50 Outrageous Fees

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.

1. Airlines: Getting paper tickets instead of e-tickets


2. Airlines: Talking to a person instead of using online or automated system


3. Airlines: Changing your flight


4. Airlines: Reserving an aisle seat (I hadn’t heard of this one before! Outrageous Indeed!)


5. Airlines: Excess Baggage


6. Car rental: Insurance


7. Car rental: Excise taxes


8. Hotel: Internet connection fee


9. Hotel: Resort fee


10. Hotel: Automatic gratuities


11. Hotel: Package delivery fees


12. Hotel: Mini-bar restocking


13. Phone: Carrier cost recovery fee


14. Phone: AT&T's tax-related surcharge


15. Phone: Property tax surcharge


16. Phone: Activation fee


17. Phone: Cancellation penalty


18. Shopping: Gift-card activation fee, inactivity fees


19. Real Estate: Junk closing costs


20. Real Estate: Title insurance


21. Mortgage: Biweekly payment fee ( this is highway robbery, if you ask me! )


22. Banking: ATM fees


23. Banking: Monthly service fee


24. Banking: Bad-deposit fee


25. Banking: Foreign-currency fee


26. Credit cards: Credit-card late fees


27. Credit cards: Balance-transfer fee


28. Credit cards: Over-limit fee


29. Credit cards: Same-day payment fee


30. Investments: Mutual Fund Fees, overcharged Index funds


31. Investments: Fees for actively managed Large U.S. stock funds


32. Investments: Target-date retirement funds


33. Investments: Variable annuity expenses


34. Investments: Brokerage transfer fees


35. Investments: 529 expenses



--- My Additions ---



36. Airlines: Headset purchase fee on long-haul flights.


37. 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 ??!!


38. Travel: Some museums and entertainment parks charge video or camera fee!


39. Car Rental: Mileage fees


40. Car Rental: Additional Driver fees


41. Car Rental: Out-of-state Charges


42. Hotel: Local Phone call fees


43. 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


44. Phone: Roaming charges. If you are still paying these, its about time to switch carriers.


45. (International) Calling Cards: Call connection fees, 3-minute rounding (sometimes even 6-minute rounding!), inactivity fee etc. etc.


46. Online Shopping: Restocking fee for returns.


47. Credit Cards: Annual Fees (How could they have missed this !)


48. Day Care: Late fees.


49. Auto Care: $60 computer diagnostic fees, to just tell me what is wrong !


50. Last but not the least – Fees for seeing your credit score. By law, the credit report for free, but not the credit score. Ugh….!

If you like this article, you can bookmark it or subscribe to the feed.