A frugal life is an easy life!

We see it everywhere we look, on every sign, on every piece of promotional bumph, included to refer us to some small print that we hardly ever read, until it is too late.

The dreaded asterix *

The sprog came home from college today, prevented from printing his assignment off, because the establishment have changed their policy on printing for students.
Not content with charging £3500 per year for his course (An increase from £1800 it was three years ago) but now they are demanding a payment be made in advance for using the college's print services.

A minimum payment of £5 must be made by debit or credit card and each page printed will cost 6p and this will be taken from the £5 deposited.
I asked sprog1 where on the course paperwork was the asterix? Where is the *?

Of course there isn't one, but it is going the same way as everything else that business tries to sell us.
Flights are a prime example, you click to buy a flight only to find that airport taxes, baggage allowances, etc, have an * after them and they bump the price up to nothing like what you were clearly led to believe in the advertising on the website or in the newspaper or shop.
"Upto 70% off sale *" - This is a common one, the * normally means that it's only applicable to new customers (you being an existing customer of course) or you cannot use it to buy certain products (almost always the product that you wanted) or to get the benefit of the offer to which the * is attached to, you have to pay more than you would normally for the product or service, in which case you are not really benefitting.

There of course is the other type of * the invisible one!

Ever bought car insurance?
I have had the same policy with the same company for 14 years now.
Until 3 years ago, my "Fully comprehensive policy" used to have a courtesy car within that package.
Until they applied the invisible * - now I have no courtesy car as well as a higher price each year.
The same invisible * applies to my excess fee, payable by me incase of an accident, even if it is not my fault. It seems to keep on rising but the price of my insurance never reduces when each quote comes in to renew.
What about "gap" insurance, where your car that is worth £10,000 on a fully comp policy, if it is written off a year later, if you don't pay for the extra for the "gap insurance" the fully comprehensive policy only pays part of the £10,000 value of your car. How fantastic is that!

Becareful out there gang, until someone high up comes along and stops these misleading practices, then it is down to us and only us, to stop it being applied to us!