Just ran into one at the airport. We had a couple of bags that were slightly overweight, one by 5 lbs, one by 2 lbs. Often they will let these small overages s

Just ran into one at the airport. We had a couple of bags that were slightly overweight, one by 5 lbs, one by 2 lbs. Often they will let these small overages slide, especially for high “status” frequent flyers such as moi. This time the desk agent sentenced us to $100 per bag. With a long line of people behind us, my traveling companion became flustered and said “just pay it”. I said “No way, it’s pure rent seeking, which they only do when they think you’ll be flustered in front of a crowd. We have an unused baggage allowance, which they could apply to an average weight. They choose to set a high enough penalty that I will seek options. In this case, let’s calmly and deliberately extract the spare fold-up duffel I always carry, shift a few items from both bags, and spend the $200 on champagne and caviar in Paris.” This was a winning argument, and it was done. I suppose I could carry a small luggage scale, but they are hardly accurate. Hotels, airports, rental car counters, etc., could provide more accurate ones, but they don’t usually. I usually fly with only carry-on, so it’s not in my sights. The check-in agent went from “beleaguered jobsworth” to “chuckling co-conspirator” once I explained what was really going on here. If someone is an insider and can explain convincingly why a slightly heavy bag places a $100 burden on the baggage handling system, I will retract. As a pricing decision maker for a deadline driven product, we always create a ramp at the end rather than stand up a brick wall. In this case, they could have set a lower fee for the first 5 or 10 lbs over, and I would very likely have paid two $25 fees. By going straight to punitive, no way. What do we call this practice in the context of the OP? How about “public shaming for minor infractions”? Feh.