Archive for August, 2023

As the hospitality industry tries to create the illusion of a bargain, they’re offering barebones rates so low that they appeal to the cheapskate in all of us. To make-up for those unsustainably cheap rates, the industry brazenly lards the final cost with nonsense fees, phantom charges and superfluous costs to boost their bottom line. These fees are tacked on at the desk when you check-in. They often appear as a “Spa” fee or an “Accommodation” fee.

 

Just what these supplementary charges are for we may never know. Is it to fold the tip of the toilet paper into a little triangle, or maybe to ensure all the corpses have been removed from the beds? Shouldn’t they be doing this automatically? I mean the coroner would take care of any cadavers – the hotel wouldn’t have to lift a finger. It seems some of the dastardly fees are unrelated to anything the hotel is actually providing, but how else can they offer a 4-star experience at $100 a night that balloons to $250 after fees, taxes and gross profiteering? The following is a list of some of those extra charges hotels are marbling into their already fatty prices.

 

Disclaimer: Reader be advised, I provide this comprehensive list completely free of charge. Now if you’d prefer a list of the truly funny overcharges, I can provide them to you for a small “Enhanced Content” fee of $5.

 

Little Known Hotel Fees and Charges

 

1. Price Gouging Allowance: $50 – This fee helps greedy hotel owners laugh all the way to the bank
2. Web Cam Deactivation Fee $25 – By paying this fee to the hotel media troll you ensure your hotel stay will not be live-streamed on Tik-Tok. Warning: Be sure to pay the separate charge for turning off the bathroom cam.
3. Exhalation Fee: .001¢ per breath – Hotels say it’s a reasonable fee when you consider they give you all your inhalations free of charge. This fee can really add up. Especially if you and your partner pant a lot during relations.
4. Blanket Charge – Bring your own, otherwise expect to pay a cover charge for the blanket
5. Memory Bank Purge Charge $10 – Allows the guest to believe they’re the first person to sit naked on anything in the room.
6. Non-Operating Thermostat Improvement Fee: $10 – Since there has never been a thermostat in any hotel room ever that has borne any relation to what it’s set at and what the actual temperature is in the room, guests are highly advised to pay this fee in order to guarantee at least a 10° minimum variance.
7. Pee Fee: $5 – A must pay if you want the toilet lid unlocked, granting you access to the bowl. Otherwise good luck reaching the sink. Be sure to pay the separate charge that makes it possible to flush the toilet.
8. Doggy Spooj Abatement Fee: $5 – With so many hotels now being pet-friendly, this fee ensures that any Fido emissions have been completely expunged from the room. Always recommended you pay this fee for a Thursday night stay since Wednesday is Hump Day.
9. Envious Mini-Bar Staring Mitigation Fee $7 – Ensures your envious stare at the peanut butter-filled pretzels doesn’t register as a purchase. A highly metaphysical impossibility, but it does happen and the Mini-Bar Staring Mitigation Fee thwarts these overcharges.
10. Bed Scale Weight Recording Prevention Fee: $11 – This fee prevents your bed from recording your weight and making it part of your permanent record. It can affect your credit score and health insurance rates. So if your chubby that’s the skinny on this weighty matter.

1. Amazing Lace – The Mary Magdalene Story
2. Nearer My Grave Am Thee – Senior worshippers embrace the truth
3. He Be All Dat – Cardi B featuring L’il Hooligan
4. Great is Thy Goiter – The endocrine system celebrated
5. Jesus Take the Wheel, No Wait, I Forgot, It’s a Self-Driving Car – Elon Musk’s paean to himself
6. God and I are Now Exclusive – Gen X’ers getting real with the Almighty
7. Hark! My Arse Hath Been Cleansed – Popular in the Anglican Church
8. One Set of Footprints in the Concrete – A delinquent teen laments ruining his neighbors newly poured sidewalk
9. A Mighty Fortress is My Mancave – Where male sports fans rejoice on Sunday afternoons
10. In the Sweet, Bi and Bi – Often heard at LGBTQ services
11. Blessed Assurance – GEICO gets all sanctimonious with this reminder that 15 minutes could save you 15%.
12. O’God You are the Beta Blocker Beneath My Hemoglobin – A cardiological prescription for Joy
13. Alas My Pharynx is Nigh – Written by David Byrne, so it doesn’t make sense, but you know it’s worthy
14. The Fruit of My Loins is Risen and You’re the Reason Why – AKA: You Up?
15. And We Shall All Joyously Clean Out Satan’s Lint Trap – A devilishly good hymn
16. Let He Who is Without Umbilicus Be Called a Clone – Recombinative DNA researchers’ favorite
17. All My Lymph Nodes Belong to You Mother – George Stephanopoulos pays tribute to his mother for birthing him with a high-functioning lymphatic system, in this esoteric hymn to the body’s other circulatory system
18. How Great Thou Art – The laity sings the praises of Art Garfunkel
19. What a Friend We Have in the IRS – This hymn is very taxing to sing and much depreciated. 10-4ty good brother.
20. Stop and Smell the Noses – Impossible to do. Noses don’t smell. Or do they?
21. The Devil Can Kiss My Grits – Southern Baptists sing their truth
22. Bringing in the Sheaves – The Baptist classic
23. Bringing in the Heaves – The more masculine oriented version of Bringing in the Sheaves
24. Bringing in the Thieves – Pontius Pilate collars Barabbas and his cohorts for stealing sheaves
25. Oy! Enough Already with the Sheaves – A favorite in synagogues
26. Desire Under the Eaves – Adam and Eve try to resist the temptation of being fruitful and multiplying
27. Dear God, What Exactly is a Sheave and Why are We Always Singing About Them? – Mrs. Fancher’s 3^rd grade class wonders what all this sheave fuss is about

In July, punctilious Professor Silas Havisham bought a $750 bookmark from Tiffany and Company – marked down from $850. He thought he got a great deal on the cobra-skinned, diamond-encrusted bookmark and was very excited to take it home and start using it. By August however, he had returned the faulty placeholder and asked for a refund claiming the bookmark was defective. Prof. Havisham explains:

 

The dog-gone thing doesn’t work. I mean it works just fine when I put it in between the page where I’ve finished reading, but later, when I go back to start reading again, it’s always moved itself to another page. It won’t stay still. Neither myself nor Mrs. Havisham can explain it. Who needs a self-aware book mark? Stay inanimate, damnit. Now I have to dog-ear pages just to keep my place in a book, which really defeats the whole purpose of a bookmark to begin with – especially one that costs $750. I have a simple plastic bookmark I got for free at our annual Lion’s Club Pancake breakfast right here in Half Moon Bay. I never find it wandering amongst the pages of the book I left it in. It works great and didn’t cost me a cent. You’d think for $750 they’d have solved the problem of the “migrating bookmark.”

 

Tiffany’s, where he bought the pricey place keeper, said the bookmark was working just fine when it left the store and that they missed this particular bookmark saying, “That bookmark will always hold a special place for us. I just wish it could do the same for Mr. Havisham.”

 

Tiffany’s said that, because this $750, one-of-a-kind bookmark had been taken out of its sleeve and used, it had depreciated to $69.99 and therefore company policy prevented them from issuing a refund. As company spokesperson Kate Nagelmackers explained to Mr. Havisham, “Sorry Professor. Since your fingerprints are all over this thing, the bookmark now has very little resale value, so we can’t offer a refund. We do however, depreciate your business very much and as testament to that we offer you a certificate for breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

 

Mr. Havisham said he was surprised by the bookmark’s malfunction: “Tiffany’s desk set accoutrements are close to perfection. Some say I overpaid for my $9500 letter opener and $3500 paperweight, but they both do the job magnificently. Tiffany was right when they marketed the set as ‘The last letter opener and paperweight you’ll ever have to buy.’ It’s strange though; we have noticed our aging paperweight is starting to put on a few extra pounds. How could it not? It just sits around all day oppressing our paper. Weight! That’s it’s job. It’s completely sedentary and gets no exercise. Anyway, we can barely lift the little guy these days.”

 

Mrs. Havisham concurred, “Usually Tiffany’s products are flawless. To me, our $12,000 tea cozy is worth twice the price. And my $300 tiny, little support table that goes in the middle of a pizza box to prevent the box top from collapsing into the pizza, probably works beautifully, even though we haven’t come close to using it in the 12 years we’ve owned it. We do lean a little ballerina next to the $300 miniature table and then when we walk by we say, ‘Hold me closer tiny dancer.’ But even that is starting to get old now.”  

 

Mr. Havisham then digressed, “Mark my words on this (just don’t use my $750 bookmark to do it). Remember that Michael Jackson/Paul McCartney hit song The Girl is Mine? That really was a Silly Love Song wasn’t it? How could those 2 legends actually sing the lyrics: ‘the dog-gone girl is mine’’? Well, we know one thing these days – the dog-eared book is mine.”