Living in a hidden fee economy

Lord knows this is the truth.

SFGate Article: Living in a Hidden Fee Economy. The article nicely breaks down the huge pressures on companies to work together to dupe consumers.

Examples given include extra fees on rental cars, hotel add-ons, and probably the most commonly known, the inkjet cartridge.

From the article..

The printer. It's one of the most common peripherals in the computer age and so cheap -- at first blush, anyway -- that stores often give them away when you buy a PC. Yet how many people realize, when they walk out of CompUSA, a nice $99 inkjet model tucked under their arm, that it's likely they've just committed themselves to spending nearly $1,500 on ink cartridges over the next four years? (In fact, only about 3 percent realize it, according to Stanford economist Robert Hall.)

My HP Photosmart 7760 has been pretty good to me regarding reliability, performance, and cartridge life, but those cartridges are indeed expensive. I do not however feel ripped of, not like I did with the most horrible printer of all time, the Epson Stylus 740. I sent this thing back to warranty repair every 3 months, and ended up with a few completely useless $30 each cartridges once the affair was over.

Epson sucks. I hate you.