When was the last time you were outraged at a stupid charge?

SpaceTime wrote: »

The Heathrow Express. It's handy but you always feel like you've been mugged as you stick your card into that machine and it charges you €31 for a 16 Min, 17 mile train trip.

The Gatwick express is just as bad, you pay twice the price of an equivalent Southern or FCC fare to save the grand total of 7-10 minutes.

RoboRat wrote: »

I was basically saying that companies charge for a service, yeah it may seem extortionate but you choose to pay it.

The cost is not upfront & clear, as per the previous poster who also thought it was free, many do. I have never used their machines but from the numerous threads I read I do not think it reports how much money you have actaully put in, and I am guessing once counted it does not give an option to return it. It is taking 9 or 10% and are cleverly playing on the fact that people vastly underestimate how much money they actually have, so they do not think in advance it will cost €50 to use the machine. I have never once heard a person exclaim "I had a big pot of money at home and do you know what it turned out to be? only €20 " it is without fail an excalmation of shock at how much it really was.

Here is a thread about the tesco one. You will see a mod of both bargain alerts & the business forums was also under the impression it was free, the type of person you would expect to be more aware of scams than most
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055900116

the offer of the voucher is the sneaky bit that catches people, as I said in that thread...

In my tesco you can put the money in and get the money back or a voucher for tesco. So at first I thought "well they must take commission on the money but the tesco voucher must be full value" -this was my (incorrect) presumption because if not I would have the question -who in their right mind would want a voucher only usable in tesco instead of cash. I reckon many people would have the same reasonable logic and fall for this scam.

another guy who fell for it

E30i wrote: »

Has anybody used one of the Coin Changing machines in Tesco Ireland Stores. They charge a commission of about 9.6% for getting the cash value. However the machine instructions outline that you can 'Redeem the full value against your shopping at any Tesco store'.

I recently changed coins to the value of €117.06 (Penny Jar)in one of these machines. This gave a cash value of €106.06 after commission. I fully understand the commission structure leading to this cash value.
However I understood from the instructions on the machine that I had 2 options
1) Redeem the full value against your shoping at any Tesco Store
or
2) Exchange for cash at the Customer Service Desk.

Given the use of the word 'full' in option 1 (and repeated on the voucher I received) I had the expectation that I could use the €117.06 value against my shopping. However in Tesco Wexford this morning the manager insisted that this is incorrect and that whether I choose cash or to redeem against my shopping the only value on my voucher is €106.06.

Anyone else find this misleading or have the same experience? I rang the machine operators but only got a recorded message. I have now e-mailed both Tesco Ireland and the machine operators to clarify the position and outline why the term 'Full Value' means the coin value less commission rather than the full coin value which I think is a reasonable assumption.

RoboRat wrote: »

Those machines can't have set fees as it would severely limit the customer base so they take a percentage.

Not sure what you mean there. They certainly could have set fees. They might need to have an upper limit of coins so they do not run out but I see not reason they could not have a set fee. Many people use the tesco self service checkouts as a type of "free" coin counting service.