DaveReidUK
The point I was making but probably not very clearly, was that instead of pre-paying for a piece of hold baggage and joining a long queue at bag drop at the airport, some passengers are taking it plus their cabin bag to the gate and giving it to the gate agent to go in the hold when a call is made to relieve anybody of their bags.
On the several times I have been through STN recently I have never seen any fees collected at the gate. They just take any bags and put a tag on it.
Hence my reference to a loophole that seems to exists.