CNNMoney.com has an excellent article today on 35 most outrageous fees (and how to avoid them). But they missed a few of my pet peeves. So I made up the expanded list of fees that I detest. The first 35 are from CNN Money website. Feel free to add to the list.
- Airlines: Getting paper tickets instead of e-tickets
- Airlines: Talking to a person instead of using online or automated system
- Airlines: Changing your flight
- Airlines: Reserving an aisle seat (I hadn’t heard of this one before! Outrageous Indeed!)
- Airlines: Excess Baggage
- Car rental: Insurance
- Car rental: Excise taxes
- Hotel: Internet connection fee
- Hotel: Resort fee
- Hotel: Automatic gratuities
- Hotel: Package delivery fees
- Hotel: Mini-bar restocking
- Phone: Carrier cost recovery fee
- Phone: AT&T’s tax-related surcharge
- Phone: Property tax surcharge
- Phone: Activation fee
- Phone: Cancellation penalty
- Shopping: Gift-card activation fee, inactivity fees
- Real Estate: Junk closing costs
- Real Estate: Title insurance
- Mortgage: Biweekly payment fee ( this is highway robbery, if you ask me! )
- Banking: ATM fees
- Banking: Monthly service fee
- Banking: Bad-deposit fee
- Banking: Foreign-currency fee
- Credit cards: Credit-card late fees
- Credit cards: Balance-transfer fee
- Credit cards: Over-limit fee
- Credit cards: Same-day payment fee
- Investments: Mutual Fund Fees, overcharged Index funds
- Investments: Fees for actively managed Large U.S. stock funds
- Investments: Target-date retirement funds
- Investments: Variable annuity expenses
- Investments: Brokerage transfer fees
- Investments: 529 expenses
- Airlines: Headset purchase fee on long-haul flights.
- Travel: Itenerary change insurance Did you know most of the popular ones require a “Doctor’s Note” to actually let you to change your plans ??!!
- Travel: Some museums and entertainment parks charge video or camera fee!
- Car Rental: Mileage fees
- Car Rental: Additional Driver fees
- Car Rental: Out-of-state Charges
- Hotel: Local Phone call fees
- Restaurant: Shared entrée fee (yes, it does exist – I have to pay more to eat less!) and automatic gratuity for more than 5 at a table
- Phone: Roaming charges. If you are still paying these, its about time to switch carriers.
- (International) Calling Cards: Call connection fees, 3-minute rounding (sometimes even 6-minute rounding!), inactivity fee etc. etc.
- Online Shopping: Restocking fee for returns.
- Credit Cards: Annual Fees (How could they have missed this !)
- Day Care: Late fees.
- Auto Care: $60 computer diagnostic fees, to just tell me what is wrong !
- Last but not the least – Fees for seeing your credit score. By law, the credit report for free, but not the credit score. Ugh….!
— My Additions —
