Nickeled and dimed...

It’s become a sad fact of modern life that the price is NEVER the price. Airline seat sale prices pull you in until you realise “the deal” will cost you as much in extras as you thought you were saving, everything from baggage charges to airport fees and fuel surcharges. The Las Vegas hotels comp your room but then add a mandatory “resort fee”. Our electricity provider charges a separate delivery fee. (No thanks, I’ll pick my power up at the electricity store.) Even the post office tacks on a fuel surcharge. It makes me crazy.

What brought this to mind was I just found a hotel invoice for our golf trip to Niagara in May. We got a good room rate (we thought) at $60 a night. But the ten add-ons - facility fees, mandatory charges, taxes on all of it, plus a municipal accommodation tax - pushed it up over $100 a night.

Now I know many of these charges do not accrue to the hotel but rather various levels of government, and the hotel wants its customers to understand where the money is going, but seriously?  And pity the poor desk clerk trying to explain all that to an irate client (me) whose budget has just been blown. There has to be a better way.