I recently helped a friend negotiate and complete a large purchase, in the neighborhood of $10k. However, about a week after we finalized the sale and right before delivery was supposed to take place, I got a call from our sales rep at the store. He said that they forgot to charge a special insurance fee that would add another $100 to the order. If we didn’t pay this fee, they said, the whole order would be voided.

My gripe here is not about the $100. At only 1% of the total purchase amount, it wouldn’t have affected our decision one way or another — if we knew about it before completing the purchase. Indeed, the problem is that nobody told us about the fee beforehand. This combination of bait-and-switch and nickel-and-diming became a big point of contention for me, especially since they decided to hold our order hostage over it. We ended up paying the fee, but my opinion of the retailer has dropped from “very good” to something in the “average to poor” neighborhood.

It seems like common sense, but no matter what you’re selling, you need to avoid surprising people late in the purchase process. Once you and the customer have agreed to what they’re buying, and especially after payment has been received, don’t tack on little fees and surcharges. If you forgot to charge for some small thing, suck it up, fix your process, and don’t make the customer suffer. In other words, get rid of the surprises that turn a great purchasing experience into a crappy one. Otherwise, you’ll see your repeat business drying up and new sales slowing down, all because you wanted to nickel-and-dime people with things that barely impact the bottom line.

When I travel, my days are usually pretty hectic. Even with everything planned out in advance, there’s no way to predict when meetings will run long or you’ll get stuck in a line at the security checkpoint. Typically, these events mean that you’ll have to rush a little more on your way to the gate — or in some cases, run the whole way. With this in mind, it’s nice to have a relaxing meal in the airport when time permits. But there’s one problem: how do you know how long the meal is going to take?

Outside of airports, I have seen a few places that mark certain items on the menu as being a “Quick Lunch” or something similar, indicating they can be delivered to your table in say 15 minutes or less. This is probably most common in places that cater heavily to people on their lunch break. And while some airport restaurants might have the same info on their menu, they’re missing the bigger picture. When people are choosing where to eat in the airport, they need to know how long the total meal takes on the average, not just the food preparation times.

To capture as many travelers as possible, restaurants should provide a sign right at the entrance, before you even ask for a table. Sort of like the signs with wait times for each ride in Universal Studios, the restaurant sign would first say how long the current wait is. Then, it would tell you how long it takes on average to get your meal. Finally, it would provide a reasonable estimate of the time required to eat it and pay the bill. Of course, restaurant staff would have to change the first two items during the day, since the times will be longer during peak periods. The sign could even be electronic, providing a total time estimate on the fly.

So, the next time you need a place to eat before hopping on a flight, you could refer to the sign that says: “The current wait is 10 minutes, we’re averaging about 20 minutes to bring your food, and most people need about 30 minutes to eat and get out the door.” In this example, if you didn’t have at least 60 minutes before boarding, you would know to look for a faster option. By taking away the uncertainty, I think this approach would bring significantly more customers into airport eateries. Really, how could it not? A lot of people see a sit-down meal at the airport as a way to unwind during an otherwise hectic day, and the last thing you need is to be rushed and nervous about making your flight because you’re stuck in a restaurant.

Advertising in airports is a big business. Companies like ClearChannel and JC Decaux sell millions of dollars worth of ads on wall-mounted billboards, digital signs, and other airport media. But one thing has always puzzled me: Why don’t they tailor the advertising at each gate to match where the plane is going?

Granted, only a limited number of airports have electronic displays that can be changed on-the-fly. Without this technology, they’d have to change out the ad panels for every flight, which is obviously impractical. But even in the airports that use flat screen displays to show the flight info at each gate, the messages usually consist of airline branding and maybe some ads for businesses in the departure city. Rarely do you see anything about the place that you’re traveling to.

What I envision is a combination of destination info, like the weather forecast, along with ads for restaurants, cab services, and other things that a traveler might want to learn about for the place they’re going. And this doesn’t have to be limited to displays at the gate area. For airlines that have TVs in the seat backs, that’s another obvious place for destination-based ads. You could even take this online, offering people coupons and promotions for their destination as soon as they book their airline ticket, hotel room, or rental car. Either way, this seems like an obvious way to improve ad targeting while delivering more value to travelers.

When I book a hotel, I always try to use the hotel’s official website. Unlike those non-refundable reservations at places like hotels.com, booking through the hotel site usually means you can change or cancel the reservation as needed. Plus, many hotels have a low price guarantee to match the travel sites on price. But there’s a catch: the price match might also mean you give up the flexibility that you were seeking from the official website in the first place.

Case in point: I found the same price offered on the Sheraton website and Expedia. But Sheraton had an incredibly restrictive change policy, while Expedia’s was quite reasonable. So I called Sheraton and asked them to match Expedia’s price for the same room. The rep explained to me that they only match the price, not things like the cancellation policy. So when it comes down to it, the price match is a scam. What good is a low price guarantee if you’re not getting the same product or service?

As customers, I guess we need to be more careful about accepting any sort of price match without reading the fine print. From the vendor side, I would argue that marketers need to disclose when their best value guarantee comes along with other terms that devalue the core product or increase the costs of returns or changes. In my case, I did end up having to change the reservation right after I booked it, so I’m glad I read the fine print and went with Expedia. Otherwise, I would have paid hundreds of dollars in change fees because of a best value guarantee that was anything but.

The last time I checked, most airports have flights arriving and departing well past 8 pm. But I’ve come across numerous airports, such as Denver and Fort Lauderdale, that shut down nearly all the restaurants and shops at 8 o’clock. I know people would buy stuff well past that time, since vendors are busy in Chicago, Minneapolis and other airports at 8 pm and later. Assuming the concession operators want to make money, why on earth do they close so early?

Maybe their electricity costs increase after 8. Or there’s a local curfew. Or those towns have a vampire problem. Frankly, I can’t think of any good reason to shut down so early. If you’ve got a captive audience of shoppers, why not stay open later and sell more? Heck, most retailers are open until 9 pm, and they don’t even have the guaranteed traffic that an airport provides. If I operated a concession company, I’d take a long hard look at the traffic numbers for the times that my stores aren’t open. If those numbers don’t vary much from the regular operating hours, it’s probably worth giving the “extended” hours a try.

One final thought on this: Airport restaurants and stores should stay open later — much later — during major weather delays. People who end up unexpectedly stranded in the airport are going to need food and supplies that they didn’t plan for. If you can provide that for them, it means lots of happy customers and higher revenues. Actually, let me clarify that: while they probably won’t be happy with the airline delays, at least they’ll be pleased that food and supplies are close at hand.

Every time I deal with another company’s tech support department, it’s always the same story. I explain the problem to the rep along with what I’ve tried so far. Inevitably, they ask me to try the same thing again, ignoring everything I just told them. Next, they transfer me to another agent, who repeats the exact same process. Is this really an efficient way to handle trouble tickets? In my experience, both on the customer and the vendor side of things, repeating the same question over and over just makes the calls take longer and costs everyone time and money.

In some cases, this endless interrogation is due to lazy support reps who can’t take 30 seconds to read what the customer typed or to review the case history. In other situations, it’s caused by a lack of communication between one support rep (or team) and another. For whatever reason, the first rep fails to provide the second rep with the info on the original problem and attempted solutions, so you go through the whole process again.

The solution here is rather obvious, but rarely practiced. First, train your support reps to listen better to customers and properly brief coworkers when transferring a customer to them. Second, put a proper case tracking system in place and use it to document everything the customer tells you about each issue. By following these steps, problems should take less time to resolve, staff productivity should rise, and customers will be a lot less frustrated.

I’ve been planning a fairly large purchase from a retailer whose annual “one day sale” is coming up. As the name suggests, they run some big discounts on that day only. Since you can’t find out exactly what the discounts will be in advance, you have to call them or visit the website during that morning to find out what’s on sale and how much you’ll save. It’s well-publicized, so customers and the sales reps both know that it makes sense to wait until the sale date before purchasing. Personally, I’m fine with that: I made a little reminder and will call them accordingly.  But I wonder how many customers actually remember to check in on the designated sale date, versus those who forget about it and end up making the purchase elsewhere.

Rather than put the onus on customers to visit the website or stop in on the day of the sale, I’d love to see the retailer offer a reminder service. This doesn’t have to be very fancy. You would just enter your email address or mobile number, and they would automatically send an email or text message right after the sale begins. To make this even more useful, they could let customers enter a short note to be sent at that time, like “Check out the sale pricing on leather sofas.” Assuming that retailers do in fact want to maximize sales during these special events, an automated reminder service seems like a no-brainer.

With many online retailers offering free shipping on every order, consumers have arguably come to expect free (or at least low-cost) shipping for all their purchases on the web. Of course, not every retailer plays this game. Some still charge full price for shipping. This seems especially common with clothing stores and others who sell a unique product you can’t get elsewhere. As they see it, there’s no business reason to pay for shipping costs if customers are going to buy anyway. I can’t fault them for that logic. But what really bothers me is when they charge shipping rates that are two or three times the actual cost.

You’ll probably recognize this scenario: You’ve filled up your shopping cart with say $50 worth of products. When you go to check out, the shipping cost appears, and it’s something absurd like $13 — almost 30% of the cost of the items. Why am I calling this absurd? Well, the products in question usually weigh a measily one or two pounds, clearly in the $5 territory for anyone with decent shipping volume. So what’s the rest of the shipping charge for? I’d argue it’s just hidden profits.

Don’t get me wrong: these stores have every right to make money. But it bothers me when they try to make the products look cheaper by burying the rest of the costs in the shipping. To this end, I propose a “truth in shipping” disclosure for online and catalog retailers. How would this work? Basically, whenever the price they’re charging for shipping is more than say 25% higher than their actual shipping and packaging costs (or some industry average based on weight), they would have to tell you about it. Of course, I don’t expect this will ever happen. All I can hope is that the free market will punish those who continue to charge outrageous shipping costs, instead of just pricing their products fairly in the first place.