Junk Fees: The Price Is Never the Price

The concert ticket said $25. By checkout it's $43.70, thanks to a service fee, a processing fee, and a "facility charge" nobody can explain. The hotel was $89 a night until a $39 "resort fee" appeared on the last screen. None of this is an accident, and it has a name: drip pricing, the strategy of advertising one number and charging another, with the difference dripped in late enough that you've stopped paying attention.

Two reasons. First, the advertised number anchors you: $25 feels cheap, and each later fee is judged as a small add-on instead of part of one bigger price. Second, by the time fees appear you've already picked seats, typed your address, and invested ten minutes, so abandoning the cart feels like losing something. Companies know both effects and price accordingly. Government studies of ticketing found fees averaging around 27% of the ticket's own price, which is not a rounding error; it is a second, hidden price.

• Resort and destination fees: $20 to $60 a night at hotels, mandatory, covering things like "pool access" that were once called the hotel.
• Ticket service, processing, and delivery fees, including delivery fees on tickets that are emailed.
• Airline extras: checked bags around $35 each way (2025), plus seat-selection charges for sitting anywhere in particular.
• "Convenience" fees for paying online, which is to say, for paying the only way offered.
• Restaurant service or "wellness" charges of 3 to 5% printed at the bottom of the menu.
• Cable and internet line items like "broadcast TV fees" that exist to keep the advertised plan price fictional.
• Housing fees — application, administrative, amenity — which are their own story: see why rent keeps going up.

Bank fees are the same species and this library already covers them in Avoiding Bank Fees; the short version is that overdraft charges of $27 to $35 remain legal (a federal cap was finalized in 2024 and repealed in 2025) even as several big banks trimmed or dropped theirs.

There is real news here. A Federal Trade Commission rule took effect in May 2025 requiring live-event tickets and short-term lodging (hotels and vacation rentals) to show the total price, mandatory fees included, upfront in ads and search results. Broadband got a version of this in 2024, with standardized "nutrition labels" for internet plans. So if a ticket site or hotel springs a mandatory fee on you at the last screen, that is no longer just annoying; it is a rule violation you can report to the FTC or your state attorney general, in about two minutes, online.

1. 1Compare checkout totals, never sticker prices. Two tabs, both carts filled to the final screen. The cheaper headline loses surprisingly often.
2. 2Screenshot the total before you pay. Disputes get much easier when the number you agreed to is on record.
3. 3Ask. Resort fees, in particular, get waived for polite persistence, especially when anything about the stay fell short.
4. 4Prefer the fee-free rail when one exists: paying in person, by bank transfer, or by mailed check sometimes skips a "convenience" charge.
5. 5Once a year, read one full bill from each recurring provider, line by line. Fee creep counts on nobody looking; Negotiating Your Bills covers what to do with what you find.

Junk fees are a flat tax on not having slack: the person who can't float a surprise $39 pays it anyway, while the fee never scales up for the person who could. Shopping by checkout total is a small habit, but it is the one that makes drip pricing stop working on you.