Age of the stealth fee

YOU only need to take your eye off the ball for a split second to get ripped off.

I’ve lost count of the number of readers who’ve written to Money Mail this year after discovering money leaking out of their bank accounts in all sorts of ways. Vodafone’s sneaky new £1-a-month fee is a case in point. The mobile giant says its Secure Net stops viruses and phishing scams and helps parents block adult websites and gambling on their children’s phones.

Great, but that doesn’t justify adding it to customers’ contracts by stealth. Most people shelling out £40-odd a month for a smartphone will expect virus blocking to be included in the price. Others won’t need the child controls.

Extra fees such as these should be spelled out when you buy a phone, not hidden in small print.

After Money Mail passed its concerns to Ofcom, the watchdog said it would intervene to ensure Vodafone plays fair. This only scratches at the surface of the modern trend for firms to take advantage of our busy lives wherever possible. Stings are often tucked away in the small print of contracts so the only explanation can be that companies know exactly what they’re up to.

Marketing managers are aware it’s difficult to spot the catches when modern homeownership involves managing so many more bills than it did in previous generations (think broadband, online tax accounts, mobile phones, satellite TV and Netflix, to name a few).

You only need shop once on Amazon to come away signed up to its £79-a-year Prime service by mistake. Customers clicking on ‘free’ face cream adverts routinely find they’ve been billed for £80. And don’t get me started on the wrinkles in insurance, car-hire contracts and pension plans.

The solution is to be extra careful when buying anything fiddly – especially online – and hope our watchdogs crack down on the most nefarious practices. In the meantime, let me know if you’ve spotted anything untoward and we’ll expose the guilty parties.

Euro raiders

STICKING with villainous raids on your wallet, watch out if you’re booking flights on the Ryanair website. As I paid for a flight home from Italy to London Stansted last weekend, the price changed from euros to pounds.

In tiny text under the space for my credit card details were the words: ‘Click here for more information on our guaranteed exchange rate.’

That link brought up a small window urging flyers to accept Ryanair’s exchange rate of 96.5p to the euro. The upshot being my €199.90 tickets would cost £192.93.

That seemed extraordinarily high when the official market rate that day was 90.9p to the euro.

To pay in euros using my Nationwide Select credit card – which is fee-free and uses the basic Visa rate – I had to uncheck a pre-ticked box inside this small pop-up window.

Nationwide confirmed it charged me £182.30 – £10.63 less than I’d have paid if I’d gone with Ryanair’s ‘guaranteed rate’.

What a nasty ruse. As well as reporting Ryanair to the authorities, I’ll be asking it to make the option clearer to customers.

Not so smart

SMART energy meters are coming – but not as quickly as we’ve been told.

Privately, suppliers warn there is little chance of them meeting the Government’s deadline of rolling them out in every home by 2020.

And what the industry and the authorities don’t want you to realise is that you have a right to say no to these new-fangled devices.

Many families and pensioners have privacy concerns. Some elderly people find the idea of a digital dial daunting. Others are waiting it out after hearing that some of the meters installed so far will go ‘dumb’ if the customer switches to another supplier.

So it’s worrying to learn that E.ON has been sending out letters that customers say make them feel under pressure to accept a smart meter.

It’s unlikely to be the only firm going too far as it tries to meet its targets, so let me know if you’ve felt strong-armed on this.