If the client wanted more help, Schwab later punted him off to a small army of 400 investment advisers, the independent financial planners who passed Schwab's sniff test for fee-based services and unbiased service and who agreed to pay referral fees for the clients.
They were particularly furious that the gradual introduction of pay-beds had, as they claimed, led to consultants using their services for fee-paying patients.
This has put a premium on generating more revenue from fee-based services, for example by selling pensions and insurance policies.
While some hotels charge a fee for these over-the-top services, many do not, adding it to the lavish perks and anticipated benefit of any stay at an extraordinary hotel, says Jonathan Frolich, general manager of Andaz 5th Avenue in Manhattan.
In China, subsidies were reduced and a fee-for-service system introduced when control over health services was loosened under economic reforms in the 1980s.
And it scrapped its delivery fee last month while increasing its advertising for shop-from-home services.
Based in San Francisco, closely held Strava is also used by runners, who can win a CR course record for posting the fastest time on a particular segment. (About half of Strava runners are women.) The site charges a fee for premium services such as analysis of heart-rate data.
Today, they provide support and education for 2, 400 members who provide fee-only financial planning services to the public.
From 2013, they will have to charge an up-front fee for advice instead, as part of moves towards greater price transparency in banking services.
In addition to its fee increase for visits, which will vary by market, WellPoint will offer primary-care doctors payments for services such as developing treatment plans for patients with chronic diseases.
What's most interesting to us is that the carriers are appearing to conflate bandwidth-heavy services like Facebook and YouTube with devices that customers use to access those services -- does it really make any sense to charge Apple or Google a fee for making good phones that encourage more network use, on top of charging users for tiered data?
ENGADGET: European carriers want content companies and smartphone makers to pay network usage fees
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