Transcripts

Bob Sullivan, Columnist for MSNBC.com and author of the book Gotcha Capitalism…

Everybody knows that when you switch cell phones companies in the middle of a contract, you've got to pay a big fee - an early termination fee. Most people don't know that you are now paying a fee even if you stay with your company and you decide to re-up your contract with the cell phone company. You get a new phone and you might pay fifty dollars for the phone at the store and then you'll find something up to two months later called a handset upgrade fee, which can be thirty six dollars more. Well, now why wasn't the price of the phone eighty five dollars instead of fifty dollars? The reason is because that might make you make a different choice. So by charging you some now and some later, they rope you in.

Banks and credit card companies love to charge fees.

Last year banks, just in over draft fees, took in seventeen billion dollars - with a "B". Seventeen billion dollars in those thirty-nine dollar fees for spending too much money using your debit card or withdrawing too much cash from an ATM. That fee didn't exist until fairly recently. It used to be that your ATM would just say no - that you don't have any money if you were overdrawn. But now it gives you money and they charge you this fee. So there is clear evidence that this problem is getting worse and unless consumers fight back against it, we're going to see it get even worse.

Tomorrow, how to fight back - I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.