It’s 10 a.m. on the day tickets to the hotly anticipated concert go on sale.

It’s forecast to sell out quickly, so you have multiple tabs open on your computer, and you’re going from one to the other, hitting “search” for tickets.

Finally, you land two excellent seats in the lower deck of the arena and you’ve got a couple of minutes to complete your purchase. Thanks to the additional fees for “convenience,” “service” and “order processing,” the tickets you thought would drain about $500 from your wallet will now take about $600.

Are you going to just forget about it and walk away? Heck no. You grit your teeth and buy them. You either pay the additional money or you don’t go to the show.

A recent survey by Consumer Reports found that most Americans have been confronted with hidden fees in one form or another over the last couple of years, and 96% of those who have had to deal with them find them to be very annoying. The only thing that’s surprising is that it wasn’t a unanimous 100% who are irritated by them.

And it’s not just concert tickets that are weighed down by additional fees. Hotels, resorts, airlines, landlords and cable TV providers are among the businesses that use them. Michelle Henry, Pennsylvania’s attorney general, stated before the U.S. Senate Banking Committee last summer that what have been called “junk fees” throw up roadblocks for consumers when they are shopping around for the best price.

A report released by the office of Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Bob Casey last week described it this way:

“Consider searching for a coat online and finding that Cheap Gear Shop sells it for $50, while Honest Clothes Mart sells the same product for $60. A Pennsylvania mom on a budget would understandably want to buy the cheaper option, but after entering all of her billing and shipping information, she finds that Cheap Gear Shop requires a $7.50 ‘delivery fee.’ Cheap Gear Shop also charges a 4% ‘credit card processing fee,’ even though there is no other way to buy the coat from this online store. There is also a 5% ‘online service fee’ and it is unclear where that money goes.

In buying from Cheap Gear Shop, a budgeting mom would end up paying $62 for a coat, instead of the upfront price of $60 from Honest Clothes Mart, which does not charge fees. This kind of pricing disadvantages both the consumers and the honest merchant, which appears more expensive at first glance, while rewarding the merchant who conceals information.”

Many American consumers, particularly those who live paycheck-to-paycheck, have also been hit with bank overdraft fees that can sometimes tack $25 to $40 onto the cost of a purchase. It’s estimated that the country’s largest banks take in $8 billion in overdraft fees every year and they have provided such a windfall for financial institutions that one Minnesota bank CEO christened his boat the Overdraft. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has proposed rules that would limit overdraft fees, to a point where banks would be able to only break even on them.

In October, Rohit Chopra, who leads the CFPB, noted that “Americans are willing to pay a competitive price for great products, because that’s how a fair economy works.” Part of that fairness should be upfront honesty about the price consumers actually have to pay for whatever they buy.

Uniontown Herald-Standard