Banks, the thinking goes, have never met a fee they didn’t like. Yet one credit card charge that has been standard for years—the “foreign transaction” or “foreign currency” fee, which tacks on an extra 3% or so to every hotel stay, meal, or tchotchke purchased outside the U.S.—is slowly but surely being dropped by more and more card issuers. Why?
Apparently, plenty of travelers aren’t turned off by airlines that charge extra for everything from paying for flights with a credit card to $3 bottles of water on board the plane. Lately, the most profitable carriers in the U.S. and Europe are the ones that pile on fees at every turn.
Airline passengers in the U.S. collectively paid $3.36 billion in fees for carry-on and checked bags last year. The figure actually represents a decrease from 2010, when we dropped $3.4 billion on baggage fees. Chances are, you paid more out of pocket to fly last year anyway.
Airline fees and a la carte pricing for flights may be highly annoying to passengers, but it’s also proving to be a highly profitable business model. Spirit Airlines, the “low-cost” carrier at the forefront of fees—since 2010, it’s charged upwards of $45 each way per carry-on bag—now averages more than $100 in fees per passenger [...]
Guess what travelers can look forward to this summer? Yep, more fees and restrictions, as well as fewer perks and higher fares to boot.
More and more, restaurants are requiring credit cards before allowing customers to make a dinner reservation, and they’ll charge you, and possibly say nasty things about you on Twitter, if you fail to show up.
Updated: 6:15 p.m., March 1 Bank fees are in the spotlight again. The Wall Street Journal reported that Bank of America is planning to roll out new checking-account fees, and the news stirred up negative sentiment in the social mediaverse almost immediately, with consumers reacting angrily to the idea. Chase, meanwhile, wants to charge customers even [...]
Ever since the Federal Reserve approved Capital One’s takeover of ING Direct, customers have feared that their beloved bright-orange online bank would change. Turns out they were right to be scared, as a recent notice is circulating announcing that the “ING Direct” name will disappear, probably next year. What else is going to change?
Will the new regulations protect consumers against misleading advertisements? Or is there some sort of government conspiracy afoot? While many observers welcome changes that promise to bring about more transparency in airline pricing, Spirit Airlines, one of the nation’s leading low-cost carriers, has taken a rather audacious, anti-regulation stance by sending out e-mails like this: [...]
They called it the “$39 cup of coffee.” At many banks, customers were automatically — often unwittingly — enrolled in overdraft programs that would permit debit purchases to go through even if it would overdraw their account, to the tune of up to $35 a pop. But a year and a half after new Federal [...]
Updated: 6:45 p.m., Dec. 30. Why should banks have all the fun? We can only imagine that’s what Verizon Wireless executives asked themselves before deciding to hit customers with a $2 fee — for paying their bill via a one-time payment on the carrier’s website. Angry customers have taken to the Internet to flood social [...]
