Today’s Los Angeles Times has an article about how fuel surcharges are driving up the effective price of a ticket. They cite examples of a round-trip Tokyo where the fare is $400… but the fuel surcharge is almost $300! As I read the article I got more and more upset. Hence… this post.
To me, this reflects the growing “fee”-ification of society. You buy a ticket on Goldstar… and the ticket is $17 + 4.50 in fees. You buy it on Ticketmaster, and the fees are sometimes more than the ticket itself. We have fuel charges, we have all sorts of fees and stuff on our phone bills. Nowadays, no price is complete without its set of fees.
When I learned business, I was taught that the price for doing a service should reflect your cost for the service, plus profit. Fees that are resentative of the cost for the service provider should be part of the fee (I’ll make an exception for government imposed charges). Anything else is just an artifice for advertising purposes that permits you to promote your price as lower than what the consumer sees out the door.
So what do you think? Do you think this “fee”-ification of society is getting ridiculous?
