America's Biggest Rip-offs
<!--Yahoo! Finance evergreen article module--><CITE>by Julianne Pepitone
Tuesday, February 2, 2010</CITE><CITE class=provider>provided by</CITE>
Are you infuriated every time you open your cell phone bill? Livid when you buy a snack at the movies? These are some of the rawest deals around.
<TABLE style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 3px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 5px" width=210 align=left><TBODY><TR><TD style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 3px">
<SMALL>©John R. Coughlin</SMALL></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Text Messages -- 6,500% Markup
Text messages are short, quick and cheap to transmit. So why are they adding so much to your wireless bill?
The messages are such a tiny piece of data that they cost carriers only about one-third of a cent to deliver, according to computer scientist Srinivasan Keshav, who testified before U.S. senators on the issue last summer.
<TABLE style="BORDER-RIGHT: #d7deee 1px solid; BORDER-TOP: #d7deee 1px solid; MARGIN: 10px; BORDER-LEFT: #d7deee 1px solid; BORDER-BOTTOM: #d7deee 1px solid" width="40%" align=right><TBODY><TR><TD style="PADDING-RIGHT: 10px; PADDING-LEFT: 10px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 10px; PADDING-TOP: 10px">More from CNNMoney.com:
• More America's Biggest Ripoffs: Premium Gasoline
• More America's Biggest Ripoffs: Hotel Mini-Bars
• More America's Biggest Ripoffs: In-Room Movies</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
But on a pay-per-text plan, the 160-character messages typically cost 20 cents outgoing and 10 cents incoming. That's a markup of as much as 6,500%. OMG!
"It's pretty much pure profit," Keshav says. "Carriers would argue they put that money toward investing in new technology."
Even if customers sign up for an unlimited texting plan for, say, $10 a month, carriers are still cashing in considering that their overhead is basically $0. That's a lot to pay for a few LOLs.
<TABLE style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 3px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 5px" width=150 align=left><TBODY><TR><TD style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 3px">
<SMALL>©Jupiter Images</SMALL></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Movie Theater Popcorn -- 900% Markup
A medium bag of popcorn costs just 60 cents to make but retails for $6, a whopping 900% markup. That's enough to make "Avatar" fans turn blue.
Richard McKenzie, an economics professor at University of California-Irvine, says theater owners mark up the snack so much because they don't make a profit elsewhere.
McKenzie, author of the 2008 book "Why Popcorn Costs So Much at the Movies: And Other Pricing Puzzles," says that out of your $10 movie ticket, only a tiny percentage goes to the theater's profits.
"Popcorn is what pays for a lot of stuff in the movie theater," McKenzie says. "A lot of theater owners tell me, 'I consider myself working in concessions, not movies.'"
<TABLE style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 3px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 5px" width=210 align=left><TBODY><TR><TD style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 3px">
<SMALL>©Neil Harris / CNNMoney.com</SMALL></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
'Free' Credit Reports That'll Cost You
There's nothing free about forking over $179 a year for information at Freecreditreport.com.
Instead you can go to AnnualCreditReport.com, which is run by the Federal Trade Commission, and get a truly free report once a year from each of the credit agencies: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.
Freecreditreport.com's catchy ditties can get stuck in your head for days -- but subscribing to the service will haunt your credit card bill for a year. When you sign up, you're asked for your credit card number. Then the site automatically enrolls you in its "Triple Advantage credit monitoring," which pledges to continuously track your credit status for $14.99 per month.
A rep for Experian, which owns Freecreditreport.com, says: "We do realize there are a very small percentage of consumers who genuinely do not understand they have signed up for a credit monitoring service. We work to resolve issues with these consumers on a case by case basis."
<TABLE style="BORDER-RIGHT: #d7deee 1px solid; BORDER-TOP: #d7deee 1px solid; MARGIN: 10px 10px 3px; BORDER-LEFT: #d7deee 1px solid; BORDER-BOTTOM: #d7deee 1px solid" width="40%" align=right><TBODY><TR><TD style="PADDING-RIGHT: 10px; PADDING-LEFT: 10px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 10px; PADDING-TOP: 10px">Popular Stories on Yahoo!:
• Battle Over e-Book Pricing Begins
• 10 Things Retailers Won't Tell You
• Toyota's Slow Response Raises Questions
<HR color=#d77b16 SIZE=1>More From Yahoo! Finance </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Technically, you have nine days to cancel the credit monitoring service before being charged, but many consumers have felt duped. The Better Business Bureau has received more than 11,000 complaints, and the site recently made its policy more prominent on its Web pages.
<TABLE style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 3px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 5px" width=150 align=left><TBODY><TR><TD style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 3px">
<SMALL>©John R. Coughlin / CNNMoney.com</SMALL></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Name-Brand Painkillers -- 60% Markup
Is Advil's sleek design worth 160% more than the same medicine in a plain package?
A 50-count bottle of 200 mg Advil tablets costs $8.49, versus just $5.29 for the exact same bottle of generic ibuprofen at a Duane Reade drug store in New York.
Brand names may give us more peace of mind, but the cheaper stuff works just as well, and in exactly the same way. It's required to, by law.
The Food and Drug Administration mandates that generic drugs must be as safe and effective as brand names. Generics have to use the same active ingredients, however they may contain different inactive ingredients like coloring or flavor agents. For its part, the company says it "stand firmly behind the value Advil brings to consumers."
But at a time when many of us are already feeling the pinch financially, a fancy package just doesn't seem worth the headache.
<TABLE style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 3px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 5px" width=150 align=left><TBODY><TR><TD style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 3px">
<SMALL>©Jupiter Images</SMALL></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Wine at Restaurants -- 500% Markup
Ordering wine in a restaurant can cost six times as much as drinking the same bottle at home. At the Olive Garden in Manhattan's Times Square, a bottle of Sutter Home's White Zinfandel goes for $24 -- but it retails online for as little as $4 per bottle.
Restaurants mark up cheaper bottles by an average of three times the retail price, while the prices of higher end wines are typically doubled, says Ronn Wiegand, a master sommelier who runs the industry newsletter RestaurantWine.
For instance, a 1985 "La Grande Dame" Veuve Cliquot that goes for about $495 online is marked up 222% to $1,600 at the swank New York City restaurant Per Se. Olive Garden didn't return calls for comment, but for its part Per Se says: "The total cost of the wine and service is calculated up front...the beverage team sets the highest standards to be sure that the quality of the wine and experience exceeds our guests' expectations."
Think that's rough? Prices for wine sold by the glass are tripled or even quadrupled, Wiegand says, since restaurants have to account for the chance that they won't sell the whole bottle before it spoils.
At prices like that, guess we'll be skipping dessert.
<TABLE style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 3px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 5px" width=150 align=left><TBODY><TR><TD style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 3px">
<SMALL>©Jupiter Images</SMALL></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
College Textbooks -- $900 a Year!
Each semester, college students shell out hundreds of dollars on textbooks they'll use for only a few months. According to a House Committee on Education and the Workforce, the average estimated cost of books and supplies is approximately $900 per year.
And a separate study conducted by the Government Accountability Office found that textbook prices nearly tripled from 1986 to 2004 -- a jump that's twice the rate of annual inflation over the last two decades.
Public-interest groups say this is a rip-off. They blame greedy publishers and bookstores for driving up prices by issuing unnecessary new editions that render older texts worthless without adding much new information, as well as by "bundling" books with other materials like CD-ROMs.
Students have no choice but to buy the textbooks for their courses. But don't worry, kids -- at the end of the semester, you can probably sell that $250 calculus tome back to the bookstore for a buck or two.
See the full list of America's Biggest Ripoffs
Copyrighted, CNNMoney. All Rights Reserved.
<!--Yahoo! Finance evergreen article module--><CITE>by Julianne Pepitone
Tuesday, February 2, 2010</CITE><CITE class=provider>provided by</CITE>
Are you infuriated every time you open your cell phone bill? Livid when you buy a snack at the movies? These are some of the rawest deals around.
<TABLE style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 3px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 5px" width=210 align=left><TBODY><TR><TD style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 3px">
<SMALL>©John R. Coughlin</SMALL></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Text Messages -- 6,500% Markup
Text messages are short, quick and cheap to transmit. So why are they adding so much to your wireless bill?
The messages are such a tiny piece of data that they cost carriers only about one-third of a cent to deliver, according to computer scientist Srinivasan Keshav, who testified before U.S. senators on the issue last summer.
<TABLE style="BORDER-RIGHT: #d7deee 1px solid; BORDER-TOP: #d7deee 1px solid; MARGIN: 10px; BORDER-LEFT: #d7deee 1px solid; BORDER-BOTTOM: #d7deee 1px solid" width="40%" align=right><TBODY><TR><TD style="PADDING-RIGHT: 10px; PADDING-LEFT: 10px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 10px; PADDING-TOP: 10px">More from CNNMoney.com:
• More America's Biggest Ripoffs: Premium Gasoline
• More America's Biggest Ripoffs: Hotel Mini-Bars
• More America's Biggest Ripoffs: In-Room Movies</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
But on a pay-per-text plan, the 160-character messages typically cost 20 cents outgoing and 10 cents incoming. That's a markup of as much as 6,500%. OMG!
"It's pretty much pure profit," Keshav says. "Carriers would argue they put that money toward investing in new technology."
Even if customers sign up for an unlimited texting plan for, say, $10 a month, carriers are still cashing in considering that their overhead is basically $0. That's a lot to pay for a few LOLs.
<TABLE style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 3px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 5px" width=150 align=left><TBODY><TR><TD style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 3px">
<SMALL>©Jupiter Images</SMALL></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Movie Theater Popcorn -- 900% Markup
A medium bag of popcorn costs just 60 cents to make but retails for $6, a whopping 900% markup. That's enough to make "Avatar" fans turn blue.
Richard McKenzie, an economics professor at University of California-Irvine, says theater owners mark up the snack so much because they don't make a profit elsewhere.
McKenzie, author of the 2008 book "Why Popcorn Costs So Much at the Movies: And Other Pricing Puzzles," says that out of your $10 movie ticket, only a tiny percentage goes to the theater's profits.
"Popcorn is what pays for a lot of stuff in the movie theater," McKenzie says. "A lot of theater owners tell me, 'I consider myself working in concessions, not movies.'"
<TABLE style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 3px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 5px" width=210 align=left><TBODY><TR><TD style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 3px">
<SMALL>©Neil Harris / CNNMoney.com</SMALL></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
'Free' Credit Reports That'll Cost You
There's nothing free about forking over $179 a year for information at Freecreditreport.com.
Instead you can go to AnnualCreditReport.com, which is run by the Federal Trade Commission, and get a truly free report once a year from each of the credit agencies: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.
Freecreditreport.com's catchy ditties can get stuck in your head for days -- but subscribing to the service will haunt your credit card bill for a year. When you sign up, you're asked for your credit card number. Then the site automatically enrolls you in its "Triple Advantage credit monitoring," which pledges to continuously track your credit status for $14.99 per month.
A rep for Experian, which owns Freecreditreport.com, says: "We do realize there are a very small percentage of consumers who genuinely do not understand they have signed up for a credit monitoring service. We work to resolve issues with these consumers on a case by case basis."
<TABLE style="BORDER-RIGHT: #d7deee 1px solid; BORDER-TOP: #d7deee 1px solid; MARGIN: 10px 10px 3px; BORDER-LEFT: #d7deee 1px solid; BORDER-BOTTOM: #d7deee 1px solid" width="40%" align=right><TBODY><TR><TD style="PADDING-RIGHT: 10px; PADDING-LEFT: 10px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 10px; PADDING-TOP: 10px">Popular Stories on Yahoo!:
• Battle Over e-Book Pricing Begins
• 10 Things Retailers Won't Tell You
• Toyota's Slow Response Raises Questions
<HR color=#d77b16 SIZE=1>More From Yahoo! Finance </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Technically, you have nine days to cancel the credit monitoring service before being charged, but many consumers have felt duped. The Better Business Bureau has received more than 11,000 complaints, and the site recently made its policy more prominent on its Web pages.
<TABLE style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 3px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 5px" width=150 align=left><TBODY><TR><TD style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 3px">
<SMALL>©John R. Coughlin / CNNMoney.com</SMALL></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Name-Brand Painkillers -- 60% Markup
Is Advil's sleek design worth 160% more than the same medicine in a plain package?
A 50-count bottle of 200 mg Advil tablets costs $8.49, versus just $5.29 for the exact same bottle of generic ibuprofen at a Duane Reade drug store in New York.
Brand names may give us more peace of mind, but the cheaper stuff works just as well, and in exactly the same way. It's required to, by law.
The Food and Drug Administration mandates that generic drugs must be as safe and effective as brand names. Generics have to use the same active ingredients, however they may contain different inactive ingredients like coloring or flavor agents. For its part, the company says it "stand
But at a time when many of us are already feeling the pinch financially, a fancy package just doesn't seem worth the headache.
<TABLE style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 3px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 5px" width=150 align=left><TBODY><TR><TD style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 3px">
<SMALL>©Jupiter Images</SMALL></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Wine at Restaurants -- 500% Markup
Ordering wine in a restaurant can cost six times as much as drinking the same bottle at home. At the Olive Garden in Manhattan's Times Square, a bottle of Sutter Home's White Zinfandel goes for $24 -- but it retails online for as little as $4 per bottle.
Restaurants mark up cheaper bottles by an average of three times the retail price, while the prices of higher end wines are typically doubled, says Ronn Wiegand, a master sommelier who runs the industry newsletter RestaurantWine.
For instance, a 1985 "La Grande Dame" Veuve Cliquot that goes for about $495 online is marked up 222% to $1,600 at the swank New York City restaurant Per Se. Olive Garden didn't return calls for comment, but for its part Per Se says: "The total cost of the wine and service is calculated up front...the beverage team sets the highest standards to be sure that the quality of the wine and experience exceeds our guests' expectations."
Think that's rough? Prices for wine sold by the glass are tripled or even quadrupled, Wiegand says, since restaurants have to account for the chance that they won't sell the whole bottle before it spoils.
At prices like that, guess we'll be skipping dessert.
<TABLE style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 3px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 5px" width=150 align=left><TBODY><TR><TD style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 3px">
<SMALL>©Jupiter Images</SMALL></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
College Textbooks -- $900 a Year!
Each semester, college students shell out hundreds of dollars on textbooks they'll use for only a few months. According to a House Committee on Education and the Workforce, the average estimated cost of books and supplies is approximately $900 per year.
And a separate study conducted by the Government Accountability Office found that textbook prices nearly tripled from 1986 to 2004 -- a jump that's twice the rate of annual inflation over the last two decades.
Public-interest groups say this is a rip-off. They blame greedy publishers and bookstores for driving up prices by issuing unnecessary new editions that render older texts worthless without adding much new information, as well as by "bundling" books with other materials like CD-ROMs.
Students have no choice but to buy the textbooks for their courses. But don't worry, kids -- at the end of the semester, you can probably sell that $250 calculus tome back to the bookstore for a buck or two.
See the full list of America's Biggest Ripoffs
Copyrighted, CNNMoney. All Rights Reserved.
