A Dazzling Array of Credit Card Fees: Evidence of an Industry in Transition‪.‬

INTRODUCTION In a well-documented article that appeared in Business Week, Emily Thornton explores a powerful social phenomenon with which all of us are all too familiar. The article entitled "Fees! Fees! Fees!" reminds us that "America used to be the land of the free. Now, it's the land of the fee" (Thornton, 2003). With methodical precision she identifies proliferating fees from a variety of industries and provides industry estimates of their financial impact. For example, hotel fees for such things as housekeeping bring in about $100 million per year (Thornton, 2003). The new "regulatory assessment fee" of 99 cents per month adds about $475 million in annual revenues for AT&T (Thornton, 2003).