Stealth inflation (original) (raw)

Stealth inflation is a type of charges or fees created by businesses to gain extra profit and revenue from its customers. The stealth part of the term is that business will often use miscellaneous fees to charge customers without the customers even knowing the fees existed as they were hidden in the fine print of a signed a contract. The inflation part of the term relates to the up charging of the service without actually providing anything additional. Since most companies charge a fee to accept payment, a portion gets built into profit and revenue. A big example of stealth inflation can be overdraft fees from banks surcharges from Telco providers, processing fees and installation fees. Another form of stealth inflation is devaluation of money by a government, sometimes in order to pay off