On my latest travel I hit this situation twice.
Once with the rental car: I made a reservation through kayak, it says $182 total rental cost, including taxes and insurance. When I came to the location, their clerk informed me that they have the additional "premium location fee" of 60 Euro (this is at CDG in Paris). So I had to sign the CC slip, otherwise I won't be able to rent a car and will lose reservation fee. I was forced to pay and sign it. They just very conveniently omitted it from their "total rental cost" in kayak offering. This is Hertz rental car.
The other time was at Lufthansa checkin in CDG. We flew in with AA airline and had to connect to LH, re-cheking the bags. Lufthansa agent said that one of our hand-bags is too large and had to be checked in (even though our previous AA flight was fine with the same set of bags in the cabin). I asked the agent "how much?", she said "I don't know, you have to leave the bag here, and go to the customer service in another corner of the terminal and they will tell you how much". I thought this will be ~$40 (what I remember UA fee was before). So I left the bag, agent took my boarding pass (!!) and I walked to the customer service counter far away. It turned out, the fee was 85 Euros (!!!). I asked them to give me that bag back, so I could just toss it out (it wasn't even worth 85 Euros). But they said "no way!". This is a security issue, and they can't get a bag once it was checked in. So I had to pay this 85 Euros, or I would lose the whole flight (!!!).
In both cases I was forced to pay quite large fee, I was forced to sign the CC slip under duress.
What recourse people normally have in such situations? I remember once complaining to CC about something similar, and they showed me signed by me under duress CC slip that I agreed to the fee. But I can't lose the flight over 85 Euros, which was probably ~$800 value at this point!
So is such extortion by businesses pretty much bullet proof?
Once with the rental car: I made a reservation through kayak, it says $182 total rental cost, including taxes and insurance. When I came to the location, their clerk informed me that they have the additional "premium location fee" of 60 Euro (this is at CDG in Paris). So I had to sign the CC slip, otherwise I won't be able to rent a car and will lose reservation fee. I was forced to pay and sign it. They just very conveniently omitted it from their "total rental cost" in kayak offering. This is Hertz rental car.
The other time was at Lufthansa checkin in CDG. We flew in with AA airline and had to connect to LH, re-cheking the bags. Lufthansa agent said that one of our hand-bags is too large and had to be checked in (even though our previous AA flight was fine with the same set of bags in the cabin). I asked the agent "how much?", she said "I don't know, you have to leave the bag here, and go to the customer service in another corner of the terminal and they will tell you how much". I thought this will be ~$40 (what I remember UA fee was before). So I left the bag, agent took my boarding pass (!!) and I walked to the customer service counter far away. It turned out, the fee was 85 Euros (!!!). I asked them to give me that bag back, so I could just toss it out (it wasn't even worth 85 Euros). But they said "no way!". This is a security issue, and they can't get a bag once it was checked in. So I had to pay this 85 Euros, or I would lose the whole flight (!!!).
In both cases I was forced to pay quite large fee, I was forced to sign the CC slip under duress.
What recourse people normally have in such situations? I remember once complaining to CC about something similar, and they showed me signed by me under duress CC slip that I agreed to the fee. But I can't lose the flight over 85 Euros, which was probably ~$800 value at this point!
So is such extortion by businesses pretty much bullet proof?
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