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Comment by KingMachiavelli | Hacker News Reader

I can't think of a situation where I would ever want the base price and fees to be disclosed seperately. The advertised price should include everything but sales taxes that vary by region. If I ever care to know why the advertised price is different in state A vs state B, then I would simply look up breakdown of the total price.

> The total amounts to nearly $450 per year in unexpected fees just on TV service alone.

As someone who hasn't every signed up for anything but flat rate internet service (still from Comcast); the only 'fee' I had was a $15 BS charge for a 'self-installation kit' but it was still discolsed before signing up for service. Are the fee amounts unknown until the first bill? Or are they just baried in the 100 page contract?

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I don't know why taxes should also not be disclosed as part of the advertised price. I've heard the "there are so many regions and rules, it's a burden" argument. It doesn't seem to be a huge burden on the company to collect the tax, so why is it a burden to include it in the price?

The only somewhat compelling argument I’ve heard is that ads are usually sold by region (be they television, radio, or print) but many regions have multiple taxing jurisdictions where the rate can vary so how do you craft a regional price with these variations. And what do you do if one jurisdiction in the region has much higher or much lower taxes than other jurisdictions?

I’m not entirely convinced that this is a very compelling argument but it is the one that at least seems reasonable.

Welcome to retail. Companies recognize that the best way to get a lead is to advertise the lowest base price out there, and the best way to make money is to have the most leads and then use every tactic in the book to extract revenue from them (close the deal, and then fees, upgrades, upcharges, rate increases, etc.)

A few years ago I was in a T-mobile store (making the switch from AT&T) and the sales guy kept trying to get me to include add-ons to my base contract (e.g. unlimited international calls).

He kept trying to convince me, and I kept saying “no I don’t want that”. At the (final?) step when reviewing the contract I saw he’d still included some of the add ons.

I asked him to remove them, and he started the spiel about why I should include them again.

This is the rudest I’ve ever been to a salesperson, but I didn’t even say goodbye: I just walked out, went home and ordered a sim online.

I’ve often wondered if he was just new/poorly trained or actually intentionally trying to trick me.

Commissions, baby.

It's the same thing with restaurants and tipping. They want you to see the lowest number possible when choosing what to spend money on. Then you pay a 20% fee on top of that for some reason.

Plus, for us Europeans who come to the US, the tax (which is included in Europe). I guess you have in the US an automatism to add some tax to the price but what we see is 10$ and do not take into account the + 8.27% tax + 15% tip. (the tax is made up, I never knew what to add)

> the tax is made up, I never knew what to add

Neither do we.

You can never know what to add for tax, because there are often local taxes that can be higher for one municipality than another. Even then, within a municipality, they can have a higher tax on a single intersection or shopping center.

On top of that, most places have different tax rates depending on the product you are buying. Food or grocery or electronics could all have a different rate.

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