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The Ridiculous Tech Fees You're Still Paying
Esther Schindler writes "None of us like to spend money (except on shiny new toys). But even we curmudgeons can understand that companies need to charge for things that cost them money; and profit-making is at the heart of our economy. Still, several charges appear on our bills that can drive even the most complacent techie into a screaming fit. How did this advertised price turn into that much on the final bill? Why are they charging for it in the first place? Herewith, fees that make no sense at all — and yet we still fork over money for them. For example: 'While Internet access is free in coffee shops, some public transit, and even campsites, as of 2009 15% of hotels charged guests for the privilege of checking their e-mail and catching up on watching cat videos. Oddly, budget and midscale hotel chains are more likely to offer free Wi-Fi, while luxurious hotels — already costing the traveler more — regularly ding us.'"
Internet costs in Australia. Its not uncommon to pay around $70/month for ADSL 1 speeds (1.5Mbps).
This isn't odd at all. People staying at budget and midscale hotel chains are more price sensitive, so they're going to not come to your hotel if you don't have free wifi. The people staying a luxury hotels are not as price sensitive and are more likely to be worried about other things beside a charge for internet access when selecting a hotel.
Seriously? That's 4 years ago. That's a lifetime in the industry
Aww snap! $250 cell phone bill from overages in data usage.
There may be no "I" in team, but there's also no "F" in way.
Some aspects of the free market can make some things irritating, if not unbearable. It's not hard to imagine the problems that would exist if water rights were undefined.
luxurious hotels — already costing the traveler more — regularly ding us.'
The company is paying for that.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
What about ebooks at the same price as the content but with making a big stock with expected losses, stocking, transporting, the physical media (paper, ink, printing, human labor) and all the chains of intermediaries with their corresponding profits? What about the same, but for music? What about movies, where you also must count too the big chunk that takes each theater?
>Oddly, budget and midscale hotel chains are more likely to offer free Wi-Fi, while luxurious hotels — already costing the traveler more — regularly ding us.
Not odd in the slightest -- the majority of said "luxurious" hotel rooms are being consumed by (in no particular order) #1 the price insensitive and #2 business travelers (arguably a great overlap, if not outright subset, of group #1).
Few of either group in covering a hotel bill for a few nights in San Francisco are going to care much if it's $845 or $885 with Internet.
Finally, those in group #2 are much more likely to have elite status with the hotel, which typically (at the higher levels) includes free internet -- making it a "valuable" perk for your brand loyalty...
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There is no try at jedinite.com
I recently almost renewed my contract with Verizon (business plan @~$110/mo after fees and taxes). But Verizon Wireless tried to charge me for an "Upgrade fee". They wanted $30 just for upgrading my device (and re-subbing my contract). This is on top of the normal price of the phone and 2/year contract. So I left for T-Mobile instead and the coverage has been very good and LTE speeds even faster (suburban northeast USA).
Agreed with the rest of the article too, but I cant remember a time when I had to pay a to check my bank balance. That's either an illegal fee or the author needs to switch banks desperately. (preferably to a credit Union).
Tethering...is possibly the most ridiculous of fees though.
Companies want to sell their products at the highest price each consumer will pay. By charging large fees for convenience items they are able to extract more money from people who place a higher value on their own time.
So, you could save money getting a SIM card for your phone to use internationally, but that would take time and make it more difficult for people to contact you. You could go to the hotel lobby for internet, but using the internet in your hotel room saves time.
This has the perverse effect that it may make sense for companies to spend extra money to waste your time or to provide worse service, if it pushes you to one of their higher priced services - assuming of course that they don't push you to a competitor.
Its just one of the very annoying effects of the free market. If you want to feel good about it, think if it as a "tax" on the wealthy who are able to put a higher value on their own time.
Their last example - payroll cards with fees ought to be outright illegal. IMO.
You can get those easily. The BestBuy kiosks at various airports even sell them.
If you still subscribe to cable, they know they have a sucker, so they sell you this crap too.
And you have a landline ... because?
They also charge as much for stale beer and cocktail peanuts as restaurants do for an entire dinner. In turn, though, they are also getting fleeced by cities with ridiculous taxes, fees, and regulations, so I guess it's only fair. Avoid all of it and go with AirBNB.
Often, all of this is just a case of "differential pricing": they simply want to extract from each person what they can easily afford to pay without feeling pain; think of it as a "progressive income tax". It's the same for many tech products, where you pay a steep increase in price for minor differences in features, or even just unlocking features. And if you're on a budget, it's probably better this way, because those excessive WiFi charges that other people pay are easy to avoid for you, but they are keeping overall prices down and allow you to stay in a hotel that you might otherwise not be able to afford.
Contributing to the profusion of these charges is that, for many people, those are business expenses anyway, so they are paid for by businesses or tax payer subsidized.
In my experience these things improve rapidly, last year I was in a Best Western in Aberdeen Scotland and they had some outrageous price like 15 pounds, for 24 hrs. of access, on check out I complained and they gave it to me for the price of a 1 hr. ticket, 5 pounds.
This year it's for 'free', or in other words; included in the room price.
Virtually all restaurants now have free internet.
During the last few years the UK was really expensive, at a time that most hotels in The Netherlands already offered net access for free.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Save your time, the 45 seconds it would take you to read TFA won't tell you more than the summary.
As far as hotel charges: everything in a major hotel is expensive, but then again you get a depth and quality of service that Motel 6 will never, ever provide. It's about the overall experience and level of comfort, not about nickle and diming on peanuts stuff.
Speaking of which, mini-bar cashews @ $18 are the best, but for a real treat order up a full carafe of room service hot chocolate after a long day.
Three Squirrels
Comcast charges $10/month for HD TV service...in 2013. I guess this HD thing is just a fad anyway.
I haven't had a landline in well over a decade, so all I can do is wonder - do the telcos still charge a monthly fee for touch-tone service? That used to be the standard despite the fact that maintaining rotary functionality was the more costly option for most telcos.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
As a foreigner, I have been looking for a way to get internet access for my phone, and sometimes when staying a hotel( some demands insane prices for WiFi when all I want to do is find and book a hotel for upcoming days).
I have gotten used to being able to search for everything on my phone, finding a place to eat, booking hotel for the next day, ideas on what to see or do
So far what I have come up with would be buying a Verizon MiFi router at Best Buy for 79.99$ and then go to their website and enable it with a prepaid plan. Then use it as a backup for when hotel / cafe / whatever WiFi aren't available.
I briefly looked at xcomglobal for MiFi rental, but it seemed expensive(with the mifi insurance added) and theri "unlimited" bandwidth seemed to be "a couple of 100 megabytes over 2-3 days" when you dug into their website, so I might as well buy the Verizon MiFi and then add the 10GB prepaid to it everytime i visit.
I haven't come across any plans with decent data rates. But perhaps I am spoiled with data plans like LTE 1000GB a month for 72$ ( http://www.3.dk/Privat/Mobilt-bredband/) or 200GB for 54$, or 500GB + HBO Go for 72$ ( http://telia.dk/mobiltbredbaand )
Who the hell still pays for internet access in public places when you can have a VPS for less than 5$/mo and OpenVPN over icmp/dns tunnels tricks are trivial to deploy ?
The main reason why i never manage to get internet in hotels is the lack of signal coverage, most of the time i have to fallback to a nearer private AP which i have to force the encryption key. Hopefully it works more than not.
The article mentioned some expensive internet fees in Amsterdam. I went to Amsterdam last year for a week for work (did not enjoy it there at all). They wanted to charge something like $20/day for internet or $30/day for internet+pay tv. The note in the hotel(Holiday Inn) said I could get both and it would show up as a single "communications charge" on the bill for each night.
Given the pay tv package included a bunch of hard core porn channels I obviously opted for that.
Of course my company paid for it.
Hopefully don't have to return to Europe any time soon, not my kind of place.
Again the real big businesses get into large contracts with the hotel chains and they get a different rate. But then the hotels get smart and add "service" fees. And the next round of contract talks things get negotiated. The cycle goes on.
In all our travel, if there is no free parking, free breakfast and free wi-fi, I am not even looking at the hotel. They get filtered out.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The manager of a group of hotels, branded at three price tiers, told me that they only charge for the stuff at the highest priced hotel because those customers will pay it. They could walk to the building next door, literally, and get it free.
Verizon wanted to charge me a $30 "upgrade" fee when I tried to upgrade to a new iPhone. They're already charging me $200 for the phone and $80/month for the service (plus a new two year contract to replace my recently lapsed one). That means I'm already going to be paying them $2,120. That sounds like a pretty sweet deal for them, what possible expense could this upgrade fee cover?
Why pay? Connect to their access point and tunnel all of your traffic over DNS or ICMP. The firewalls that they use rarely block ICMP and almost never block UDP port 53. All you need is to have a client installed on your machine and run a server out on the interwebs somewhere that is running the right server software and acts as a proxy. The tech to do this has been around for quite a while, and most linux distros have the clients and servers in their repositories. The main system used for DNS is called iodine and there are two different, very good ICMP tunnels that I know of. One is here and another here. If you search through your favorite linux or BSD distro's repository search for "ip over icmp" or "ip over dns" and you'll find what you need.
Agreed with the rest of the article too, but I cant remember a time when I had to pay a to check my bank balance. That's either an illegal fee or the author needs to switch banks desperately. (preferably to a credit Union).
That is because it isn't your bank balance. The way payroll cards work is that it is a sub-ledger on your employer's bank account. Therefore, they exist in an odd realm of law because it isn't your money but you have the right to access it. But this also means that as long as you get a pay stub of some form and they give you the option to opt out (usually in the mountain of paperwork you sign when you get the job) they can use them. And since they are in that sort of middle ground, they can charge basically whatever they want (as it isn't really your account and the employer can agree to whatever fees they want). The only exceptions are for fees that are not allowed for ANY type of account (because it is still drawn on your employer's account) and in states that consider these types of accounts trust accounts.
How about the "We never used to charge extra to send you a paper bill, but now we are going to" fee?
Or the "it costs us money to publish your phone number in the phone books, but we're going to charge you not to publish it" fee?
#1: Long Distance Fees:
BS from the phone companies backed by laws they could try to change but don't want to.
#2: Hotel Internet Fees:
BS from the hotel. Cheap hotels don't do it because dealing with complaints would eat all the profit. Expensive hotels do it because rich people don't care because the bill is still below their "to cheap to care about the details" threshold.
#3: International Data Fees:
And you thought internet peering partnerships were difficult to negotiate? Get a sim card or a tempoary local phone.
#4: TV/Internet Equipment Fees:
Overblown. The break-even point on buying your own equipment is ~2-4 years of ownership, assuming you never have a problem.
#5: Bank Fees:
This is the banks getting away with anything they can at any opportunity. The payroll cards abuses should be considered criminal offenses.
I think people get so used to things they forget how much SHIT goes on in the background to make this stuff work. Honestly this "article" is nothing but a ranting old man bitching about how privileges should become entitlements as he hopscotches around the world on some one else's dime just to bring us drivel like this.
Please let me just cry you a river cause a smiley face that bounced all around the world though miles of wires, switches and exchanges making up one of the most stable communications network man has ever made cost you 25 cents cause your too stupid to understand your contract.
I actually did the same exact thing. I went to upgrade my phone and they wanted to do the 30 dollar upgrade fee, so I cut the Internet from my plan, dropped to a dumb phone, paid the 25 dollar whatever fee to do all that, then switched to TMobile. Paying 50 a month for unlimited text, 500 minutes (about 450 more than i actually use) and 2GB data when I'm on wifi most of the time anyway is pretty sweet. Plus I can bail if they start to rip me off, which really was what sealed the deal.
Bell Canada land lines: $2+ / month touch-tone fees.
And pulse dialing is not available according to Bell.
Touch-tone, that new-fangled tech from the 1970s...
Fuck you Bell.
The only one that's ripping me off right now is AT&T, and that's only because Comcast would screw me harder. All I'm buying from them is DSL and I'm paying $47 a month. Meanwhile on my phone I not only get unlimited internet* (with email from my 10 year old address, YouTube, Google), but a phone with long distance, voicemail, 411, roaming, all unlimited and included in the $42 I pay them. I'm not going to name them but they're not the only ones and some may even be better. I've been with them for 5 years with no problems except their website is an ugly clusterfuck, but most are these days.
Hell, even my credit card company doesn't screw me over, and I'll bet most of you the people you guys deal with don't screw you, either. But you're nerds, and we're not normal (at least I'm not). I use a small local bank, and they're damned near free. Wasting your money is stupid.
But most people? Hell, I'll tell people what I'm paying for my phone when they're paying three times that for less stuff, and they go on using the expensive carrier they're with. And switching carriers is easy; maybe expensive if you're on a contract but easy.
Why in the hell am I paying seven dollars more for internet alone than a phone WITH internet?? I guess because there's competition in the cell phone business. I wish my phone company sold internet.
* I listen to KSHE on it all day long at work, that's eight hours a day using its radio, plus when I ask it the temperature or read a novel or newspaper
Free Martian Whores!
If the rich weren't being charged a premium for their super duper luxury services such as, erm, wi-fi internet access, then they would feel that they were not staying in a place of luxury and sophistication and exclusive facilities that only they can afford and were therefore less important.
It makes an awful lot of economic sense once you understand it from this idiotic perspective.
"Why are they charging for it in the first place?"
Duh: because they can.
This isn't even Econ 101. This is stuff everyone knows before they even enroll in an Econ class.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I'm posting this from a hotel with pay-for internet access. I'm paying about $200 a night for two beds (so not too expensive, but expensive for me). As soon as I saw that the internet costs money here, I thought to myself, well shit, I won't be coming to the Hilton again. So yes, I would imagine that it does affect the amount of customers they get, but apparently not enough for them to lose money on charging for access. Fortunately the conference that I'm attending is paying for my internet.
As a side note, they don't offer any free breakfast either. :(
[/rant]
I mean, here they are trying to employ H1B's and all you do is piss it away on things like internet fees.
1) Regardless, internet services has to cost something. If the cost is not paid upfront, it's hidden within other items. Like in the case of budget hotels, part of the cost of the room. Or in the case of free wifi hotspots, cost of advertising.
2) Paid service usually implies better service. Like perhaps, more privacy, better uptime, more stability, etc.
3) Part of the whole perception issue. Coffee is WAY cheaper to purchase from unbranded coffeeshops than in starbucks.
TFS says:
profit-making is at the heart of our economy
That is true for SMB, and that was true for megacorporations in the last centuries. Now when transnational companies make profits, the money never goes back to the real economy because there is not enough demand: who want to invest when the new products and services will not have customers? Instead, money goes to speculation, inflate bubbles, and when bubble burst, that wrecks the economy even further.
How the heck is text messaging not included in this list?
:)
SMS messages are piggybacked onto existing beacon probes between the cell network and the handset. They cost virtually NOTHING to the carrier. They are 99.9999999% profit. The fact that the general public isn't intelligently adopting iMessages and Google Hangouts for this reason alone is silly. I see the argument though... Short term, the price gouging that occurs in SMS and MMS messages will simply transfer over to the data plans. Long term, the moment SMS is no longer a contract-signing focus, the carriers will become competitive with the data plan fees/restrictions. That's how I see the future anyways.
http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/141867-price-gouging-it-costs-more-to-send-a-text-message-on-earth-than-from-mars
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/12/text-messages-c/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/sethporges/2013/03/28/mobile-carrier-are-worried-about-free-messaging-apps-good/
Just sayin'
"I know this... this is a unix system" -- Jurrasic Park
One thing nobody appears to have posted yet... the big hotels might have a contract with someone who installed the system back when nobody had free Wifi. They're paying the price of being early adopters, and they're probably locked in for a minimum term.
Furthermore, most people staying in 4 star hotels or better have a 3G card in their iPad, and have tethering enabled on their mobile phone, or have a 3G/4G dongle for their laptop.
People staying in cheap hotels probably don't have a fistful of ways to get to the Internet on the road, either because they're [poor/cheap/frugal], or they are globally-roaming.
It's simple economics, you pay a lot for Internet at a fine hotel, (a) because they're not amortizing that cost over very many users; and (b) if you need WiFi from the hotel, you are probably willing to pay a fortune for it.
I got really fed up with paying high prices for soda pop.
The 2 and 3 liter plastic bottles soda pop comes in make handy carbonation vessels. I drilled a hole in the cap and inserted one of those bolt-in-place stainless steel tire stems sold at Pep Boys. I also got a 20 pound CO2 tank at a garage sale, and a decent 100 PSI adjustable regulator from a surplus house.
I fill my bottle to the brim with water. Refrigerate it. Warm water will not carbonate... cold water will. Then I connect my special cap and hook it to 70PSI CO2 ( Do not connect to tank directly, as tank pressures run from 500 psi on a cold day to over 1000 psi on a hot day; the CO2 inside the tank is a liquid ).
I shake for a few seconds and watch the gas stream into the water. About 10-15 seconds or so. After that things taper off. I shut off the gas and disconnect the hose. I take my container full of freshly carbonated water into the house to mix with any variety of flavor powders or fruit juice concentrates.
Makes great fizzy soda pop. It cost me $14 to get the 20 pounds of CO2. I have been using the same tank for about 3 years now. My calculations show I have roughly enough CO2 to carbonate a swimming pool full of water. Its gonna take me quite some time to drink that much.
The one caveat is you do not want any substantial volume of gas in your carbonation vessel, as the compressed gas will release substantial mechanical energy in the event of a rupture of the vessel. The water does not compress, so the idea is to minimize the amount of explosive decompression you get in the event the bottle ruptures - albeit I have not ever had that happen.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Hey Esther -- Bundling and Price Discrimination. Read up on it, and watch all your questions about such fees melt away.
you're too stupid
- FTFY
I have the same story (except I switched to ATT). It wasn't the $30, it was the principle of the $30.
In the so called luxary hotels Ive been in where they charge for WiFi theres a pretty good chance they have a real live active *gasp* ethernet port that can be used free of charge. Also good to carry a patch cable in the laptop bag. Piggybacking that to the tablet is an exercise for the reader.
There are also states that have laws to specifically cover paycheck debit cards that take some or all of the crap fees out.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
Just added my wife to my Consumer Cellular account. We had been paying 57.00 month for her phone. After adding her to mine, I will be paying about $35 month for both of our phones. Furthermore CC uses the ATT network which has worked flawlessly for us for about 20 years now.
Um, asking for an elegant explanation is being a script-kiddie. It is like saying I want to be an expert without being a nubile first.
Want that elegant explanation? Just type 'man nc' at your nearest terminal.
most places in las vegas have forced resort fees that come with wifi
I am leaving Verizon as soon as i can over the ridiculous tethering bullshit. Its on a compltely separate meter from my unlimited data package and its $20 fucking bucks. My phone can suck down as much data as any laptop, their old excuses of tethering using more data is bullshit now.
Good-bye
I think the author was pointing out one of the 'flaws' of capitalism; Technology and infrastructure makes offering such amenities a very cheap proposition. And yet, you wind up paying through the nose for them in certain situations; It is basically a misrepresentation of the true cost of the good or service being provided.
It's not a "misrepresentation", it's charging what the market will bear. Very obviously the real price is much lower.
Another factor not considered is that more well off travelers staying at high end hotels are very likely to have cellular connected devices already, so there's not as much of a need to even provide internet service. If you don't have to do something as often, you usually charge more because you lose scale.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If it isn't my money then they haven't fulfilled their obligation to pay me for my work. If it's their account, the fees should be charged against their money, not mine.
Forced hidden fees need to go away or be part of the base fee.
If I'm staying at a Best Western, I'm paying for it. If I'm staying at the Hilton, odds are it's on an expense account so screw it, charge me $20/day for WiFi. I'm not going to be paying for it.
This so reminds me of my trip to Santa Monica, CA. I stayed at the Oceanic on the beach and the plane, taxi, food, and hotel were all paid for + a free $50 prepaid Visa for random expenses by one of the companies I was working for. So I decided to treat myself since it was sort of vacation-y and not 100% business and get a nice salad with room service. I was dead set on it as I looked for the menu. Then I found it and it was like $34 plus in tiny italics it said there's an 18% gratuity on the bill regardless of payment method plus they probably want a cash tip anyway when they get there. First of all, if that 18% built-in gratuity actually goes to the delivery person, they make more than I do at my job. I would quit on the spot and bring salads to rich families for like $10 per trip in a heartbeat. Secondly, I didn't end up ordering anything.
I found the best place for WiFi in Las Vegas was the municipal public library. You need to go out of your way to find it, but the librarians were pretty decent about helping you get hooked up if you were courteous and reasonable. It sure as hell beat trying to jerk around with the hotel management and the bandwidth was a hell of a lot better too. If you wanted to even bother, all you need to do is sit in you (presumably rental) car with your laptop or go inside and they even had outlets... or you could get onto terminals in the library.
An added bonus by bringing your own equipment is that you essentially had no real time limit either.
By far and away the worst places were the resort hotels, but even the budget motels are a pain in the rear.
Don't even get me started with "roaming fees" for cell phones. Las Vegas is a death trap for most cell phone carriers. I purposely bought a throw-away cell phone at Wal-Mart with pre-paid minutes explicitly for calling from Vegas on the last time I was there. A buddy of mine brought in an AT&T cell phone, and ended up with a $500 cell phone bill before he left after just a few days in that city. His typical cell phone bill was usually about $40/month. Reno is almost as bad as Vegas too. By using the throw away cell phone, I only had to pay $50, including the brand-new cell phone and I even had minutes left over after the trip. It is just one of those "buyer beware" kind of things.
The only one that's ripping me off right now is AT&T, and that's only because Comcast would screw me harder. All I'm buying from them is DSL and I'm paying $47 a month. Meanwhile on my phone I not only get unlimited internet* (with email from my 10 year old address, YouTube, Google), but a phone with long distance, voicemail, 411, roaming, all unlimited and included in the $42 I pay them. I'm not going to name them but they're not the only ones and some may even be better. I've been with them for 5 years with no problems except their website is an ugly clusterfuck, but most are these days.
Hell, even my credit card company doesn't screw me over, and I'll bet most of you the people you guys deal with don't screw you, either. But you're nerds, and we're not normal (at least I'm not). I use a small local bank, and they're damned near free. Wasting your money is stupid.
But most people? Hell, I'll tell people what I'm paying for my phone when they're paying three times that for less stuff, and they go on using the expensive carrier they're with. And switching carriers is easy; maybe expensive if you're on a contract but easy.
Why in the hell am I paying seven dollars more for internet alone than a phone WITH internet?? I guess because there's competition in the cell phone business. I wish my phone company sold internet.
* I listen to KSHE on it all day long at work, that's eight hours a day using its radio, plus when I ask it the temperature or read a novel or newspaper
Yikes. My "cell phone" company offers just LTE internet as a service. If I used my device as a phone only (say, 2000-3000 minutes and as many text messages) I'd pay $12/month. Voice and text data is small data.
Meanwhile, in Romania, of all places, a provider (RDS) announced deployment of a new "pipe" (fiber-optic) that would allow (they say) up to 1 GB/sec down, all that for around 10..12 euro/mo, which is the cost of a one-person lunch in a mid-scale restaurant in town. I currently have about 40Mb/sec and pay 23 euro/mo for the whole package (internet, 70 channnels IPTV, and landline phone). In other words, if the situation is this bad in Australia, as per previous posts... it clearly is a huge money grab.
Another example: I've been trying for months now
to get BT's (British Telecom's) "cease charge" refunded:
they charge you 30 pounds for closing a broadband account (!)
No luck so far :-(
Notice it is from 2009. Things have changed a lot in that time. Back then, the Seattle-Tacoma airport charged for WiFi, now it is free there, as a simple example.
However it is also region/country dependent to an extent and also in certain ranges of hotels. The really nice places don't tend to charge. Their guests expect that dropping a couple hundred for a room means you don't get nailed with piddly shit and will get mad. Also the budget places don't tend to charge, as it costs them very little and it is something that will drive customers somewhere else. If someone is worried about paying $40 for a room, they'll sure as hell worry about paying $10 for Internet.
The places that still most often charge (though they are coming around) are the middle ground hotels. The three star business types. Places where it is expensive enough that people who stay there have cash and aren't too price sensitive, but not luxury such that an addon could be seen as an insult.
Smartphones have also had an impact. Getting much more common to have a phone you can tether and thus use that if the hotel tries to screw you. So a chain will find that basically nobody is paying their exorbitant fee, thus they are making nothing, but they ARE driving away some customers by charging, so they decide to make it free.
What could've been a good article is, unfortunately, just your typical uninformed zero-research blog rant.
What's missing is what journalism is all about: Going deeper, finding the causes, even if they are more then one step away.
For example, why do some hotels charge for Internet and others don't? No, it's not the price, that is counterintuitive (cheap hotels often offer free Internet, expensive ones charge, as the article also says). So what is it? Well, other articles on the topic that did some actual research dug up the answer years ago: It's not the price, it's the guests. Hotels that are largely frequented by business travellers will charge, because a) their guests really need Internet and b) are ready to pay for it because it's business expenses anyways. Hotels that are largely frequented by tourists offer free-of-charge, because their customers would probably go to a nearby Starbucks instead if they charged and Internet or not may be the deciding factor between this hotel or the other one down the road as in the low price range there are fewer actual differences between the hotels.
If stuff like that had been in the article for the other 4 items as well, it would've been a good read.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Hell, even my credit card company doesn't screw me over
Or you don't notice. Remember that money is not the only thing they can screw you with.
For example, I'm getting more and more angry every time YouTube tries to convince me to use my real name, and it never goes away. The best you get out of it is "ok, we'll ask you again later". No, you stupid piece of crap, I want you to accept my answer once and for all, period.
But, Google wants your personal data, because that is what they are selling to their customers (which isn't you, you're the product). So they keep insisting as much as they can get away with. Because my account data with my real name on it would be more valuable then without.
Some companies screw you on service fees, some on quality, some on customer service - but they all screw you somewhere.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
in the more upmarket ones is aimed at business people on expenses - so its just another way to ramp the bill up if your on expenses you dont realy care how much it is as its not your money
In Switzerland with a prepaid SIM card you can buy 100mB for ~10$.
But it will only last one month. Do bytes expire? Do they rot?
I don't understand why people accept completely arbitrarily limits created only to make more money on stuff you _don't_ sell.
But the best one is the power company charges me $5 to NOT get a paper bill OR $5 for a paper bill. One is a convenience charge and the other is for, oh who knows- recycling?
Fuck them all to flaming uranium hell forever.
OK so maybe not a tech cost but a ridiculous train ticket fee in some countries that I just don't get. Say there is a train journey from station A to C, and you must change to a different line at B. Example tickets:
A to C (not leaving the station at B) = $6
A to B, exit, enter again then B to C = $8 ($4 each leg)
How and why should exiting and rentering the station at B cost $2?
Japan has the best costing since you pay for the distance you travel. Simple, effective!
I hate that you can't have a smart phone without paying at least an extra $30 a month for a data plan. I like my smart phone, its a single device that makes/receives phone calls, holds all my music, photos, camera, calendar events, bathroom games, all that stuff, but I don't need a mobile data plan. My usage patterns are such that I'm rarely out of range of a wifi access point, and in the rare instances I am, I'm fine with waiting like 20 minutes till I get back to a wifi hotspot to sync back up. $30 might not seem like much, but both my wife and I are in the same boat, so that is $60 a month that we're paying out and not getting anything in return.
Another poster mentioned pretending it is a deal breaker and getting certain bullshit fees waived, but has anyone ever tried this with a data plan and have a voice-only plan on a smartphone with Verizon? It seems my only option is to use a 'dumb' flip phone for calls, and carry around an additional wifi-only device for all the functions I listed above, and I am fully ready to get my flip phone from a different carrier just out of spite.
Check out the cave on the east side of lake Hylia. Strange and wonderful things live in it.
So presumably you visited Vegas...and went to the public library? You sure do know how to have a great time. I think this would be one of those times where what happened in Vegas needs to stay in Vegas.
Took my Verizon phone to Vegas just this past summer, the only time I saw roaming was when way out in the desert. Despite their other faults having coverage is one thing Verizon is consistently good at for me.
The resort fees are annoying in that they should just be more honest and roll it into the room price right from the start but we had no issues with the hotel's internet either. Then again I don't go to Vegas for business so aside from posting some occasional photos online and checking email once a day usually we're too busy out enjoying ourselves to care much about the internet.
Yeah, that pisses me off too, but it came in real handy when I went to Hawaii last week where all the fucking hotels charge for internet. 4G coverage is fucking phenomenal all over the island of Oahu, and at 4G speeds, using my phone as a mobile hotspot is totally worth the extra $20 for a month. I'll be getting rid of that for next month, though. No need for it at home.
While Internet access is free in coffee shops, some public transit, and even campsites, as of 2009 15% of hotels charged guests for the privilege of checking their e-mail and catching up on watching cat videos. Oddly, budget and midscale hotel chains are more likely to offer free Wi-Fi, while luxurious hotels — already costing the traveler more — regularly ding us.
It's all about charging what you think you can get. Budget hotels house budget travelers who likely won't pay extra for WiFi. So free WiFi serves to differentiate you from you competitors, or at least keeps you competitive. Higher end hotels serve a wealthier clientele who won't notice $30 tacked on to a $1000 bill, or business travelers who will just pay it and expense it.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
I am soon going to New Orleans for a conference, and the hotel charges $14.95 per day for WiFi. Knowing that hot water is not metered, that's what I plan to do:
Therefore, I will let hot water flow free for about 10 hours (every night, closing it at breakfast) and offset the profit they make on WiFi.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Why would Comcast mess you over more than AT&T DSL/Landline?
Down here in South Florida, Comcast is 10x faster than AT&T at about the same price, and they have always billed me honestly. AT&T, by contrast, has added huge, incomprehensible fees to their bills, making $50 or so in announced charges turn into $80.
D
I was merely stating that it was the best network service I found in the whole city in terms of network bandwidth. If you have the money where you don't give a damn, of course you can always hit one of the casinos.... or try to get "lucky" with a slot machine or something else there as well. Unfortunately most people who use computers are smart enough to know the odds are stacked against you when you visit a casino, so depending on winning the money needed to buy network coverage is usually not an option and is utterly stupid to even plan on.
Just how large was the expense account you used when you last made a trip to Vegas on business? Did it include a few thousand dollars for "entertainment"? No doubt some businesses similarly don't give a damn or expect that sending employees there for the various conventions are also going to "live it up". I wasn't so lucky.
If it has a pool they charge a "resort fee". Plus a half dozen other fees. The budget chains have all-in-one prices. Car rentals and airlines have large add-on fees too.
Cable modem fees aren't even an option for many people. I purchased my own years ago, but Charter wasn't equipped to deal with DOCSYS 3, so I had to switch to on an old modem from a friend. When they finally upgraded their network, they changed their policy to disallow any customer-owned equipment. I'm grandfathered-in to use my own modem, but I can't even switch to my faster and more reliable modem because they refuse to register new equipment. Now I have the choice between leasing equipment in which I have no control over the software and giving them backdoors into everything on my network or sticking with my old equipment until it breaks or their policy changes again.
fat32 and exfat are a great way to waste your money on fees that makes your devices even slower, It is like kicking your own ass and paying for it.
The first two entries in the article, second predominately, use old data or information.
Kosh: "Understanding is a 3 edged sword, your side, their side, the Truth."
This one could be considered the opposite of the rant in the tarticle. Why in Canada with Bell on my land line am I NOT ALLOWED to dial 1 before a local number, yet I HAVE to dial 1 before a long distance number? I DON'T CARE if it's local or long distance! I can afford the $0.04 per minute or whatever. Just let me make the call without having to hang up and dial again with or without the magic prepended 1.
At least my mobile phone just tells me it's local/long distance and puts the call through anyway. It's an improvement.
I switched from Bell to TekSavvy for my home phone a few years ago. I thought TekSavvy might make this problem go away then but it didn't.
</rant>
www.clarke.ca
For a land line, Bell Canada still charges the "Touch-Tone" option, even if you can't remove it...
So now days to use simple technology as recording (something we used to be able to do for free with a VCR) we get dinged for $20 to $50 / month. I'm talking about DVR service. Augh.
Add that to the HD technology fee when you get the HD digital cable package. Um, what's with the technology fee? It's not like you're fixing issues with digital broadcasting or improving on the HD pictures that are compressed in transfer. We're just being hit with extra fees and questioning them does nothing to help anyone take notice of them.
Oh Cable companies, you're such a racket, as bad as the insurance industry, or Obamacare. Shame on all of you.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
Does Xbox Live qualify as a "needless expense"? (and hence, a 'ridiculous tech fee')
Leave your damn smart phone, laptop, and pads at home.
Comcast wants twice what AT&T wants for internet alone. What's worse they send paper spam here daily and even had a god damned spammer ring my damned doorbell a couple of days ago!
I don't need the extra speed, I live alone and DSL suffices. There's no reason for me to pay for extra speed. And I don't need or have a landline, either. Just DSL, smartphone, and an antenna for OTA TV.
Free Martian Whores!
I just use the McDonalds on the strip for free wifi. Was good enough to do face time.
-Xoltri
Vegas, especially the casino hotels, is going to charge you for WiFi and they're charging you not with the intent to make extra cash. They charging you for WiFi to discourage you from sitting in your hotel room on the Internet and instead trying to get you to go out on the casino floor where you'll lose your money on the games.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
I currently pay $30 a month for a DVR device. This includes the TV listings service that enables the DVR to automatically record my schedule programs. Sp, I purchased a basic TiVO HD model at around $150. I then need to subscribe to TiVO service at $15 a month for a 1 year contract. But then I need the Cable M-Card (tuner decoder) to enable the TiVO to see the cable signal at $3.50 a month fee. Another option is to get a 6 tuner DLNA ethernet device for around $300 which also requires the $3.50 monthly M-Card. I can then deploy Android set top devices to tune to the DLNA streams, with the bonus of Angry Birds, Chrome browser and Netflix. TV listing services are available for around $25 a year from Schedule Direct. This is where I am heading eventually (still searching couch for the cash). In short, there is a LONG recovery time from the purchase price of the equipment to realize an actual cost savings on DVR rental fees.
1. Solved with One-Time purchase.OBi100 + Google Voice: Solved forever for $39.
2. Solved by other purchase. Tethering from no-contract $60 virgin wifi hotspot I use when I'm traveling. I'm OK with paying $35 for unlimited 4G and 3GB of 3g for a 30 day window while traveling. It runs on Sprint in most places.
3. Not solved. Still pissed off about this.
4. Solved for long-term one-time purchases. I use CableCARDs + Windows Media Center + Xbox 360 Extender + SlingBox + 4x4TB HDDs + DVD-R DL's to eternally archive and watch full-resolution television content. Without ads on the channel guide, and with skipped commercials, to boot. And I never have to worry about this sort of snafu: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Your-Comcast-DVR-Is-Watching-You-92830 since they don't get analytics from me, except when I choose to share them (Which I do, through Shazam auto-tagged shows that I have scripted to pipe in to my GetGlue account. I support my content, just not the ability for the cable company to compute my life index). Oh, and of course, a DOCSYS 3.0 modem of my own that's both Comcast and TimeWarner approved. Will eventually have to replace to get with faster technology, but I'm OK with that.
5. Solved. Credit Unions ftw.
Same BS statistics are used in Canada.
Never mind 95% of the population lives in a 100km strip across the US border...
Also places like Finland have similar population densities and somehow they make it work with lower costs and higher speeds...
I live in a City, and pay 80$ a month for Internet. Does it costs anything near that? No. I pay that because the telcos know they can make me pay that.
So I go traveling abroad from Canada, spend a couple weeks roaming around the med.
So I can't really use my phone anywhere but Canada with having 1000's of dollars in bills, (which is a whole other rant entirely) but I figure I am going to be in a civilized countries (maybe not Turkey, sorry Turks! :)) and like big cities in Canada there will be free WiFi everywhere and I can just communicate via the internets!. I mean McDonalds, Tim Hortons, StarBucks, just about every restaurant, business or whatever will have free wifi.
Surprise#1: Italy apparently has no internet anywhere, except in nicer hotels that want 20$ a minute to use it. It isn't like it is a tourist destination or anything silly like that.
Surprise#2: Greece may not have many things, like working toilets and sewer system, or an economy, but holy crap do they have internet everywhere. The guy who has a gyro stand on the street corner will not only have wifi and a password to access it, but an iPad to use at your convenience...