.
Elliott is consumer advocate 
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