We were given a quote from a courier company today of nearly £550 to deliver a parcel to Israel. That's loads more than it would cost to send a one of us there personally... if you could get past security with a box full of dry ice and algae!

What examples of ridiculous overcharging have you all come across?

Maybe the security people won't let you through because they're afraid the container might harbour trained attack algae.

One box & you would outnumber the few sky marshalls by several orders of magnitude.

They could demand anything once they've taken over the plane. Freedom for all revolutionary bacteria held captive in sewerage treatment plants, algae blooms to be recognised as a cultural heritage, land rights for rotifers...

Who knows where it would end. Far better to prevent them getting on board in the first place.

AB

You may find that the £550 is a minimum charge type thing and that if you wanted a whole pallet of boxes delivered it would still cost the same. Then again you may not :)

AB. .Its not uncommon for contractors who don't want the job to quote high.

Would you really want to courier something to that part of the world at the moment? <img src="wink.gif" border="0">

Once charged a Hospital authority 400 pounds for tightening up two screws, at request of hospital engineer, had two days to spend his budget surplus, what he didn,t spent he lost the following year.. .Didn't argue with him. <img src="frown.gif" border="0">

[ 19 February 2002: Message edited by: tony draper ]</p>

My predecessor at my job was a contractor who charged by the project, not an employee. He wrote into his programs a few arbitrary limits on the number of records that it would store in the database. Whenever the database hit the limit, he took 90 seconds to change the one line of code that had the limit and billed us $500.

The CAA charge 201 British Pounds to renew an Aircraft Maintenance Engineer's Licence even though it no longer gives any certification privileges. I reckon thats about 400 pounds a minute for the clerical effort. <img src="eek.gif" border="0">

**********************************. .Through difficulties to the cinema

While I was still working out in the field I once charged a customer over $8,000.00 to change one piece of data in the programming of their telephone system. It had been installed in a non standard way and had never worked since install so having advised them we charged $200.00 per visit and $150.00 per hour for that type of work I investigated, went away, came back to try a solution, went away...... 12 visits and over 40 hours later I found the undocumented data change and all was right. Customer never turned a hair when they got the bill, but I believe the installers nearly died when it was passed on to them.

Don't get me started on the charges for a few ATPL exams... <img src="mad.gif" border="0"> <img src="frown.gif" border="0"> <img src="mad.gif" border="0">

I know it's not as bad in Oz as elsewhere, so I won't go into it now, but there's just been a _significant_ increase in the price of the exams <img src="mad.gif" border="0">

£400 for an initial Class 1 medical? I can get abducted by aliens, have 100 times as many probes inserted into 10 times as many orifices, and not get charged for it, but if it's the CAA who are inserting probes into me they charge me £400? <img src="eek.gif" border="0">

AerBabe, how urgent is your package? My brother's Israeli girlfriend will be going home shortly, but I can't remember exactly when. If your package isn't urgent, bring it to the London bash in March, I'm sure she'll be happy to take it back with her and post it when she gets home.

FFF. .-----------

But will the aliens issue you with a Class one medical that will keep the JAR bureaucrats happy? I didn't think so....

And will the aliens abduct you annually, until you hit 'the new 30' when it becomes bi-annual, and relieve of you of the same index-linked-plus-a-bit-fee? I don't think so... How come you've got so many orifices anyway?

My experiences of overcharging are at places like Costa Coffee (Costa f&^%*ng Mint mor like) or the Thistle Hotel in Inverness who wanted to charge me £1.45 for a 1/2 pint of lime and soda, which was 80p per pint more than beer. I explained how I had inherited my Grandfathers 'Scottish' gene, and that they wouldn't catch me paying that sort of money for lime and soda. So there! <img src="mad.gif" border="0">