Why hidden fees are a big deal

Bob Sullivan Technology correspondent • Profile • E-mail

Let me make a confession. I hate getting cheated. I mean, really, really, really hate getting cheated. I mean veins-pop-out-of-my-forehead, glad-I’m-not-getting-my-blood-pressure-checked-today hate getting cheated.

And yet, I feel like I’m getting cheated all the time.

I often open the mail with dread. It makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, as if I were some primal creature readying for a fight.  I walk into a cell phone store, check my online statements, or just turn on my television, and I feel like everyone is out to get me.  I suffer from what a therapist might call low-level, background anxiety. I think someone is always trying to steal something from me. 

Am I crazy? 

When I was a child growing up just outside New York City during the 1970s, I learned to be afraid of getting mugged.  But this is not that.  The criminals I’m talking about don’t bop anyone over the head and steal hundreds of dollars.  These criminals slowly take $5, $10, and $20 from me, often with a smile. They pop a surcharge onto my monthly phone bill. They pad my TV bill with services I didn’t ask for.  They drain my bank account — drip, drip, drip — when I’m not watching.  These hidden fees keep me up late at night like the sound of a leaky faucet. I feel like I have to watch everything all the time, because it’s so easy to miss some statement on some form with some asterisk that means the company can take even more money from me. And when that happens, I suffer from what I call small print rage.        

Am I crazy? Or am I just paying attention? One thing I know for sure: I’m not alone.

I’m not a therapist, or a sociologist, but I feel on firm ground saying that small print rage is a close second only to road rage as a source of angst in America today. As author of the Red Tape Chronicles on msnbc.com, a twice-weekly column that exposes small print, corporate sneakiness, and other 21^st Century headaches, I invite readers to share their woes with me.  Tens of thousands have e-mailed and left comments on my blog as a desperate last attempt to get justice. I can see the exasperation in the amount of CAPITAL LETTERS that show up in their notes.

So I know: You suffer from small print rage, too.

Sneaky fees peck away at us like a swarm of mosquitoes that ruin an otherwise beautiful summer evening. And like mosquitoes, an individual bite might seem trivial, barely more than a nuisance, but repeated bites can actually change the way you live. They chase you inside, make you build a screened porch, and in extreme cases make you sick. 

As a too-sticky summer night breeds mosquitoes, today’s business environment breeds sneakiness. Companies under pressure to keep advertised prices low have seized on trickery to pump profits up. The most successful firms are now the ones that hide their prices best:  Under asterisks, deep inside terms and conditions, in fees they call taxes, bills that come months after the fact, or around a dark corners in auto dealerships where the manager’s office is. Then, right when you think you just got a good deal, an unexpected bill comes, or a car salesman jumps out from behind the corner and yells: GOTCHA!

One Gotcha might be irritating. A few might make you angry. But Gotchas are everywhere you turn, now. They are a way of life for consumers. They are our economic system, one that has replaced our former system, the free market economy.  Gotcha Capitalism — your personal finances, under siege.  Mosquitoes might threaten your life with death by 1,000 bites; Gotcha Capitalism threatens your finances with death by a thousand fees.

“C’mon, Bob,” you might be thinking.  “We’re talking about nickel and diming. It’s not that bad.”

Yes, it is. I’ve got research to prove it.

During November 2006, I asked independent researcher Larry Ponemon of The Ponemon Institute to conduct a nationwide survey of fees and surcharges. Together, we asked consumers around the country how much they believed they’ve lost to sneaky in the past 12 months.  To be fair, we didn’t allow much speculation; instead we asked consumers to identify the amount of hidden fees they’d later discovered in 10 important product lines one at a time, such as cell phones, groceries, and travel. 

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