訂機票，遭遇票價無故飆升，外加支付不明費用；訂火車票，又遇到一個“不承認不否認式”售票員。我怒不可遏，但只能忍氣吞聲。

By Anthony Daniels

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Sharp practice, if not outright dishonesty, is bound to grow in a society in which personal trust and honour are replaced by law.[1] Everyone then does what he can get away with, for a reliance on the law as the sole determinant of the permissible destroys all sense of shame.[2] It is small wonder that “Cheat, that ye be not cheated”[3] seems increasingly to be the rule by which we live.

Recently, I bought a ticket online from a low-cost airline. With each click of the mouse the cost rose, until it reached 25 times the advertised fare[4]. I was angered in a way that I should not have been if the final cost had been asked of me in the first place. I suppose that by now, having bought many such tickets, I should be used to the sharp practice, but I am not. It still irritates me.

I knew, of course, that I should be charged a credit card fee even if I used my debit card[5]. But this particular airline found a new wheeze to misrepresent its fare.[6] It charged an additional ￡6 for a seat.

Could I have avoided this charge if I had volunteered to stand rather than sit? Reader, I could not: I had to have a seat. In what sense, then, could the original fare have been advertised at ￡x rather than at ￡x+￡6?[7] In none that I could fathom.[8]

Even this was not the end of it, however. The website now gave me what it called the “total cost” and asked me to press the “continue” button if I agreed to it. I did so, only to discover that the next page had added a further ￡6 for reasons that I was quite unable to discover.

Since the airline was the only one going to my destination, I swallowed my rage[9].

A lack of straightforwardness in dealing with customers is now commonplace,[10] and it seems worse in Britain than elsewhere. On the very same day, I booked a four-hour train journey on a route that I know is always very busy. I tried to book a seat online but found I could not do so, and so I called the telephone number indicated.

The assistant who answered my call told me I could not reserve a seat. “But,” she added brightly, “you may take any seat subject to availability.”[11]

It was reassuring that passengers on trains are permitted to sit in available seats.

“You mean that I might have to stand,” I said, “if the train is full, as it often is?”

“No, sir, you can sit in any seat, subject to availability.”

Try as I might I could not get her to admit that this meant that I might have to stand. She had evidently been trained not to deny the possibility, but rather not to admit it. She was like a common-or-garden[12] politician answering—which is to say, not answering—questions put to him by an interviewer.

Vocabulary

1. 在個人誠信被法律法規取代的社會里，欺騙行為——只要不是徹徹底底的欺詐——必定會滋生蔓延。

2. 于是人人都做一些錯誤但能逃避處罰的事，因為只要一切都在法律所允許的范圍內，就不會讓人覺得羞愧。

3. Cheat, that ye be not cheated: 寧可騙人，也別被騙。

4. fare: 票價。

5. debit card: （銀行發放的）借記卡。

6. wheeze: 伎倆，計謀；misrepresent: 不如實地表述。

7. 那么從什么角度，才能把廣告中的原始票價理解成x英鎊而不是x+6英鎊？

8. 從哪個角度我都理解不了。

9. swallow one’s rage: 忍氣吞聲，壓抑怒火。

10. straightforwardness: 坦率，直截了當；commonplace: 常見的。

11. brightly: 歡快地；subject to availability: 根據空余座位的情況。

12. common-or-garden: <英口>很普通的，一般的。

（來源：英語學習雜志）