Hidden and rip-off airline charges

I'm currently campaigning to put an end to all the hidden and rip-off charges levied by airlines on their often unsuspecting passengers..such as myself!

On a flight out for my summer holiday I was stung for an extraordinarily large fee for excess baggage which I had not been aware of at the time of booking. It is easy to say that we should all check the small print at time of booking but this often runs to pages and pages of largely irrelevant information. In any case I did check the small print afterwards and to my surprise it didn't detail the charges. It mentioned, with a scandalous lack of precision, that fees for excess baggage would be "charged at prevailing rate at time of flight". I also noted that a hefty fee for paying by card is levied and that this fee is in fact largely unavoidable unless you have an obscure type of debit card which you would have to go out of your way to acquire. This fee was 4.4% of the cost of the flight! When you add to this the cost of checking in, paying for hold luggage and any other costs levied, the total amount paid can be many times that of the advertised rate.

I had already raised this issue over a year ago but now have come back to it with increased determination. I am asking for a clear and comprehensive set of guidelines for airlines operating within the European Union to ensure no more unsuspecting passengers are ripped off!