Mandatory pricing

Some interesting observations from China based colleague Tony Bruno on his trip to the UK for the 11th LimeBridge international gathering:

"I hired a car from Europcar via their website. Normally, you are given a choice of whether to buy a tank of fuel from the care hire company at the start of the hire.

I always refuse because it is basically a con. It is virtually impossible to return the car empty, and hence what you are doing is buying fuel for the hire company who can re-sell it to another unsuspecting punter.

However, on this occasion I was informed that Europcar have now deemed it "mandatory" (the assistant's word, not mine) to buy a tank of fuel from them. Nowhere on the web site or any of the confirmation material I received from Europcar did it state this. I returned the car about half full so I paid for about 20 litres of fuel I could not use. What next, I wonder....

3) When we stayed in the Paddington Hilton I noticed that there was a "charitable donation" charge on my bill of £1 per night. I guess 99.999% of people who get this charge ignore it. I must be in the 0.001%.

There is a point of principle here (maybe, like the Europcar case it's a "mandatory" charge). I like to be informed in advance if some charge is going to be levied - and the option to opt in, rather than having to positively opt out. I also assume that Hilton are collecting a lot of money from their customers, donating it to charity and getting some marketing mileage out of it. So, looks like their getting their customers to pay directly for some of their marketing....

just call me Mr. Grumpy. Happy New Year.... "