Some consumers are rather miffed when they buy airline tickets and later find that the .Com company, which sold them the ticket is advising them of a recent fuel surcharge, which is to be added. That can be a major sticker shock attack on ones credit card balance and hardly seems very fair. But an airline selling advanced tickets can also be caught off guard by rapidly increasing unexpected fuel prices you see? And if you consider we are going into Hurricane Season, the Iran "nuclear weapons showdown" and China making friends and influencing people, indeed prices will go up. And for airlines this is a very tricky issue. Shouldnt the government do something about these surcharges? Well, personally I am not a fan of "FTC Intervention" unless an Airline Company is willfully and purposely deceptive in advertising. Additionally I am most certainly concerned with the FTCs abuse of power in their negative PR campaigns against Brand Names to win the case in the court of public opinion. I feel the FTC does this simply in order to justify their intervention, filing or subpoenaing of information and the FTCs next years budget. Especially knowing that much of these cases come from Competitor intervention or complaints specially crafted by competitors. For instance American Airlines and United are very tight politically and can cause actions via Senator phone calls to the FTC. That is an Adam Smith disaster in the making and hurts the competitive free enterprise, which lowers consumer costs, thus the FTC intervention often, actually usually has the opposite affect of helping the consumer. The FTC in my opinion sucks and basically it is a sham. Consider this in 2006. |
