> as if the person who wrote the email doesn't know the actual meaning of the word.
In my country, "tariff" is seen in several contexts:
* A tax on imports, much in the news since the recent US election.
* A pub or bar's price list is known as the "bar tariff"
* Energy companies offer a selection of "tariffs" i.e. agreed contract rates for usage-based pricing. e.g. a 3-year-fixed-price tariff, a 100%-green-energy tariff, and so on.
* The portion of a 'life' jail sentence which must be served, before a prisoner can be considered for parole.
So I don't think it's incorrect to call a price list a "tariff", merely unusual.
Right, only the first usage is mainstream American English. The others are not.
I am curious if the others are British English? Or Indian? Other?
> So I don't think it's incorrect to call a price list a "tariff"
I'm pretty sure it is in American English. That usage might be ok in British English, but for Americans that terminology is going to be confusing. Before today, I had never heard tariff used for anything other than import taxes. And since this applies to servers in the US, it would make sense not to use terminology that would be confusing to people in that country.
From what I can tell, in the US energy suppliers talking to one another use the term "tariff" like for example https://www.puc.texas.gov/industry/electric/rates/tdr.aspx
Whereas when talking to consumers they seem to use terms like 'rate' and 'plan'.