Biden announces plan to cut down on ‘junk fees’

This might be the best thing any politician ever does for me. That and an absolute right to repair.

 

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I think the only part of it that will help ordinary people is eliminating or significantly reducing bank overdraft fees. That is about the only one I can think of that the business in question won’t simply pass off to the consumer by raising their baseline costs. The only reason hotels and rental car companies do this is so that they can advertise a lower daily or nightly rate for their services and make the rest of the money in their fees. If the fees are eliminated, they will simply raise their daily rates to compensate for the missed revenue.

 

Verizon called my wife and told her that their map showed we have 5G and made her a “great” offer. Except we do not have 5G. So they shipped a giant box of crap that we couldn’t use. Then they wouldn’t have it picked up, we had to take it to a Verizon service center that was a half hour away. They threatened to charge us something absurd for the equipment, like $600. And then they charged a $50 fee of some ludicrous type when my wife returned it. We eventually got that waived but it took me weeks and multiple calls to finally get it done.

In the end it was hours of calls, an hour of driving, and just general hassle to get out of charges and fees that just materialized out of thin air. I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist but I wonder how often Verizon gets this $50 for shipping people useless equipment. I bet a lot, because I myself would’ve given up if not for just pure principle. All the time was def >$50.

 

Telecommunications giants are the worst with customer service. They’ve created a behemoth to make it intentionally difficult to remove services or discontinue services. They are a nightmare.

 

While I think this is really cool, its not the job of govt to do.

Related, but I've heard Air bnb bookings are way way down because the fees have gotten so high it is more logical now to to just book a hotel most of the time.

 

Even if you argued that they will fully pass through these former fees in price (which seems unlikely, given that they set these as hidden fees for a reason), the ability to know them and plan for them is a good thing for customers. Also, it allows for less discrimination due to subjective measures (e.g., what scratches get charges and which ones don't on a car rental).

 

I’ll believe that panacea when I see it.

 

We flat rate bill most of our garbage contracts. Customers love it compared to the 35-50% hidden fees of the large haulers
Easy selling point.

 

I can definitely see this perspective as well. And yeah, AirBNB is definitely showing that markets can react to these things. The downside is that it only seems to work after you have a really bad experience. But I was just talking to my wife about an article she read about how places are charging fees for everything at AirBNBs and then making people still do almost all of the cleaning.

 

There is no way they are ever going to regulate how rental car companies assess consumer damage to their vehicles. I have rented cars dozens of times and have never been charged for a scratch. If I had left a noticeable scratch, I’m sure it would have been charged and they’re never going to stop rental car companies from doing that. It’s always going to be part of the agreement. Living in a fantasy world if you think Biden is going to somehow stop rental car companies from collecting when their cars are damaged by a customer.

There are tons of rental car options. If rental car companies were truly charging their customers for erroneous damage, that rental car company is going out of business quickly. But in any event, believing Joe Biden will somehow make rental cars more fair is just funny.

 

Exactly. A two night air bnb listed for $400 will have a $175 cleaning fee (that the owner just pcokets) because you can't leave it messy anyway or get a bad rating.

I prefer the good ole days where I could just vomit in the hotel sink and leave a $20 for the cleaning lady ans call it a day

 

I have been. For a scratch that was already there. It took me months of fighting to get rid of the charge, which was for $500. I only fought with them out of principle. They tried to claim that despite my pictures of all the scratches on the car, I didn't have pictures of one particular scratch, so it must be new (I had ten pictures of scratches on that side of the car, which clearly has been scraped against a wall, I suspect by their employees who didn't want to admit it to the company).

That rental car company is still in business. You are expecting that customers have far more information than they do in making this decision. Basically, they get to rip you off once.

 

I mean, there aren’t a lot of buys that are more voluntary than AirBNB. Nobody is putting a gun to your head and saying “you must book this AirBNB or else.” You can literally sift through hundreds of AirBNB’s in the comfort of your home before committing to one and paying for it. Not to mention that many AirBNB’s offer a full refund if you cancel a few days ahead of time. If you don’t know how to shop AirBNB’s, Joe Biden isn’t going to fix that for you. Acting like he will is just funny.

 

You are, again, asking for customers to have the sophistication to understand the many ways to attach fees that are specifically and strategically designed to not be detected. One of the examples given was that a place had a fee to use the hot tub. A family was charged because a motion detection camera picked up movement near the hot tub, when the family sat outside and didn't use it. It took them 10 hours of work to fix the issue. How is the customer supposed to know not just that they would be charged if they used the hot tub but also if they say near it?

The solution in AirBNB's case is that people are switching off the platform altogether, harming those not scamming their customers. Hopefully, the platform fixes the issue or another platform emerges.

 

Any time I’ve ever rented a car, I’m given the opportunity to look the car over for scratches, dents, damage before signing for it. That’s just one of the necessary hassles in renting a car. Your experience is anecdotal at best and again, if this was a common practice, that rental car company will be driven out of business quick. Not to mention, this could have been an honest mistake. I’ve stood through numerous inspections and never got the vibe they were looking for reasons to gouge me on scratches.

 

It’s AirBNB. If you don’t understand the fees, they have disclosures which explain them. You can also ask a friend or family. Nobody is pressuring you when you book an AirBNB, lol.