Fluff

Fluffing up a sale or service is a time honored practice. A doctor or contractor might fluff up their work a little bit to ease the pain of an expensive office business or construction repair. An unethical electrician, for example, will bid the repair of a lighting circuit to be two thousand dollars. The electrician can get the two thousand dollars because their client is a naive elderly woman. She is willing to pay the price. Since the repair requires only changing a switch the unscrupulous business will spend maybe four hours in her house inventing things to do to make it look like time is being spent on the project.

• Gouging