Over Weight, Over Charged!

Gatwick Airport or, more precisely, some of the airlines flying from it, have been done by their local trading standards department for overcharging customers whose baggage is over weight or, as the airlines term it, “Excess Baggage”.
I’m well versed in the woes of overweight luggage. David, my ex, was the stereotypical gay man in as much as he would take every item from his extensive wardrobe [of overpriced tat] on holiday with him. To this end he bought a suitcase [ Dolce & Gabbana] the size of a large hotel and at the cost of a small war, into which he could almost fit everything he “needed”.
The first outing for this luggage behemoth was to the Dominican Republic about five years ago.
Having financed the suitcase, we had to travel with a shyster outfit for the holiday [MyTravel].
David, not being the tallest gay in the village, hauled this thing around the longest serpentine check-in queue in the airport only to reach a minion with a set of scales before he reached the minion at the check-in desk.
As we’d shuffled along in the queued towards this point, I could see that there was always some kind of commotion going on but could never quite hear what it was. This commotion also seemed to entail lots of disgruntled people either walking away arguing with their partners / kids / travel companions. Then I saw the scales.
“You’re in trouble, sunshine. They’re weighing the baggage!”
“No worries, I weighed it before we left and it was just under” he assured me.
True though this was, what we didn’t know was that this outfit of bastards had a baggage limit of 13kg, where every other airline tends to operate at around 22 -25kg. This information was actually printed on the flight tickets but hey, who reads flight tickets? Not me, certainly not David, and, by the look of almost every other passenger in the queue, nobody else!
The end result was that even my baggage was over weight by about 2kg; and I take virtually nothing with me on holiday. David’s was massively over weight, I forget by how much, but it cost him over £60 in excess payment.
When we got back, David wrote to MyTravel and complained. Their response was that the information was clearly printed on the tickets. Not much fukin’ good if you collect your ticket at the airport.
Anyway, seeing this on the news, today, I was somewhat surprised. I would have thought that such a public place, like an airport, would have been up to the mark with simple things like having their scales verified. Places such as Post Offices have to verify and record their scales at the beginning of every week, so to find that some airlines have been caught out makes me wonder what else they don’t do that the should?