What A Drip

Grant, you know those annoying add-on fees that you don’t come across online until you’re almost at the end of your transaction? Maybe it’s extra money for checked luggage if you’re booking an airline or seat selection.

Yeah, yeah, handling or facility fees if you’re renting a car or, you know, different fees for concert tickets.

Yeah, I’m looking at you, Ticketmaster, whatever those nine fees are that are mysterious. I was reading about an airport in Venezuela that actually charged customers a fee several years ago to cover its ventilation system. And people were joking that that was a breathing tax. If you went through that airport, you had to pay a breathing tax.

Well, this is a lucrative practice. In fact, in 2023, I was reading that airlines raked in $33 billion from extra baggage fees. And what I didn’t know was that in the industry, this practice has a name. It’s called drip pricing. That drip word has done a lot in marketing and sales. Drip has become a kind of an add-on word for anything that slowly increases revenue.

Oh, is that right?

Yeah, and it also slowly increases consumers’ attention. So there’s drip marketing where you drip emails and texts and other bits of marketing to somebody where you don’t hit them over the head at once with your message.

Oh, interesting.

Oh, I knew about drip pricing but not drip marketing.

Oh, yeah. I just found a drip pricing in my bank account where somebody has been drip charging me for a service that doesn’t even work anymore. And does anybody say I like your drip anymore?

I don’t think so.

They do.

Yeah.

You’ve got mad drip, Martha.

You haven’t seen me lately, have you?

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