2004-07-06 - 12:38 p.m.
I am I the only one that has become fed up with "recovery charges"?
There was a time when ATM's were free, and so was going in the bank. ATM cards were free. Telephones were free and there was one tax. Cable television was the same price no matter how many TVs you had. Moving somewhere required only the first month's rent and a deposit. Utilities were included in your rent. You could split dessert with your friend for free and they even brought extra spoons.
That was less than ten years ago.
In the last week:
In my new complex, you need a remote to get into the gate - but you have to give them $35 to get one.
The entire complex has ONE water meter to the utility - so they have installed individual meters on every apartment, and add a $1.50 "recovery fee" to cover the cost of billing you.
The apartment comes with an alarm - which you may or may not have monitored... but if you don't have it monitored, all it does is beep three times if you open the front door. To have a code and it actually DO anything - that's $20 a month.
With a bank not handy, I ran up $4.50 in ATM fees to avoid the $8 of talking to a teller.
I paid BellSouth $47 to move my phone line - but they said it's all digital so no one actually does anything. This is addition to the fact that the taxes and "recovery fees" on my monthly bill are $2 more than the charge for the telephone line.
After wanting $49.95 to screw a wire into a wall, the cable company feels the need to charge an extra $2 for each CABLE JACK you have in your house. Whether you have a TV is irrelevant. And, of course, there are the $6.50 in "recovery fees."
I did get a good deal, actually -- I gave them a satellite box and they gave me digital cable for the price of normal cable.... except the digital cable has advertising in the program guide, menus, whatever.
A restaraunt I visited recently had a sign up that they had begun a $1 "sharing charge" for sharing dessert.
However, all of this pales in comparison to the ultimate outrage: Domino's Pizza.
I am not talking in getting rid of the "30 Minutes or Less" rule that often ends up with cold pizza 90 minutes after you order it.
Domino's now CHARGES for delivery. It's always been a well-kept secret that if you go pick up your pizza, it's two or three dollars less, and this is still true at Domino's.... the listed price is the same, but NOW you have to pay them to deliver it AND the driver wants a tip!!!
The domain of hidden fees and charges used to be limited to the ranks of scummy car dealers and time-share sales groups. No more.
In the next year, I anticipate McDonalds having a .10 "recovery fee" to cover the cost of throwing out your own trash. Repair shops will charge you to get rid of the old oil (wait: they already do that!) even though they resell it to be recycled.
Who knows -- maybe soon we'll be paying more for drinking water than we do for gasoline?
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