Fee Fi Fo Fum

Australia has an amazing penchant for charging fees to NOT provide service. I will be paying over $80 to terminate my gas and electric service. I would retell the ridiculous argument I had with AGL employee, but I am reluctant to reprint some of the colorful vocabulary I was compelled to invoke – although I am sure the recording of the call will feature prominently at the next staff training session.

Recently, we were charged exorbitant fees to cancel some flights. Fair enough – we knew the risks when we bought the ticket – but now, each time we use the credit for a new flight, we are charged a ‘credit card service fee’. Upon trying to explain that we are not, in fact, using a credit card, we were informed that the fee is to cover the revenue lost from the fact that we are NOT using a credit card. It hurt my brain to even write that.

I have alluded to this topic in a previous rant about the Australia Post – but now I have further information. Not only will we have to pay $26 per month to NOT receive our mail while we are in between addresses, we will have to pay a termination fee to stop NOT receiving our mail…PLUS, we will have to pay $36 per month – retroactively to the date that we had initially stopped receiving mail – in order to have it forwarded to our new address (assuming we ever get one!...but that’s another rant altogether.)

So, for the foreseeable future, in addition to the initial postage paid to deliver a letter to me, I will pay to have it held, then pay to have it not held, then pay again to have it forwarded.

I hope no one at the USPS follows my blog…