Bait and switch

“And of course, insurance is extra. Additional drivers are extra. Satellite radio is extra. GPS is extra. If you don’t pay for fuel in advance and you bring it back less than brim full, we’ll charge you the GDP of Latvia to gas it up. And all quoted prices are plus tax, so that we appear 6% less villainous.”

Such are the delights of car rental in the United States, where most domestic customers have their own motor insurance that covers rental cars when they’re away from home.

Way back, I used to trot along to Hertz in Dubai to book and pay for car rental up front, in advance, and in full. Then, arriving at Hertz at Washington Dulles airport, I was handed a car and everything was paid for. Sadly, this arrangement has now gone away. When I tried recently, Hertz in Dubai could only book a car; I’d have to pay when I picked it up, and I wouldn’t be told how much the insurance would cost until I got there.

Result? Not fancying spending any time over a barrel, Beloved Wife got on line and booked and paid for everything, including a second driver and fully comprehensive insurance.

At Hertz at Dulles, the first thing we learned is that ticking the ‘Additional Driver’ box didn’t add His Goatness to the insurance, and to do so would be an additional $91 for the week. Plus tax. Secondly, the motor insurance paid for covered only the vehicle, and would we like additional cover at a mere $12 per day, plus tax? Nope. Would we like to pay for a full tank of ‘energy’ at below pump price and return the car empty? Yes, we’ll have that, and we’ll bring the car back on the last traces of hydrocarbon fumes.

Finally, because Beloved Wife had picked a sub-compact car, because it was cheapest, would we like to upgrade to something more sensible than a Fiat Cinquecento for two grown adults and their luggage?

“Nah… we rented one of those last year and it was just fine. They can ford 15 inches of water, you know…”

“But a more realistic car is a mere $10 a day extra. Plus tax.”

“Fiat 500, please. No additional costs, thank you. We’ll be just fine. We’ll drop the back seat to get our luggage in.”

Ms Hertz finally relented, and told us to collect our car from Bay #1. The car turned out not to be a Cinquecento, nor a Yaris, but a Chevrolet Sonic. This vehicle is still technically a sub-compact, and compared to a Toyota Tundra it’s minuscule, but the Sonic has an enormous boot and four doors, along with satellite radio and a cruise control, all of which are optional extras at additional cost at the Hertz desk. And we had our own GPS too, saving a further $5 a day. Plus tax.

Here, then, is the Bait and Switch: offer a ludicrously tiny car, then attempt to get the customer to pay to upgrade it. As they didn’t have any Cinquecentos, Hertz had to upgrade us for nuppence.

Incidentally, after we returned the car, coasting down the ramp on the last teaspoon of fuel, a fellow customer shared his experience with us. He was offered a bigger car because of his luggage, and only later discovered the additional cost.

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Pies in the skies

Here we go again. Airlines, seeking to increase their profit margins, are looking at fat passengers as a means to fill their coffers.

This BBC news article refers.

Euphemistically described as having ‘unique seating needs’, a fatter passenger is sometimes obliged to buy a second seat if he or she can’t get the armrest all the way down, or need the seatbelt extension, or if someone at Check-In decides he or she is a suitable target for additional charges. What an outrage! Imagine the scene in a crowded airport terminal. 

Now imagine that scene if it’s the choleric Goat who gets singled out. 

According to the World Health Organisation, the planet is suffering from an obesity epidemic. Translated into air travel, this means heavier planes, more fuel, and more drowned polar bears. Perhaps airlines shouldn’t persist with minuscule seats, and instead take a realistic view that the population as a whole is getting bigger. Charge more if you have to.

Cattle Class seating is tiny. Instead of providing luxury in the sky as promised by the adverts for the newer, larger airliners (The ads invariably show happy, smiling First Class passengers who almost certainly had someone else buy their tickets), we find more seats crammed into the back with minimal seat pitch and width. OK, so the Goat could do with losing a stone or three, and he’s currently working on this. But no amount of diet and exercise is going to decrease the distance between his shoulders or the length of his thigh-bones.

The Goat contends that picking out only certain passengers for weigh-in as if they’re jockeys at the Grand National is deeply offensive. If an airline is insistent on charging by body weight, then it should certainly not single out only the fuller-figured. Every passenger should be weighed, along with their carry-on as well as the checked baggage, and the fare decided based on the total weight carried by that passenger. Thus, some racing snake with a couple of massive bags in the hold, plus a gigantic carry-on holdall, plus a bag of Duty Free might well end up paying more than Muggins with his overnight bag and no checked luggage.

But that doesn’t suit the airlines’ Grand Plan, does it? Make fat passengers pay more, but don’t offer any form of discount for anyone travelling light. It doesn’t feel so good to be slim now, does it? Paying over the odds because you’re underweight. Rather like the current system with checked bags, where you have pay ‘excess baggage’ if it’s overweight but receive less than a brass farthing if it’s under.

Assuming that it’s unrealistic to boycott any airline that is going to charge extra to any passenger who looks a bit porky, there is a more practical solution, which is this: fly Business Class. One Business seat costs no more than two in Cattle Class, it’s certainly more comfortable; wider and longer, plus you get more baggage allowance, better food, and better service.

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Gold crocodiles, they snap their teeth

They don't only snap their teeth on your cigarette, as the song goes. They also snap their teeth on your - or more to the point, my - wallet.

Regular readers may remember my complaint that I was obliged to pay import duty on the postage in addition to the value of the goods. Today I found out new and inventive additional ways to extract more funds from unsuspecting importers of goods that are Not Coming In Dubai.

The value on which 5% duty is charged ignores any discount applied at the other end! Thus, my goods attract 5% duty on $360 for the full price including postage, rather than on $315 plus postage (which is what I actually paid the seller for my stuff), nor on $270, the value of the goods. I was told to complain over at the Department of Seaports and Customs, but previous experience leads me to infer that this would be a waste of oxygen.

In my case the additional duty paid amounts to only a few dirhams, but the principle as explained to me by the nice Egyptian gentleman behind the desk was that:-

If I import something invoiced at Dh1000 with free shipping, I pay Dh50 duty.

If I import something whose original price was Dh100,000, but is discounted by Dh99,000, I have to pay Dh5000: 5% of the original Dh100,000. And there's something morally obscene about that particular arrangement.

My new Egyptian friend told me that I was lucky: in Egypt there's a 200% import duty, etc, etc, blah, blah. Which is of course part of the reason why neither he nor I live in Egypt.

Insult to injury time. There was an additional administration fee to pay Customs, and a further fee to pay Emirates Post for 'storage'.

Apparently I have to pay for two weeks (or part thereof) of storage of my package. I know it left the US on 06 February, and Track and Trace said it arrived in the UAE on 15 February and landed in my local post office on 16 February, six hours before I collected it. Yet I had to pay storage for the eight days when the parcel didn't officially exist, but was actually sitting unsorted somewhere in Dubai.

The moral to this story is labelled Shop&Ship.

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