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Yesterday's gasoline discussion proved quite fruitful and I'd like to stick with it, albeit it with a turn from the political to the pocketbook. And what could be more political? Mom's birthday is right around the corner and my girlfriend picked out some beautiful flowers for her. I bought them. Glancing over the bill, I noticed this nugget: "Courier Fuel Surcharge: $1.93." Say what? More galling, this hidden surcharge wasn't mentioned at any point in the flower purchasing process. So, is this ripoff an outlier, or is this just the way it's going to be?
17 Comments on “Question of the Day: Have You Been Hit With Any Hidden Gas Charges Lately?...”
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Sure, UPS for example has “fuel Surcharges” added on to all it’s shipments. My local Electric Power Company, LIPA, also has fuel surcharges.
I actually used less electricity in 2007 than 2006 and my bill went up.
I call ripoff. The gas should be included in any delivery charge and not as an unexpected surcharge when you’re at the checkout.
I remember my piano teacher giving my parents a letter stating that she was going to increase her hourly rate “due to the increase in gas prices,” this was in 1998
Way of the future, I’m afriad. But more transparency is in order..
We canceled the gas, but I haven’t checked BG& E or Penelec. Yeah, I turn everything off, turn the heat down, and I’m still paying twice as much as before.
I also found bogus charges on my phone bill, from a phone company I’d never heard of – its a real scam. Verizon won’t remove the charges and the company never answers their phones.
In this 3 minute clip of old documentary footage, a very young Daniel Yergin and an old Marion King Hubbert agree about declining oil reserves.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez9TRtXu8rQ
Yergin seems to have changed his mind since then.
I call scam as well. They can adjust prices for shipping upward slightly to compensate (and it appears they have). The extra fuel surcharge seems to be a way to reach a little deeper into consumers’ pockets for a little more and taking advantage of the pain everyone is feeling at the gas pump.
When I flipped the nozzle holder up to begin the pump, a charge of .04 immediately appeared on the screen before I even squeezed the handle. Is this a “delivery charge” or a “convenience fee”?
The phone companies throw all manner of nonsense on your bill. Electric co too. It is a scam, but it goes way beyond fuel charges.
Living in the “sticks”, or at least 5 miles outside of town, propane is needed. I’ve been supplementing heat with the woodstove more and more, but last month when I called them to fill up the tank the first time this winter, the PROPANE COMPANY, which also sells home heating oil and I believe diesel, had the audacity to charge me a $25 Diesel surcharge. I’m not THAT out in the sticks, and their distribution place is 3.5 miles away. It took yelling at 4 different people before it was removed.
I have not received personal fuel surcharges.
But working in the chemical industry, our freight costs have gone way up.
Funnily enough, many of the bids we participate in have price adjustment clauses for fuel surcharges, but not for our principal cost: raw materials, some of which have gone up 400% in less than 6 months.
A friend of mine owns a landscaping maintenance company and he has resorted to adding a fuel surcharge to his bills. When he raised his rates he lost customers, so he lowered his rates back to what they were and added a fuel surcharge and he has had no complaints or lost any more customers since.
I don’t have a problem if it is a reasonable charge. In the propane example above, $25 was out of line; if the truck had to travel 3.5 miles one way, I could see charging for the fuel used for the 7 mile trip. Given that the propane truck probably gets about 5 mpg, that would be about $6.
Yes, the plumber charged us a $5.00 fuel surcharge in addition to other fees to make a house call.
BTW, changing the subject a little:
Western Refineries of El Paso, TX delivered approximately 200 tanker trucks of contaminated gasoline to several Shell stations in New Mexico, mainly Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Rio Rancho yesterday and today. The tanker trucks had diesel mixed in with the gasoline – enough so that vehicles that filled up with this fuel either stall out, won’t start, and/or smoke if they run at all. What a mess! The station owners promise to compensate vehicle owners all expenses associated with draining and repair with this screw-up.
I’m with the Aggie, most of the fuel surcharges I have seen were plain BS for the exact reasoning he used. They often charge more for the surcharge than the whole cost of fuel involved, or at least more than any cost increase since the eighties.
My propane bill itemization just had “fuel surcharge” written on it. Had they just called it “temporary fuel surcharge,” or “one-time fuel surcharge,” and charged $10 or less, me, the reasonable consumer, someone like me, probably would have gone along with it.
I told them when I called for a fill-up anytime within the following week would be fine because I had 25% plus left (100 gallons), so they could have combined it with other routes, but they had to come out within 2 hours so they could get their $25 from me.
My daughter, who seems to live under a perpetual cloud, had her water heater conk out two days after Christmas–an expense she couldn’t afford
until her tax refund arrived.
Dad to the rescue! I offered to front the money, got estimates, picked a plumber, put the heater on an “empty” credit card that had a closing bill date of Jan.22 and a due date of Feb.18, and thought I was fine.
Then, the plumber came to my daughter’s place,located in a small Iowa town from which one can see both the North Omaha water and power plants, and demanded an additional $35 above what the man’s boss and I had agreed to on the phone.
I stuck to my guns with plumber’s boss, got him to admit that the charge would NOT appear on any bill for an address in any McMansion area that was also 4 miles (or more) from North Omaha, and got it rescinded.
If daughter truly lived in “the sticks” and not the literal shadow of Omaha, and/or if the plumber had clearly defined the “metro Omaha” included in “free delivery”,and if he hadn’t called our previously agreed-to price “all inclusive”, I’d have paid up.
I read an article in a FORBES magazine at my wife’s doctor’s office that said that the government inflation figures are artificially low because businesses report “list”prices, not “as delivered” prices in govt. surveys.
tony-e30: When I flipped the nozzle holder up to begin the pump, a charge of .04 immediately appeared on the screen before I even squeezed the handle.
That’s interesting. Same thing has happened to me on more than one occasion recently. Never before.
Could be that with prices so high, the pumps are not as accurate as they were when they just plugged along at a liesurly pace. Who knows?