Biggest Rip Offs in North America
Posted February 5th, 2010 by Josh Watson
Ha ha, not too surprised at some of these. :)
#1.) Text messages: They're basically free to send and receive. Meaning it doesn't cost the phone company anything to handle them. But on pay-per-text plans, phone companies will charge as much as 20 cents apiece. That's a 6,500% markup.
#2.) Hotel mini-bars: At an average hotel, mini-bar items typically cost three to four times the retail price. And at "fancy" hotels, it's not uncommon to markup mini-bar items by as much as 1,300%.
#3.) Movie theater popcorn: A medium bag of popcorn costs about 60 cents to make, and it sells for about $6. That's a 900% markup.
#4.) Wine at restaurants: Most restaurants double the price of their more expensive bottles, and triple the price of their cheaper ones. And if you just buy a glass instead of a bottle, you're going to pay a 500% markup.
#5.) Hotel in-room movies: A movie rental at Blockbuster will run you about $5. But in a hotel, you'll pay anywhere from $10 to $15. That's a 200% markup.
#6.) Name-brand painkillers: A bottle of Advil costs $8.49, while a bottle of the generic stuff goes for $5.29. That's a 60% markup, even though the no-name stuff works just as well.
#7.) Premium gasoline: Typically, you're going to pay about 20 cents to 40 cents more for premium gas than the regular stuff. At $2.72 a gallon for regular gas, that translates to a markup of 15%.
#8.) College textbooks: Since 1986, the cost of textbooks has increased at double the rate of inflation. Now, an average college student will shell out around $900 a year for textbooks.
#9.) "Free" credit reports: We've all seen those god-awful ads from FreeCreditReport.com. The only problem is their service isn't actually free. It costs $14.99 a month, or $179 a year. (CNN Money)
Ethanol fuel is also a rip
Ethanol fuel is also a rip off. It is subsidized by the government so producers get a kick back and fuel companies sell it at the same price as regular gasoline even though it is a much lower quality fuel. It degrades engine performance and corrodes lines. They try to sell it off as a detergent and attribute the low quality performance to "cleaning your engine". Regular, mid-grade and high performance are not rip offs and you do notice the difference if you own a performance vehicle and even then the average is 10 cents per litre more for premium.
Movie theatres source of income comes from selling popcorn and drinks, not from selling tickets to movies.
Purchasing an HDMI cable for 60 bucks at a box store when the cable itself will cost no more than 3 bucks to put together but then again this is how companies make money when they don't make much off their bigger items.
very true on most of these!
very true on most of these! I will point out that you can get a free credit report by contacting the agency directly(www.equifax.com, www.transunion.ca), and asking them to mail out a copy to you (the email or instant versions cost $$)
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