robbery

Fig. the practice of blatantly or grossly overcharging. It's daylight robbery to charge that amount of money for a hotel room! The cost of renting a car at that place is daylight robbery.

outrageous overpricing; a bill that is much higher than normally acceptable but must be paid. (As if one had been accosted and robbed on the open road or in broad daylight.) Four thousand dollars! That's highway robbery for one piece of furniture! I won't pay it! It's highway robbery!

a situation in which you are charged much more for something than you think you should have to pay Three pounds for an orange juice? It's daylight robbery!

Charging exorbitant prices, as in The amount you're asking for this couch is daylight robbery. [Mid-1900s] Also see highway robbery.

The exaction of an exorbitantly high price or fee. For example, You paid ten dollars for that meat? That's highway robbery. This term, used figuratively since the late 1800s, alludes to literal robbery of travelers on or near a public road.

An outrageously high price. An appliance store advertises a refrigerators for $900, but you see ads for the same brand and model elsewhere for half that price. That store, you conclude, is committing daylight robbery, a “crime” so metaphorically blatant that it is being committed in broad daylight. That's not to be confused with “highway robbery.” “Daylight robbery” offers you the option of paying the money or not, but you don't have that choice in “highway robbery,” just as the victim of a stagecoach holdup had no choice. Your city raises property taxes. You receive the bill, take one look, and scream, “That's highway robbery!”