Administrative Fee my ass

Last month while we were in Melbourne, we hired a Kia Carnival from Europcar. Payment was made using credit card and everything was settled.

3 weeks later, an odd entry in my credit card statement appeared. Apparently I've been charged $38.50 by Europcar. "Dang, must be some speed trap fine." I thought to myself. The T&C clearly states that the hirer has to settle all fines and any infringements that occurred during the duration.

So I called them up, out of curiousity rather than inquiry. The guy confirmed my suspicion that we had indeed violated some traffic offence. "So does that mean that this $38.50 that you're charging me is to settle the traffic violation?", I enquired.

"Oh, no. That's just the administration fee. The actual summon will be sent to your residential address at XXX."
I was like, "WTF So what's the purpose of this administration fee that I have to fork out for?"
"It's for us to inform the traffic police that the offence occurred while you were in possession of the car, and to provide them with your address so that they may send the summon to you."

So f**k it, now I have to pay the summon, on top of the exorbitant admin fee which serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever. I mean, to pay $38.50 just to pass my address (which is already in your database and all you have to do is to type my name in) over to the traffic police seems pretty dodgy to me.

If all you have to do is input the customer's name, inform the traffic police and you'll get $38.50, then I'll say you must have the best (work to pay) ratio in the world.

I've been waiting for 2 weeks and there isn't any traffic summons in my mail yet. I think I'll call them up on Monday to interrogate them on why they're swindling my money.

And there was that time when we were joining Fitness First, we had to pay them an administration fee of $70. According to them its "ADMIN FEE - Is a fee used for all set up costs of a new or renewing membership."

And do you know what they did? Grab a pen, fill in a 2 page form with our information, that's it! (One would think they should be able to read our minds and fill up the forms themselves with the amount we're paying) Probably because the pen weighs a ton, or the form consists of some high-tech crap that uses a lot of energy/expertise to write on, because it costs $70.

ADMIN FEE is just an elaborate scheme to deceive us consumers!