Sneaky hidden extras rile us

Mark Dawson, Editor of Wanganui Chronicle

IT'S usually only a dollar here and a dollar there ... but somehow there's something particularly infuriating about the added extra costs that service providers hit us with.

It's not the money as such, perhaps it's the rather sneaky way these extra charges creep in. Or maybe it's the fact that we've paid the price for something already and then, for some convoluted reason, we have to top it up.

It's that niggling irritation of feeling "ripped off" - and most of us have experienced it.

That's why I empathise with Neil Gerrie who has to give Telecom an extra $1.50 on top of his phone bill just because he likes a walk in the fresh air down to the post office to pay over the counter.

Mr Gerrie doesn't have a computer, so cannot pay online which would save him the extra charge.

He is like many people in Wanganui - particularly those of a certain age - who are unable to conduct their financial business over the internet and who use the old-fashioned face-to-face method to pay their bills.

But so much business is now conducted online that these people can find themselves being penalised by default.

The hidden extras are all-pervasive. Banks, of course, like to charge you fees even though you've given them your money to play with; a few years ago tickets for a concert or show suddenly started invoking a "booking fee"; and GST on the rates bill is simply a tax on a tax.

The tide of add-on costs is hard to turn back and the wave of online transactions is unstoppable, but sometimes it feels good to give the "miserable so-and-sos" an earful.