Waikato Times

Check those baggage fees first

- SUSAN EDMUNDS AND JOHN ANTHONY Merchant of Venice. The

If you’re taking bulky luggage overseas, shop around for the best price.

One Jetstar passenger was shocked to discover he had to pay an extra $180 to take his snowboard on a flight with him.

Alex Lee and his wife had already purchased 25kg of checked luggage each for their flight. Jetstar’s standard luggage fees start at $13 for 15kg and go up to $53 for 40kg.

He also paid $25 to book the board as an oversized item.

Lee thought that meant the board would not count towards his normal luggage allowance. But when he turned up to the airport he was charged $180 for being 12kg over what he had purchased.

‘‘I was understand­ably upset about having to pay a $180 fee, having thought I had done the right thing and booked this luggage ahead.’’

A Jetstar spokesman said the fee was introduced in March last year to cover the additional handling required for oversized items.

‘‘Previously we absorbed the cost of having extra staff and equipment to handle bikes, golf clubs, guitars and other oversized items.’’

House of Travel commercial director Brent Thomas said there was a lot of variation between airlines, and according to destinatio­n. ‘‘It’s extremely complex.’’

He said travellers should check websites for the details before they booked. Costs could range from ‘‘significan­t to very, very large’’, he said.

It was cheapest to pay any extra fees at the time of booking rather than at the airport, he said.

Customers who knew they were going to need more luggage allowance could prepay $60 for an extra bag on Air New Zealand flights to Australia and the Pacific Islands, $105 on other long-haul flights, and $165 for flights to London. It was about twice that if extra baggage was paid for at the airport.

Virgin Australia would charge $35 per extra bag, if purchased online, and $75 if the bag was added at the airport.

Thomas said some travellers would find that the cheapest fare advertised turned out not to be the best if they had to take oversized luggage, such as sports gear.

‘‘Air New Zealand might have a $1600 flight to go somewhere and another might have $1500 but if they charge you $250 for a bag and Air New Zealand charges $60, you’re better off with Air New Zealand.’’

He said travellers should also check the rules around connecting flights if they were transferri­ng on to another airline.

Air New Zealand said it would usually consider a snowboard to be the equivalent of one checked standard bag, and could be counted within the normal allowance.

Emirates too said it would accept sporting equipment as checked baggage. Virgin would allow it if it met size and weight limits. OPINION:‘‘The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.’’ King James Bible – the Book of Proverbs

22:7

The tale of 86-year-old grandmothe­r Regine Du Villier went viral two weeks ago. On her way to the doctors, she got crook and stopped to find help.

In the time it took her to get assistance, a parking services company zeroed in on her hatchback and shackled up a wheelclamp to the front right tyre. When the ailing and confused granny returned to the car the non-uniformed clamper demanded $200. Du Villier didn’t have $200 and things went south pretty quickly after that.

This is where the police got involved. Fortunatel­y the West Auckland coppers persuaded Elite Parking Services to see reason and the fine was finally waived.

Transport Minister Phil Twyford has consequent­ly said wheel clamping needs to be made illegal and is keen to see legislatio­n that would ban or severely restrict the rapacious practice. And not before time.

With the support of Consumer Affairs Minister Kris Faafoi it appears likely that we will see a law change that will place formal restrictio­ns on the industry. Twyford said he regards the wheel clamping industry as predators and bottom-feeders.

It’s a good descriptio­n and one that also came to mind when profession­al director and Booktown backer Pete Monk told me about the experience he’d had with short-term loan company Superloans.

A mate of Pete’s was suffering from toothache and needed some money to get some urgent dental work and payday was some distance off. Having an existing loan with Superloans, he was on the TXT spam list for a service they call ‘‘top ups’’.

Pete’s mate succumbed to a top-up offer to help pay the dental bill. The cash top up was $267.70, on top of which was a

$45 top-up fee, a $50 admin fee and a finance charge that worked out to almost 150 per cent per annum.

Put this together and he would have been paying back $657. This is on top of an initial unpaid balance, so he would be paying back $155 per fortnight for almost seven months. A pretty corrosive recipe for a blue-collar worker with two kids and a wedding on the horizon.

The interestin­g part is that Superloans also runs a loyalty programme where you get points for taking on debt. They call it Superscore. More debt, better Superscore.

Think of it like Air New Zealand Airpoints, except you can’t fly to Hawaii on Superscore points.

Rather it just allows you to borrow more money.

Good bloke that he is, Pete ended up buying out the debt and settling it for his mate.

However, from what I can gather Superloans is far from the worst across the yeasty third-tier money lenders. An industry made infamous by Shakespear­e’s Shylock character in

The Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Act 2014 and the Responsibl­e Lending Code were meant to solve all this. They came into force in 2015 and include changes to lender responsibi­lity principles, repossessi­on of consumer goods, and amendments to some disclosure rules.

This law was meant to protect customers when they borrow money and covers a broad range of transactio­ns including consumer loans, leases and buy-back transactio­ns. However, no limits are set on charges, and the code itself is non-binding on loan companies and fails to provide a safe harbour.

Meanwhile, nowhere are any caps set on fees or interest rates. This sees interest rates that can be as much as 1.5 per cent to 2 per cent, per day.

This contrasts with Great Britain where payday loan store investigat­ions have led to stringent interest rate caps on loans. According to the Financial Conduct Authority this has saved lowincome Britons millions.

It also contrasts with Australia, where monthly interest is capped at 4 per cent, establishm­ent fees are capped at 20 per cent of the amount borrowed and payday loans of less than 15 days are banned.

The good news is that the Labour-led Government has voiced commitment to putting interest rate caps on payday loans. As well as looking into wheel clamping, Consumer Affairs Minister Faafoi has told Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment officials to consider how low New Zealand’s payday loan rate caps should be set.

Not only would such moves be consumer-centric and fundamenta­lly good, they’d also help shine some sanitising daylight into a world where there are no limits on the extent to which a consumer can be shafted.

A world where the calculatin­g prey upon those with little choice.

A world with considerab­ly higher downsides than having your old Corolla clamped.

❚ Mike ‘‘MOD’’ O’Donnell is a profession­al director and writer. His Twitter handle is @modsta and he’s learnt a lot from the Book of Proverbs.

 ??  ?? Jetstar customers should make sure they purchase enough checked weight when booking oversized luggage to avoid hefty fees.
Jetstar customers should make sure they purchase enough checked weight when booking oversized luggage to avoid hefty fees.

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