Price vs Fees

According to the Pocket Oxford Dictionary, price is the amount of money for which a thing is bought or sold.

Fees on the other hand, refers to the sum payable to official or professional person (e.g. doctors, dentists, lawyers, architects and engineers) for services.

Thus, it can be seen that the fundamental difference between price and fees is that price involves a product while fees involve a service.

When we compare prices, we make one single assumption:

The product that we are comparing is identical and differing only in cost, otherwise, we would be comparing apples with oranges, which does not help us make any meaningful comparisons.

An iPod is an iPod is an iPod!

The iPod in one shop is identical to an iPod in another shop with a different price. So it does not matter where you buy your iPod from because they are the same thing.

On the other hand, when it comes to services, the comparison is not so straightforward. For example, two chefs following the same recipe would not end up with exactly the same chocolate cake.

Invariably, one would taste better than the other.

The same applies in dentistry; two dentists doing a set of dentures each for the same patient will end up with different outcomes with the patient preferring one over the other.