Now do service fees and 'convenience' fees. Every ticket I buy for a movie somehow costs $2 extra now. (As with everything else). Robbery.

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dylan604 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

My favorite is the local tax office charges extra for paying online vs going in to the office to pay in person. At first, I thought it was a way to recoup the processing fees as you're obviously paying by card online. The last time I paid in person with a card, that fee was not added on though. So they are charging you extra for not having to pay an employee to process your account.

	▲	perlgeek 6 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		What you really need are strong consumer protection offices, and the right for them to sue. This has really helped in Germany.
	▲	mrWiz 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Until a few years ago merchants were not allowed to charge credit card fees. In that case, online fees make a legally-allowable proxy for credit card surcharges.

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bsimpson 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The one that pisses me off is when the waitress tells you to pay with your phone, and it's charged a "convenience fee."

	▲	traderj0e 12 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I won't go anywhere that wants you to pay with phone period, cause it's just annoying and usually means bad food/service. If they somehow hid this fact until the end and wanted a fee for it, I'd just slap a bill on the table and leave. Don't think that's even a crime.

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foobarchu 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I looked at buying tickets for a local hockey game last week, and the venue goes through Ticketmaster. The service fees were exactly the same as the actual ticket cost, maybe the total 200% of the list price.

I ended up going to the physical box office, where they still charged an extra 40% of the ticket cost in service fees.

	▲	alexanderscott 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		most large venues have a rev share agreement on these fees. they aren’t all going to the ticketing company.

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micromacrofoot 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

usually the service fee doesn't even get refunded, which feels additionally foul

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wccrawford 14 hours ago | parent [-]

I think that's exactly the point. They've charged you $2 to process the request. They did that work. Even if you get the money back for the event, they still did the job, so they won't refund the service fee.

	▲	micromacrofoot 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sure, but imagine a brick and mortar doing that? "we paid our cashier so we can't refund you the full cost" running the service is the cost of doing business

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colechristensen 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

California, Minnesota, Maryland, and New York have

	▲	bsimpson 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		And then the restaurant lobby got the CA one rescinded for restaurant junk fees, which were probably the biggest culprit most people encounter day-to-day.