Are You Sick of Junk Fees? | I Allegedly

Hey, it’s Dan. Welcome back. This is I allegedly, and I’ve got a good one for you today for a few reasons. Number one, it is not raining anymore. So that’s that and junk fees guys, are completely out of control. Gonzo. And we’re going to discuss that, plus a bunch of other business news. And today we have a brand new sponsor that I’m incredibly proud of and excited that they came aboard delete.

And I will talk about them a little later. But let’s get right into it. In this world of, oh, it’s free to do business with us and we have no fee checking and we’re getting killed with all these junk fees. Well, there is a new lawsuit that just got filed against JPMorgan Chase. Lisa Constadine is the lawyer that filed this and wants to get class action status for a minimum of $5 million where people, the lowest form, lowest income level of people went out and were hit with junk fees for depositing checks that were returned.

Okay, now think about this. You can sit there and say, that’s no big deal. Somebody writes you a check, it bounces. Well, the problem with it is that sometimes these bounce check fees that you get charged lead to other fees and other overdraft fees that make it so that people are completely upside down. So they’re suing over this because during 21 and 22 of this year, people went out and were charged these ridiculous fees.

And I had a bank two weeks ago that I put a check in and they said, hey, we’ve never seen a check from this client before. I got originally a text message and I said, well, I’m going to call the bank. And they said, well, we’ve never seen you deposit a check from these people before. We were just trying to protect you. I go, what do you mean, protect me? Well, we don’t want to return the check.

Why would you return a check that was deposited in my account? Because it just didn’t look like somebody you’d done business with before. And again, it was a company check. I have the image. I don’t want to show it to you, but I have the image. And I was like, this is insane that you guys did this. And again, well, we just don’t want any fees. We don’t want it returned.

I said there wouldn’t be any fees. I don’t have any fees. And the day you charge me a fee is the day I leave that bank. So not everybody can do that. Not everybody can be strong on them and say, you’re not going to charge me this fee on this. It is insane because free checking is not free checking. You understand that, okay? And I understand banks need to make a profit and things like that.

But the second you put your money in those banks, they go out and they lend it out at a much higher rate than they could ever make from us. Now, the Biden administration last year tried to have a junk fee symposium to get rid of all these junk fees. The link is below to discussing this. Their intentions were good, but the problem with it is it just led me down this rabbit hole of, do you know what they’re charging people right now? This is insane.

And again, it’s the brokest people in the world that get charged things like deposit fees. Oh, you’ve made more than five deposits a month. Well, yeah, I burned some extra income. I have a side job. I’m doing this craziness. You understand? It’s absolutely unfair that they are doing this. And it goes to everything in our lives that our people are charging fees for. Now think about this. Water companies.

Oh, if you want to pay via check, it’s going to be $2. 50 more. Why you’re getting money regardless of how this is. Well, we want online payments only. We don’t want to deal with checks. Oh, and credit card fees. We’re going to charge you a fee. It was illegal at one point for you to say, oh, you want to pay with visa or Mastercard, we’re going to charge you 3% more.

That was illegal at one point. Now it’s like people just kind of forgot about that. So rent has all these different junk fees that are applied to it, people that sign up for rentals. And this is a huge scam. You want to go out and you want to rent a new place. Great, good for you. Well, here’s what they do. They charge you an application Fee. They charge you a credit fee.

Now think about this. The application fee and the credit fee are separate. They’re going to charge you per applicant. They’re going to charge you. My favorite one was the pet fee. Well, you’re going to charge a pet deposit. No, we want to have a fee to investigate your pet. So you have to send pictures of your pet and notify us of what type of dog you have, like the dogs filling out the application.

But again, a fee fee, fee, fee fee. And it is ridiculous. The point of this is that let’s hope that this lawsuit curbs this. Let’s hope that this is the beginning of this. But again, open your mouth, people, when you see this stuff, when you walk into a restaurant and they add fees to it, all it does is hurt the servers, the owners, and the management that sit there and say, yeah, we have a 4% insurance fee.

I have had, and I’m telling you this, at least 18 to two dozen people that have told me what a problem it’s been lately with the extra fees that are added onto checks. And it’s unfair, because what you do is you get mad at the server, like, he’s charging you the 4% or the insurance fee, and you know he’s not doing that. So always look at this stuff.

Always dispute it. The other thing is resort fees. When you go someplace and you sign up and you have a resort fee, you don’t have to always pay that. You can argue that all you want, okay? I haven’t paid a resort fee in years. I don’t care where it’s at, okay? Oh, no, you don’t understand. That’s mandatory. So you have to pay the resort fee. Really? So I’ll do a video on why you should never stay at the Hyatt.

Okay. If they ever want to charge me a resort fee. So let them know, guys, that you don’t want to pay these fees, question these fees, but do it immediately when you get this. Don’t wait until it’s a year later to go dispute it, because that doesn’t carry the same weight as complaining about it right now. But what junk fees have you seen? Send these stories to me.

Send these to us because everybody thinks this is just unfair. I’m never going to do that. I am telling you guys, people are so sick of spending so much money right now to go out to eat the chipotle, two people going out and having a burrito. This was sent to me twice, and these people don’t even know each other. Emails where they went out, had two burritos in a water and spent $38 on that is.

That’s insane. Guys. The whole world is expensive, and you don’t want to be charged a dollar more from anybody for anything right? Now. Share your thoughts on this one. Let’s talk about our sponsor. Delete me. Let’s face it. Arguably, the number one story that we have discussed over the last six months has been all the data breaches and all the hacks. Your information is at risk. Think about this.

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But a few things that were sent to me over and over again from you guys was there was a great study done by the EPA about certain chemicals that could be in Cheerios. And, you know, one thing about this is that when you take these chemicals, they could stunt growth, they could delay puberty and just are not good for you when you have these known carcinogen chemicals ingested in your body.

Okay? So you want to stay away from stuff like this. My late girlfriend Lisa was really into eating organically. And at first it was irritating. Then as I started researching, it made a lot of sense because a nurse that I knew was talking about how everybody eats the way they want to. And then when they turn 60, they realize they have heart disease, and they should have put that steak down and not eaten so much red meat and things like that.

And it’s a problem. And that’s why cardiology, she says, is the number one killer. And everybody, she’s got a job for life. So the other thing right now is beyond meat. Beyond meat has suffered tremendously. Beyond meat is horrible because it doesn’t taste like real meat. And they’re doing a big new advertising push, whether you care about this or not. They’re saying it’s 60% less saturated fat, but it doesn’t taste like meat.

That’s the problem with it, is that I have never eaten a veggie patty and said, oh, my gosh, I’m eating a burger. And I’ve never understood this about the fake meat. And two years ago, I tasted a lot of this stuff and force fed myself this stuff, and it was horrific. It tasted spongy and gooey and just like I was eating something from science that I should stay away from and from being in the medical space, I saw a lot of people do a lot of things that were really amazing.

But the one thing with the fake food is that it never clicked with me. It never made it. Oh, wow. I really think I’m eating a hamburger. And that’s the thing I don’t get about the vegans, is that, okay, you’re going to stay away from meat, but then you want to have meatloaf. You want to have fake meatloaf, you want to have a fake burger, fake hot dog.

Why? Why not just not eat it? Okay, there’s that. And I’ve had people cook me things where they’ve taken carrots and cauliflower and made taco meat out of it. And it tastes great. Tastes like to season like taco meat. It’s crunchy. It tastes like taco meat. But the beyond meat, I never liked it. I’ve never had a desire for it. And it just doesn’t taste good. Now they’re advertising things like canola oil and avocado oil in it.

Is this going to motivate you to try this stuff? Seriously? Is that going to be the thing that’s going to make you go out and do this? Try know, we start talking about junk fees, and one thing that I’m going to do next week is I’m going to go out with Doug and post a bunch of foreclosures because it’s getting busier. But in small business right now, I want you to think about this.

When you look at smaller companies, and I’m talking under $2 million in sales, a lot of these people are filing bankruptcy right now because of merchant cash advance fees and getting these merchant cash advances. Now, when you are a small business and you take Visa, Mastercard, American Express, discover all that stuff, and you do a substantial amount of business, let’s just say 50 grand, 100 grand, 800,000 a year, when you start to do this business, you can then go to your bank and say, hey, listen, I do $40,000 a month in business.

I want to get an advance against that, and they will send you a check, and then you will pay a fee. Now, what they will do is they will take a percentage of your future sale. So every time you swipe your card from that day forward until it’s paid back, they will take a percentage like 20%, 30%. It can be as low as 10%. You negotiate that up front.

And what they do is basically this is usually worked out around how much you borrow. So, hey, you want to borrow more money, you want a more aggressive payment, you borrow 30,000, you pay back 40. And yeah, it’s, things like that. It’s a much bigger fee. The problem with it is that in this world, in today’s business climate, you have no idea what you’re going to sell. You really don’t.

When I talk to real business people and real bankers, and there’s a great article below from Anthony Bourdain talking about this. When you look at what people have done over the course of the last few years with this, people thought, well, the restaurant does $25,000 a month in credit cards. We’re going to continue to do that. And then you do 12,000 a month, but somebody’s taken 30% of it and it’s delayed three days.

So there’s a problem with that. That’s where people are running into a foul with the money. Whenever you borrow money, and money is a tool, guys, and you have to have it. You have to have lines of credit and you have to take Visa and Mastercard and things like that in your business. I went to a shoe store to have shoes repaired and the guy was cash only, cash only.

Cash only. And stuck it in my face. And I’m like, oh, that’s cool. But if you ever took a Visa card, you’d get more money from guys like me because I’d come back more often. Just got to remind myself when I pick my shoes up to bring you cash. His choice. Okay. The point is that there’s more bankruptcies right now from these fees. And when you do this, this is very expensive money.

Very expensive money. As I research this, I know a financier who does this, who lends people this money. And he says, dan, we only deal with the top tier businesses. I said, oh, come on, everybody’s having a difficult time right now. You don’t think that these people are not paying you right now? You don’t think that they’re off right now? Well, they’re all off, but we’re dealing with the people that are going to stay in business during this time.

So the fact that you’re squeezing them. And think about this. I want you to think about this. You’re going to sell whatever you sell. And when you swipe that credit card, you’re going to get 20% less, 30% less. You don’t think that that’s going to hurt you and cramp your cash flow? It’s going to kill it. So people are going bankrupt at a record pace because of this and because of the fees that they get desperate for.

They get the money, Jones, where they have to get money to get by and they’re desperate to borrow it. And this is one way to do it. So share your thoughts on this. If you know anybody that’s done this. I’ve done it. And it was good and bad. And when it was bad was when you start to have money troubles, man, that’s when it’s bad. You’re like, oh, my God, I’m getting killed for 30% every time we swipe those credit cards.

Okay, so share your thoughts on this stuff so far. I want to thank you guys for all the birthday cards and everything you’ve been sending this week. I really appreciate it. My birthday is on Sunday, for those of you that want to know. But I appreciate the time and effort. Send the cards and everything you guys have sent me. It’s great so far. One thing, kind of a follow up to talking about getting tax advice up front is there is a way to pay zero capital gains tax if you are on a lower income.

And there’s a great story below talking about this. But the problem is people sit there and say, oh, I don’t have to pay capital gains. And that’s because my income is at a certain level. Talk to a tax expert. I am not a tax expert and I’m not giving you financial advice. But people don’t want to spend the time to do the research. And again, you can ask accountants questions.

Accountants are a little different than attorneys. Accountants love numbers. Accountants love to give free advice. Every single community out there has an accountants agency and support groups that will give you free tax advice. I found these in every area of the country, and you should take a look at that. Now, to continue with the theme of junk fees that are out of line, I flew on spirit and frontier airlines last year to go to the Formula one race, and I just dreaded every second of it.

And it was awful. And my bag fell running to a plane to catch a plane. I spilt everything all over, put it together, gasping for air. As I get to the plane, I hop on a spirit flight. Can I get a water? She goes, yeah, $6 and give you a water. Okay, so it’s a criminal act now. JetBlue just announced with, it’s not really an announcement. They just changed it.

They changed their per bag check fee to almost $40 per bag. Now the problem with this is that, here’s the thing that I don’t do a lot. I don’t book a flight three months in advance and say I’m going to fly and I’m going to have one bag and my date’s going to have this. This is what happened literally an hour ago. Hey, do you think you could come to Texas next week? Yeah, let’s say, yeah.

What time? Well, we’ll let you know. But we’ll probably let you know Monday. You think you’d fly it on Wednesday? That’s how I do it, guys. When I do this stuff and there’s no way to get pre boarding, there’s no way to save money in advance. Oh, you booked within 48 hours. You’re going to pay the higher bag fee. American Airlines, same thing. It went up from thirty five dollars to forty dollars for these bags and so much for the second bag.

The problem with that is you can sit there, think of the millions of suitcases that American Airlines deals with. Think of the millions of suitcases that JetBlue deals with. And again, these junk fees, they’re making money on us all over the place. Now if I had to recommend like a regular airline, I love Jetblue. JetBlue has just been fantastic. But I had no idea that they charged me for stuff like that.

I didn’t even pay attention to. You know, these fees are getting out of control and that’s what people are fed up with. Now the next thing is the fed released their minutes from their last meeting talking. Know, maybe we’re not going to lower interest rates so fast for everybody. People should understand that the economy is in such a way that we may not do it and it’s so wishy washy.

And it’s not like on this date we’re going to lower interest rates. And again, if you talk to anybody that’s been in real estate for a long period of time, that understands mortgages, that understands real estate, none of them are sitting there going, oh yeah, we’re going to see 5% mortgages this year. They just know that that’s not going to happen. There’s a great article below about how it is cheaper to rent right now than it is to own.

And I am telling you, you’d be think about what your down payment is right now. And again, do your own due diligence and your own financial advice and your own research on this. But why not rent a nicer place and take that down payment, live a little better lifestyle and save money and have it be somebody else’s headache? That’s what I think people should do right now over going out and getting themselves house poor, because that’s what happens over and over again.

So let me know what you think about that. But this is the problem with this is that nobody wants to put pen to paper and everybody thinks that we’re going to wake up and there’s going to be a mythical 5% mortgage again. So let me know what you think about that’s. Think about this stat. The percentage that we spend on food right now hasn’t been this high since the Gulf war, since 1991.

That’s insane, guys. That is absolutely out of control. Almost 11. 4% of our budget, disposable income is spent on food again, the highest since 1991. So you wonder why people are spending less. They can’t go out, they can’t eat. It’s crazy. Now the next thing there was a great story about Kiki, who started a business, online business, and did side hustles. But because she was not proficient in her management and managing her money, she had a tremendous amount of overdraft fees that cost her an absolute ton.

And again, it goes to the problem with management. It goes to all the fees that she didn’t bank on. And lending tree did a great study. 5. 1% of the people out there have a second income, which is great. I’m all for that. But I am telling you two things. Don’t quit your job when you start the side gig, don’t do it until you know it’s done. My daughter did this.

My daughter went out and had a plan and sat down with me and says, I’m going to keep my job for six months. And if I hit this income level and this income level on this side gig, I’m going to quit my job. Great. And because she’s responsible, it totally worked out. And that’s what happened. Well, then you read somebody like Kiki that sits there and was just completely overwhelmed that everything is upside down.

Think about this stat. Of all the businesses that get started every year, 20% of them, 20% fail within the first year. The number one reason for that is management. Management of your money. Time management, not expecting anything to go wrong. The one that I always get mystified by are restaurants that go out of business. Man, oh, man. You sit there and you look at a restaurant and 90 days later they’re closed.

I really think about this. What if nobody went to your restaurant? Do you have the cash flow to maintain this place to open if nobody came here? And I don’t think anybody does that. I really think that’s what you’d have to do right now if you wanted to start a new restaurant. Now, final two stories on this video. First things first is a great story about Vegas hotels that have bedbugs.

And I won’t name names, but some of them are, like, really nice hotels. I’m like, really? They got nailed for bedbugs. So read the story below if that interests you. And the final, final story, we’ve talked a lot about traveling, a lot about ridiculous fees, and I’m telling you this right now. I love going to a hotel. I love taking a shower, getting nine towels and throwing them on the floor when I’m done, and having the maid come and clean it up.

It’s fantasy land, okay? That is the way I like to do it. In Australia, there is an Airbnb listing for a tent in somebody’s backyard for $295. And, I mean, I’m like, could you imagine this? Hey, honey, let me show you where we’re going to stay in Australia. Here’s the house. Oh, wow. That’s beautiful. No, we’re not in the house. We’re in the tent. Okay. Now, people are freaking out over this because there’s fees and things like that.

But $295 for a tent? Where do you shower? Oh, you got a hose over there. What bathroom do you use when you rent the tent? So again, it’s getting out of control. But the listing and the link is below. So if you want to travel, imagine having a tent in your backyard. Imagine having ten tents in your backyard. You can make three grand a week. Oh, my God, honey, it’d be great.

I won’t be staying in the tent anytime soon. Please don’t forget to hit the like button. Please don’t forget to subscribe to the channel and take a look at delete me, guys, because I was really impressed by the privacy report and everything that they send out. So take a look at it today if you want to get a hold of me. Hello@iallegedly. com? And again, we had an email go out a couple of days ago.

Had to correct it. Make sure you check your spam filters to watch the video and everything that’s on that. Okay, I will see you guys very soon. .

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