“You want to hear my origin story?” Steve Kole asked Louis Sideways, founder of Sideways Marketing. Steve scheduled the meeting, but with few details. Sideways liked these types of mysterious requests, so he was willing to humor Steve Kole.
“Your origin story for what?” Sideways asked.
“I created the inconvenience fee,” Steve said. “That’s what I’m here to talk about.”
“What’s an inconvenience fee?”
“That’s why I wanted to tell you my origin story,” Steve said. “I awoke one morning to an alert from my bank that I had overdrawn my account and my debit card was canceled. When I looked, the big ticketing company charged me an outrageous convenience fee seven times for a single soccer game I attended.”
“That’s a lot of convenience fees,” Sideways noted.
“So I spent two hours on the phone before they agreed to pay me back the money, but not cover my overdraft fee. This was an inconvenience on so many levels.”
“So you started thinking about an inconvenience fee?” Sideways suggested.
“Not yet, because then I had to rush off to go to my dentist appointment,” Steve said. “On my way there, someone ran their rental scooter into the passenger door of my car.”
“Oof, was the guy okay? Sideways asked.
“Sure, sure,” Steve said, “But I had to wait 45 minutes for the scooter company to arrive and then argue with the guy about whether the scooter-sized dent in my car was caused by the scooter crash.”
Sideways added, “And then you exclaimed, this is a huge inconvenience!”
“Not quite,” Steve said, “Because I realized my cut-off debit card was on file to pay for my dental copay, so I ran to the ATM next to the dentist. I had to pay a $6.00 convenience fee to get my own money out of the bank.”
“Was this the moment?”
“No,” Steve said. “At this point, I was an hour late for the dentist. I got there, and they told me I owed them $25 for being late.”
“A true inconvenience fee,” Sideways said.
“You would think that was the origin,” Steve said, “But now I must tell you about the lawyer I had to hire.”
“They charged you a convenience fee?” Sideways asked.
“Yes, they did. They charged a fee for emailing me to ask if I wanted to use them as my lawyer in the scooter incident,” Steve said.
“And that got the gears going,” Sideways said. “Why didn’t you start there when you told me about the inconvenience charge?”
“Well, I needed to set the stage,” Steve said.
“I’m making a note,” Sideways said. “You owe me $5.00 because that whole story was a huge inconvenience.”