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Another string to the rip-off Britain bow . . .

We all detest booking fees. Or at least I certainly do. Those hidden extras which totally negate the "from £9.99" ticket price that is written extremely large while the "plus booking fee" needs a microscope to be seen.  The instant translucent coating painted over the so-called  transparent price-ticket.

There is the straightforward daylight robbery fee that the wonderful concert ticket agencies place on their tickets, as if the profit from exclusively filling an arena with 15,000 ticket-payers nine-months prior to the event is not enough.  One single event from a nationwide series of concerts producing in excess of £100,000. £1million in profit from fees for a series of just 10 major venues.And that's before their profit from the tickets themselves. And in the days before the internet, the venues had to put in a much greater effort to sell their tickets. All without booking fees.

Of course, sheer greed and the ability to get away with it legally, is the real explanation.

Then there's the budget airlines. They find all manner of ways to ensure they charge you at least £8, or even a percentage of the full ticket price, for the mere £1 the bank charges them for you using your credit card.

And Megabus with their "From £1 + 50p booking fee" plastered all over the back of their coaches. Don't  the marketing dimwits running the company marketing department realise that "From £1.50" is a far better and more honest proposition for the public?

The latest wheeze comes care of those wonderful people we all know and love. Estate rental agents. While the property aggregation sites, with their stupid names sounding like menageries or house-builders, proudly shout that they will sell your house for a fee that can "save you the price of a new kitchen",  their rental divisions are truly putting the "rip-off" into "rip-off Britain.

A recent wheeze is to charge £60 for a new annual contract for a property rental agreement. Yes, £60 to print out an identical contract to that of the previous year,  just with the new year copied and pasted in. Takes about three minutes? That's £1,200 an hour. Even slightly more than non-medical managers in the NHS earn. Or barristers. And even a little more than the annual lottery-winner that is the Chief Executive of the British national lottery earns.

This is disgusting. Immoral. And daylight robbery. And a thundering disgrace. It's the FIFA equivalent of the property world. It's nothing short of an organised crime racket. Every time you renew your rental contract, you are ostensibly helping award the rental world's World Cup to Qatar. There are a whole bunch of estate agents being run by the equivalent of crooked FIFA officials.

I, for one, think it's time this racket ends.

I'm not to sure what you think. But I'm fairly confident you are as jealous as I am that you can't make a living so easily.

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