Experiment shows why ticket sellers hit you with last-second fees
newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu
newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu
Gym membership? Don't forget about the extra "maintenance fee".
Eating out or catching a ride? Don't forget the tip.
Getting a new game? Don't forget the DLC and microtransactions.
Flying? Don't forget luggage fees.
Ordering online? Don't forget about shipping/delivery.
Just going to the supermarket? You still have to factor in taxes.
Free shipping often means that the person who delivers the package is paid badly.
There is likely no correlation between shipping fees and the amount of money paid to package delivery people.
Recently though, I bought out my leased car when the lease was over. I didn't want to spend time to wait around the DMV during the pandemic so I paid a lawyer $500 to do the registration for me. That's about what a dealership would charge for a "documentation fee". Totally worth it.
It's baffling how many people here think they don't pay taxes AT ALL. While in reality they pay around 20% in prices of goods and around 1/3 of their pay at work goes to mediocre public health service and taxes.
I used to live in one of the richest counties in the US, and they had different tax rates in my city for eat-in, vs. takeout food. Also different tax rates for certain consumer staples. The solution was to carry an extra $20, not to do the math. And that gets abstracted away when you start using debit or credit all the time -- just lines on a statement.
Meanwhile, living in Australia, when I saw something in the store that said $5.50, I only had to make sure I had $5.50 in my pocket.
Who and where are these people? Reading through the comment section, I don't see them.
> While in reality they pay around 20% in prices of goods and around 1/3 of their pay at work goes to mediocre public health service and taxes.
Not sure about the rationale behind that jab towards public healthcare.
In real life. Let me show some context: Over half of voters in my country vote for a party that is giving away money specifically to it's low income voters. Money we don't have. Like we have that huge "500+" program that was a corner stone of ruling party's program. 500zł for each child, that can't be taken by repossession agents and so on. To burst child birth.
After several years child birth rate is the lowest since in between WWI and WWII, said voters more often choose not to work at all yet still complain that said 500zł is not worth as much as it used to be. People don't get consequences of inflation, even though it's not that long time ago when we faced hyperinflation. Surveys say 21% of citizens claim "they don't pay any taxes", while gross and net pays are different by 30-40%.
> Not sure about the rationale behind that jab towards public healthcare.
Don't get me wrong. Public healthcare is awesome and I think it should be kept even if not efficient. The USA example shows clearly how bad it can get without it. It's just that so many people think public healthcare is free, while it makes the biggest part of their net/gross pay difference. Especially for low income jobs. You cannot resign from that service and go all-private. I wrote a long complain on state of public healthcare here, at first, but deleted it - let's just say it's lacking and you still have to pay for private services. It's common for doctors and nurses to flee to Germany or further. Corona basically stopped most services, while national TV yells it's all fine while people die at homes.
There is a joke: a guy comes to a doctor with a nail in his head. Doctor says "oh, sure, we can operate you in half an hour!". "But I'd like to be paid by public healthcare", patient says. "Then I can slightly bend it with a hammer, so it won't bother you that much".
I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but depending on the wording of the question, people might assume they're talking about income tax, and 21% not paying income tax isn't really far fetched at all, depending on Poland's tax laws - IIRC here in Canada about a third of people who filed tax returns didn't pay a single cent.
Minimum wage here was recently increased to 7000 Euro a year (2800 PLN a month, gross, around 2100 PLN of actual cash in your wallet). Personal allowance/tax allowance here depends on your income, for minimum wage of 32000 PLN gross a year you will have exactly 525 PLN returned. Or not paid, to be precise.
With higher income, tax allowance gets smaller.
My flat rent plus upkeep is around 3000 PLN a month (capital, suburbs, almost 60 square meters), half of that in a small city. Big Mac is 18 PLN, coke 330ml (small can) in large store chain is 2,50 PLN or more (recent "sugar tax"). Trash pickup fees just went up from 18, to 60, to amount calculated based on water usage (around 120PLN in my case, two people in flat).
So that 525 saved ain't much. I can't even keep up with new taxes my government creates, but we still have 21% of people saying they pay no taxes at all. That's not wording. "at all".
Good government.
I've been making movie popcorn for months now and it's been great.
Besides, I have many other issues with cinema popcorn specifically. I don't care it's terribly overpriced, but basically most of these venues don't offer any healthy snacks AND you are forbidden to bring your own, so you either eat shit or just sit there hearing all others eat. Fine for an adult, but when you have kids, this becomes really frustrating.
The restaurants costs haven't changed significantly by just switching to takeaway. Their staff still want the same salary and they still have to by rent on their restaurant premise even if no one is sitting there.
I really don't know what you were expecting. They're still preparing the entire meal for you.
Was a comment deleted or something? The person you'd responded to didn't mention "ambience etc". They specifically said "You pay for convenience more than anything else at a movie theater." Unless I'm mistaken, the first person to mention ambience in this thread was you- what argument were you objecting to?
Not sure if it happens in Canada...
So if you are trying to send a mailer or run a tv ad, what price do you do?
That's different from fees that don't vary by location, like in this article.
If this were the law all retail businesses would be able to comply and it wouldn't even be a significant burden.
So what's stopping them putting tax-inclusive prices on shelves or on stickers on the items themselves?
Growing up in suburban Kansas City, we had both city, county and state sales taxes which could vary based on a short drive. And then there's certain entities which are allowed tax exemptions, like teachers making qualified purchases for some things.
Yes they can. Just have a constant price in that advertising region for the premium items you're advertising, eat the cost in locations with high sales tax rates (or rent, or wages, or shipping costs, or any other of the ten thousand other factors that they already deal with without issue), and make up for it in the areas where costs are lower than average.
Almost every single large business in the United States already does this, and it would be incredibly trivial for them to do it for sales tax as well.
Almost every large grocery store business does this, and a brief google street view tour of North St Louis will show multiple places where grocery stores have vanished and been replaced, if at all, by dollar stores.
the few times i remember handing over a specific sum of cash at thrift/vintage stores, indie shops, etc smaller stores here or there, they would always seem to include the tax in the displayed price if there was no computer to calculate the final tax, and the receipt (if any) was whole numbers throughout
I think this also doubles as a political statement. Basically a subtle way to shift "blame" and make consumers feel upset about a tax, and more likely to put pressure on governments to reduce said taxes. Ultimately it's all anti-consumer.
>I mean it's just a tax the business has to pay to the government, calculated based on products sold
No, its explicitly a tax on each transaction to be paid by the buyer. You're probably thinking of corporate tax, which the company also has to pay, but is completely separate from sales tax.
From their site:
>The buyer pays the sales tax, as an addition to the purchase price, to the vendor at the time of purchase. The vendor then sends the tax to Massachusetts. For motor vehicle and trailer sales, however, the buyer pays the sales tax directly to Massachusetts.
https://www.mass.gov/guides/sales-and-use-tax
>Ultimately it's all anti-consumer.
Yeah. Fortunately, New Hampshire is a lovely place to live.
And i'm pretty sure every single country in europe, and from my limited experience in asia, probably in most countries there too.
Each time I return, the barely letter-of-the-law scams that permeate our economy and culture are a huge aggravation and disappointment.
I know a lot of other people who also do extensive, long-term travel and who express similar sentiments: "The whole society is organized around financially draining you" etc.
Example ledger: “service fee”, “tip”, “taxes & fees” (hidden) which, when clicked, reveals the tax and another two dollar fee. Which means the service fee is actually $2 more than it seems and the tax is $2 less than it seems. In any reasonable legal system, the business would have been forced to show you just one “service fee” with the right amount. Furthermore, there is no guarantee whatsoever that the “tip” is broken down the way you would expect; for all you know, the company can take a huge cut of that and not show you that breakdown at all. Just utter crap.
Add to the list hotels and their “resort fees”.
Is it literally the exact same thing? No, but it definitely falls into the same category of sunk-cost/trapped buyers. Once you get to the gate, you're getting on the plane, even if you have to pay more for your luggage than you expected.
It's also very similar to why the soda vending machine at work charges $1 for a soda; the one in the amusement park charges $3, and the one _in the line_ for the popular ride costs $6. They all rely on facets of behavior that the consumer will just pay a little more once they've somehow invested in the process. The only difference is _what_ they invested and how easily recoverable it is.
It’s not the same thing at all. Even frontier displays up front what the bag fees will be. And it’s been years since airlines have been charging extra for bags, so I would say it’s convention by now. On Google flight search, you can see total prices including however many bags you specify.
[1] https://www.transportation.gov/policy/aviation-policy/airlin...
With luggage, it's kind of ironic because carry-ons slow down turnaround time and that eats into profits. But I presume this doesn't completely offset the extra profit generated from freight or they wouldn't do it.
I know that when dealing with sleazy sites I always do a fake transaction first, just to see the price, and only later do a real one if I still want to.
Even the artist doesn’t get much choice, the venues mostly have lock-in contracts with the big ticketing companies. If your band wants to play a 10,000 seat room in a specific city, there’s unlikely to be much choice about venues and ticketing agents.