By Dave Begel Contributing Writer Published Jul 02, 2015 at 9:00 AM

The opinions expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the opinions of OnMilwaukee.com, its advertisers or editorial staff.

I got ripped off!

And what's worse, I only found out almost by accident.

What happened isn’t apparently illegal, but it sure as hell happened to me without any idea that it was happening to me.

I went out of town last weekend. I went to Priceline and rented a car from Saturday until Sunday. When I got to the counter at Mitchell Field, as we went through all the optional things I could buy, the agent asked if I wanted to fill up the car when I turned it in.

"How much do you charge a gallon to refill it," I asked.

"$2.97," she replied. "And then you don’t have to bother stopping to fill it up."

That was the same price I’d get if I did it myself, so I signed up to have them fill it up.

When I returned the car Sunday the gas gauge showed I had not even used up half a tank.  Then I got my receipt. It showed a charge of $49.79 for gas.

I thought that seemed excessive. The Toyota Camry I had driven had a 17-gallon gas tank. Say I used only eight gallons. That should have resulted in a charge of $23.76. I asked the guy checking me in what had happened.

"If you return the car with more than 100 miles driven we charge you for an entire tank," he said.

Nobody ever told me that, so what happened was that I got ripped off for $23.36, which in my world, is real money.

Like I said, there’s nothing illegal about this. Apparently the information is contained in the 1,000 small-font pages of terms and conditions that nobody could, or does, read.

I loved the car and the service, but still felt like I had really been ripped off and it made me wonder about other times I might have fallen prey to the horrors of consumer subterfuge. Checking around a little bit leads me to believe that this company is not the only one that has this provision. 

Next, I was shocked, I tell you shocked, to find out that my frequent purchasing of things online may also have been buried under bad behavior by companies and websites.

I am a big, big Amazon Prime member and I love the prices and customer service at the giant retailer. I also like all the product reviews by average users and I let them be a guide to product purchase.

And then I find out that it is highly likely that some of the product reviews I read about a specific item may well be fake reviews.

The New York attorney general recently announced that his office had uncovered over 20 instances of companies that post false reviews and companies that buy them.

And Amazon filed a lawsuit in California against a man who operated a number of reviews for sale sites, including buyreviewsnow.com.

In the lawsuit Amazon said that the company both solicited and got requests to arrange favorable reviews for a wide variety of businesses and products. The owner of the company or product pays the middleman for the reviews. The middleman gets people to write the favorable reviews and pays them a fee for their efforts.

"These reviews threaten to undermine the trust that customers, and the vast majority of sellers and manufacturers, place in Amazon, thereby tarnishing Amazon’s brand," the suit says. "Amazon strictly prohibits any attempt to manipulate customer reviews and actively polices its website to remove false, misleading and inauthentic reviews.

"Despite substantial efforts to stamp out the practice, an unhealthy ecosystem is developing outside of Amazon to supply inauthentic reviews. Defendants’ businesses consist entirely of selling such reviews."

Add to this whole thing the investigation claiming that Whole Foods had been overcharging customers for products sold by weight, and it makes me want to climb out of the buyer hole.

Never has caveat emptor seemed quite so apropos.

Dave Begel Contributing Writer

With a history in Milwaukee stretching back decades, Dave tries to bring a unique perspective to his writing, whether it's sports, politics, theater or any other issue.

He's seen Milwaukee grow, suffer pangs of growth, strive for success and has been involved in many efforts to both shape and re-shape the city. He's a happy man, now that he's quit playing golf, and enjoys music, his children and grandchildren and the myriad of sports in this state. He loves great food and hates bullies and people who think they are smarter than everyone else.

This whole Internet thing continues to baffle him, but he's willing to play the game as long as OnMilwaukee.com keeps lending him a helping hand. He is constantly amazed that just a few dedicated people can provide so much news and information to a hungry public.

Despite some opinions to the contrary, Dave likes most stuff. But he is a skeptic who constantly wonders about the world around him. So many questions, so few answers.