Thursday, March 26, 2009

Taxes, Surcharges, and Fees!

So I am headed to California in April and am starting to book hotels, cars, etc...

We are going to be renting a car and driving up the coast of California for a week. I found the vehicle at the price I wanted and made reservations. Once I got to the purchase page I see that my price had sky rocketed. I went and looked at the pricing and saw the breakdown of taxes, surcharges, and fees.


Airport Concession Fee 11.1 % = 28.62

Los Angeles World Airport Fee $10 = 10.00

Travel and Tourism Fee 2.5% = 6.45

State Sales Tax 8.25% = 23.63

Total = $68.70


This is just renting a car...I might have to calculate all the taxes, surcharges, and fees from my trip(Flight, Car, Hotel, etc...) and see the total of all these. I also have a surfboard that I kept out at a friends in California after I moved. I was going to bring it home with me after this trip. Guess what? If you guessed that there is a fee you were correct, a $175.00 fee to bring my surfboard back. A brand new surfboard cost between $400-$700 so its not worth it to me to bring it back. I will be giving it to a friend in the end.

I love traveling and don't mind flying 4-5 hours for a weekend trip if it was cost effective, but all these fee and surcharges along with tax it just not affordable. My question is do you think in the long run that travel oriented business hurt themselves by adding cost on to the regular price of goods and services? I don't know I am guessing someone is charging these companies and they are just passing along the charges to the consumer?

I would love to stay in a hotel every night out there but we just cannot afford it? I am willing to bet that once I add up all the cost associated with my trip I could have stayed a couple extra nights or brought more business to other hotels, restaurants, etc...

I don't mind spending money for experience and fun things, but it cost so much that we can really only afford one big vacation a year and thats still hard. I would love it if I could take more trips more frequently especially surfing. I can tell you one thing though, I will not be flying Delta to any surf destinations. That is a shame because A) Delta is my airline of choice (Amex and frequent flyer) and b) surfers travel to destinations all over the world. If I was a business I would cater to customers like surfers who spend a lot of their hard earned money every year to travel.

Why in anyones right mind would they want to turn those types of customers away? I know every company has to tax but fees and surcharges can only be hurting business in the long run, no? Let me know what you think?

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