Transit Rip-offs – Nickel And Diming Proceeds Apace
It is mother’s day weekend and I am flying across major swathes of the country today to pick up my mother and bring her back to New York City, meaning that I am feeling very daughterly and also that I will be spending virtually all day in an airplane.
I am happy to do it on the daughterly side, but what’s driving me crazy is the transit side. Geez, what a rip-off flying has become! (Actually, let’s make that what a rip-off the whole culture has become, with a particular emphasis on airlines. Especially those airlines that sell you a ticket and then make it impossible to check in without paying extra for a seat!)
And exactly how are you supposed to fly without a seat? (Last time I checked there was no place in the plane for straphangers.)
I do not truly believe that an airline can force you to buy a seat over and above the cost of your ticket. I am quite sure that if you have a confirmed ticket but do not select a seat in advance of flying, they will have to, eventually, finally, place you in a seat before take-off; maybe they will even have to place you into one of those seats with extra leg room. (Ahem, make that SOME leg room.)
But the airlines can make it extremely difficult for you to win at this game of chicken. Hard enough that you may end up just giving in and buying the stupid seat because you want to check in online and you are too busy and stressed to hang out on the phone with them endlessly, much less curse your computer all night long.
Wearing down the consumer seems lately to be a common business technique. The basic approach is to put up so many hurdles that the customer just gives up on the idea of ever collecting their rebate, pursuing their insurance reimbursement, returning their faulty product and collecting any kind of refund, or otherwise insisting on what they paid for.
The world of transit has become particularly adept at hidden charges. For example, the Metropolitan Transit Authority has recently begun pricing subway fares and fare cards in a manner that virtually ensures that most travelers will end up forfeiting about 5% of every purchase.
MTA commuter trains have, in turn, recently instituted expiration dates on train tickets, with extremely short windows of usage. Oh sure, you can return some of there some expired tickets, but only if you pay a set $10 processing fee (no matter that the ticket itself only cost $11.)
And in the meantime, it’s getting chilly on this plane–except that oops! Blankets are $6.00.
Oh mama!
PS- and now even my free bag of “fancy nut mix” has come filled to the brim with little wheat sticks. Sheesh.
(Addendum: I have a certain amount of sympathy with airline companies – the employees are working extremely hard filling all kinds of function. My objection here is the sneaking in of costs. In my particular case, I felt forced to pay extra for a leg-room seat because of a “glitch” in the online check-in, which did not feel like a true “glitch.” But the point of the post is that there are all these nickel-and-dime extra charges put on average consumers and citizens lately –and it’s the sneakiness of it that gets to me.)
Explore posts in the same categories: UncategorizedTags: airlines charging extra for seats, manicddaily, MTA ripping people off, nickel and diming in transit, rip-off of traveling
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ManicDDaily 
May 11, 2012 at 11:53 pm
Sheesh was a polite understatement! I think we air consumers should rise up and revolt!
May 12, 2012 at 3:44 am
The web’s synchcronicity strikes again. I was thinking these thoughts only yesterday in response to a newspaper article I’d read. I even fantasized about how far I might take it and what might happen.
May 12, 2012 at 7:00 am
oh heck…we have some low cost airlines over here and you have to pay extra if you take luggage with you…so i travel light most of the time by just having some hand luggage with me..(helps you stay focused…ha)…but you don’t have to pay extra to get a seat (though you can’t choose your seat) but i can live with this for short trips… and hey…have fun with your mom over the weekend
May 12, 2012 at 7:02 am
Thanks! She’s here probably for a month! I don’t mind extra costs when the airline is advertised as no-frills – you know that you have to pay for everything. But that’s not what is happening over here of late. I always pack very light also – I wished I lived that way!
May 12, 2012 at 7:04 am
travel safe k…and hope you and your mother have a great visit…been a while since i flew but i know the head aches for sure after 9/11 it opened the door it seems to gouging when it comes to air transit…i used to always fly rather light….
May 12, 2012 at 7:09 am
Well, we’re back already! Made it! Now only New York to navigate! k.
May 12, 2012 at 11:12 am
well that should be fun…smiles…read your comment below and ugh def on the sneakiness…have fun
May 12, 2012 at 8:21 am
Thank god I don’t have to travel. And I wonder why it has to be so difficult for airline companies to survive that they feel they have to resort to these sorts of practices. Perhaps naively, I blame the price of fuel, which is such a volatile and anti-consumer industry that feels it can dictate terms because people need its product to carry on their basic lives. Hope you can put these aggravations behind you, have a safe trip and an enjoyable mother’s day at the end of it all, k.
May 12, 2012 at 8:35 am
Thanks – we are back already, safely – this written on one of the plane rides with not a very good writing implement! And then posted late last night. It wasn’t so bad – I was just quite angry that I ended up having to buy seat because of the way the online check in set up. I am usually very good at negotiating airports, but I never check anything, and of course, my mom did. But all fine (if you don’t mind shelling out cash!)
I think the thing with the airlines is that their prices are very high. And I don’t blame them for trying to recover their costs. What’s annoying is that they are so sneaky about it all – trying to advertise lower prices and that sneaking in a bunch of stuff at the last minute. And increasingly I think business practices do this– make it very hard for people to actually get the deal that they think they are bargaining for. New York City (as a municipal entity) has just gotten terrible in that way, in terms of imposing crazy fees or tickets that are not really fair but are impossible to fight. k.
May 12, 2012 at 8:37 am
What I meant is that their COSTS are very high – their prices are high too, but their prices probably don’t reflect their costs so that they try to make it up in all these crazy ways. The employees are all working around the clock – you can see that – doing multiple multiple tasks. So you can’t blame them. It’s just this whole advertising thing where they want to promote a low price and then sneak in ways to recover their true costs – that’s what’s annoying. Certainly the airline companies are not getting rich – they are barely breaking even, I think. k.
May 13, 2012 at 1:52 am
American Airlines did that to us recently. We bought tickets and went to pic out and reserve seats on the online chart. And though there were plenty of seats to choose from none were adjacent to each other, unless we paid extra. Ridiculous!