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Hotwire: Hidden Fees in their “Complete” Prices

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When it comes to shopping for travel, the price that catches your eye is not always the price you pay. And rarely is it lower than advertised.

Hotwire.com is a site that offers discounted airfares, hotel, and car reservations by not disclosing what airline, hotel or car rental agency you are contracting for until after you pay. (It is like Priceline without the price guessing games.)

On it website, Hotwire advertised car rental rates as low as “$13.95 with no hidden fees.”  Just beneath that it listed Boston with rates as low as $5.95. What a deal!  Clicking on that link brings up the typical pricing form where you enter dates of travel.

For a one day rental from March 28 to March 29, the system returned the following price:

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Yes, it is $3 higher than the lowest price, but it still a great deal. The asterisk after “$8.95 per day” goes to this:

*MOUSE PRINT: 

* Rates are shown in US dollars. Total cost for Hotwire Discount rates includes applicable tax recovery charges and fees.

Indeed, this is more good news — $8.95 is price you really pay. Or is it?

*MOUSE PRINT: On the next screen, the truth is revealed:

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Adding the taxes and fees makes the total cost of the car triple the advertised price!

Unfortunately, the problem of advertising incomplete prices is not limited to Hotwire. Most car rental companies, airlines, cell providers, and cable companies attract you with seemingly low priced packages only to relegate to the fine print or your first bill what the true total and complete price really is.

All these services have extraordinarily high fees, charges, and taxes added to the promoted price which can bring the total to 30%, 40% or more than advertised. Here’s a novel idea: companies should make the price you see be the price you pay! 

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Smart for Life Diet: Just Eat Cookies?

If you live in one of the cities where Smart for Life has offices, no doubt you have seen their TV commercials touting their cookie diet. “I lost 35 pounds in three months by eating cookies,” says one now slender client.

They say their cookies are made from extracts of fruits, vegetables, wheat and dairy, and their commercials show all those produce and grain ingredients being loaded into their cookies. But, they only provide ingredients listings for three of their six cookies on their site. Here is their recipe for blueberry cookies.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Triple Filtered Water, Vegetable Glycerin, Doctors Protein BlendTM (Milk Protein, Egg Protein, Organic Whey Protein), Hydrolyzed Collagen (Gelatin), Organic Whole Oats, Organic Crisp Rice (Organic Brown Rice Flour, Organic Molasses, Calcium Carbonate), Organic Invert Sugar, Organic Dried Blueberries, Organic Whole-Grain Wheat Flour, Vegetable Gum, Organic Soybean Oil and/or Enriched Organic Golden Flax Meal (Organic Flax, Fish Oil), Vegetable Gum, Organic Fractioned Palm Oil, Raw Organic Oat and/or Wheat Bran, Organic Oat Flour, Organic Pure Tahitian Vanilla Extract, Baking Soda, Baking Powder, Sea Salt, Natural Flavoring, Organic Nutmeg. Contains at least 60% Organic Ingredients.

Yum. Notice that water is the first ingredient, meaning there is more of it by weight than another other ingredient. And the only “vegetable” listed for the three cookies online is “vegetable glycerin” and “vegetable gum”. No wonder some people around the country are selling 12 days’ worth of leftover cookies on Craigslist. Worse, the cookies are not particularly nutritionally dense considering they will account for most of the food you will be eating daily.

The diet requires you to eat six cookies a day instead of breakfast, lunch and snacks. For dinner, you are only allowed six ounces of protein and two half-cup servings of vegetables. According to one of the company’s doctors who is interviewed, clients generally eat only about 800 calories a day. So, at 105 calories per cookie, that would only leave 170 calories for dinner. Eat hearty!

The commercial also claims “it will save you a fortune over other plans.”

*MOUSE PRINT: A two week supply of cookies is $129!  That is over $1.50 per cookie. (NutriSystem says their real food is about $10 a day, or about $140 for two weeks.)

In addition to the cost of the cookies, there is an initial evaluation and program fee,  including medical tests, and vitamins. That adds hundreds more to the cost.

The company’s website does, however, have good news for would-be clients:  “No exercise needed to lose weight” and “Eating habits improve automatically and permanently”.

Sure.

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Pay Your Taxes with Plastic — and Get Rewarded?

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With tax day less than a month away, cash-strapped consumers may be tempted to charge the balance they owe to a credit card, such as through the offer above (or via the electronic payment services approved by the IRS that accept credit cards).

The promotion says you could earn rewards for every dollar you charge. The fine print, however, says:

*MOUSE PRINT: “Tax payments made with your credit card will be subject to a service fee…”  How much of a service fee?  It is 2.49 percent, or about $25 per $1000 charged.

But what about the rewards they promised?  Most reward credit cards only offer 1% back, so that would reduce your service fee to 1.49 percent or about $15 per $1000 charged. The good news is that most credit card companies will treat this tax payment as a purchase rather than a cash advance (thus giving you a 20-25 days grace period with no finance charges or cash advance charges if you pay in full every month). If you don’t pay it in full, regular finances charges will accrue on top of the 2.49 percent fee.

Some credit cards like Citi’s CashReturns card offer 5% back on everything for the first three months. Were you to use this card, you would actually make 2.5% on your tax payment.

A little known alternative to charging your taxes to your credit card is to put that charge on your debit card through a company called Link2Gov.

*MOUSE PRINT:  The fee is only $2.95, but your card must be a member of the NYCE, Star or Pulse networks.

Don’t charge more than is your bank account, or that will trigger overdraft fees, and/or finance charges from your bank.

Most experts, however, suggest paying your taxes the old fashioned way — by check. You will enjoy a week or two of float, and not pay a penny extra in fees or finance charges.

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