“Every day we use banks, cell phones, and credit cards. Every day we book hotels and airline tickets. And every day we get ripped off.” So says Bob Sullivan, author of Gotcha Capitalism - How Hidden Fees Rip You Off Every Day-and What You Can Do About It.

Sullivan, who writes “The Red Tape Chronicles” for MSNBC, “a twice-weekly column that exposes small print, corporate sneakiness, and other Twenty-First Century headaches,” says that “small-print rage is a close second only to road rage as a source of angst in America today.”

Sullivan’s reasoning is sound. As he explains in Gotcha Capitalism, “Today’s business environment breeds sneakiness. Companies under pressure to keep advertised prices low have seized on trickery to pump profits up. The most successful firms are now the ones that hide their prices best.”

The effect on you?

“Gotcha Capitalism threatens your finances with death by a thousand fees.”

A study commissioned by Sullivan found Americans lose $946 to hidden fees each year - and “adding up analysts’ estimates of total fee income from credit card late fees, homeowners’ title insurance, wacky hotel resort fees, and the like, consumers lose well more than $100 billion a year to hidden surcharges.”

Consumer Reports estimated that figure at $216 billion a year back in 2004, boosting each family’s annual loss to $4,000.

Sullivan writes of himself, “I hate getting cheated. I mean, really, really, really hate getting cheated. I mean veins-pop-out-of-my-forehead, glad-I’m-not-getting-my-blood-pressure-checked-today hate getting cheated.”

Here are 10 artfully hidden fees that may well raise your blood pressure, too.