Spall: Get A Charge Out Of …

Back in my childhood, I didn’t get many chances to rue a bad financial decision, like buying a creme-filled long-john for a dime and discovering, well, the absence of any filling.

“Well,” I’d hear from one of my parents, “you get what you pay for.”

I’m struck by those words almost a half-century later, except that there’s a new twist: Now I’m getting less than what I used to pay for. Some people – usually the ones toting up the bill – call it “appropriate charges.” Those who get the tab often call it greed.

To me, it’s too much focus on what someone can get away with today without thinking of tomorrow. It’s just bad business.

There’s a sequence of scenes in an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine where Quark, the owner of his namesake bar on a space station, goes to his home planet of Ferenginar. As his species – the Fergengi – are hypercapitalists, Quark pays for everything, such as directions in an office building; the time spent waiting to see a government official; and even admittance to his family’s home to see his mother.

Or, as she says when greeting him at the door, “My house is my house.”

Back in the mid-1990s, the thought of opening the wallet for the privilege of waiting or access sounded so absurd that you couldn’t help laughing. Just who’d be stupid enough to pay for that?

Jump forward to the Twenty Teens, and life is eerily imitating art. And it’s not so funny when concept moves to reality.

Businesses owners – and workers – often found a sense of pride in providing customer service. The idea of going the extra mile or always better than the rest earned consumer respect. Sure, you might pay a few more bucks for that particular brand, but – going back to the old refrain – you got what you paid for.

In the New Economy, it seems, such notions are for saps. Now, you get slogans like unbundling costs, or getting fees for what used to be free. Or, the one that grates the worst with me: monetizing assets.

Airlines currently bear the brunt of criticism for this new trend, in part because the new charges are the most-obvious to consumers. You have baggage fees, seat fees and $8 boxes full of beef jerky and potato chips. Some budget European airlines now charge a ticketing fee, even though they don’t issue paper tickets (or even man a counter to offer help); you do all the work by booking online.

It’s also in other businesses, although not as noticeable. The other day, I received a call from a FedEx operator stating that the delivery person couldn’t make a delivery of an overnight package because the address didn’t include my unit number. Now, FedEx should have a way to look this up; I’ve been a customer for 20 years, and I was paying for the shipment. I gave the operator the correct address and, an hour or so later, I received the package.

A day or so later, I received a bill via email. Included in the charges: an $11 fee for “address correction.”