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Comment by doctorpangloss | Hacker News Reader

T-Mobile's taxes & fees included pricing is the #1 reason I switched to them from AT&T.

Amazon has items for less than $10, but most items with a price between $0.01-$9.99 have to sell for $10.00 for their free shipping economics to work. That's notwithstanding the fee that your license to buy, i.e. Prime, cost you.

In San Francisco, if you sit down at a restaurant, take the written prices on the menu and multiply them by 1.5 to get what you'll actually be paying. I don't think it's that bad in Los Angeles.

Further, in San Francisco, if you sign up for $40/mo fiber Internet, it's really $63.50. Somehow Sonic managed to break past 1.5.

The takeaway is there is no hard and fast rule about transparency in pricing. It's all psychological.

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> In San Francisco, if you sit down at a restaurant, take the written prices on the menu and multiply them by 1.5 to get what you'll actually be paying.

Is this anything other than taxes and gratuity (which, technically, you can give 0% for)? I'm trying to understand how even with 20% gratuity and SF's 8.5% tax, how you could get anywhere close to 1.5.

> Amazon has items for less than $10, but most items with a price between $0.01-$9.99 have to sell for $10.00 for their free shipping economics to work. That's notwithstanding the fee that your license to buy, i.e. Prime, cost you.

Amazon actually now will give you a longer ETA on cheap items to make it more affordable for them.

SF has a half dozen extra taxes that aren't listed on menus. It's not quite 1.5x bad but they aren't too far off.

>> In San Francisco, if you sit down at a restaurant, take the written prices on the menu and multiply them by 1.5 to get what you'll actually be paying.

>Is this anything other than taxes and gratuity (which, technically, you can give 0% for)? I'm trying to understand how even with 20% gratuity and SF's 8.5% tax, how you could get anywhere close to 1.5.

It's mostly hyperbole. There's an additional 4-6% charge that's fairly common to see for "SF employer mandate" which is sort of BS in its own way, but that only gets you up to a bit over 1.3x.

Ah, ok, similar to the service charge concept that's common around Seattle in lieu of tips.

I haven't been to the Bay in over a year, wasn't sure if something's changed since.

Most restaurants have an additional percent charge to provide healthcare or other benefits to their workers.

> Further, in San Francisco, if you sign up for $40/mo fiber Internet, it's really $63.50.

$73.63 once your promotional price expires.

Plus the router rental fee of $11 per month

I have RCN. Normally I would use my own modem. But, on the phone they told me the modem would be 5$ a month. Lo and behold, my bill reads:

>Modem fee: 5$ >Wifi fee: 6$

Really makes me love the company! /s

Fee fee fee

Hm, mine says $9.50. Fiber vs DSL rental price?

I know I can return the router, but what I wish I could really "return" is the phone service that adds a ton of taxes.

What are the charges on internet in SF? The ITFA(internet tax freedom act) banned taxes or fees on internet service.

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