Companies use drip pricing to overcharge consumers
passingtime.substack.com
passingtime.substack.com
Sometimes you can just refuse to pay it and they'll back down because they want a repeat customer more. Sometimes they'll insist, but you can still just... not pay it, if you don't plan on going back. It's not like they're going to call the police, and you're paying the main bill.
Unfortunately, it's not infrequent for restaurants to also withhold any unpaid part of the bill from a server's tips. That's usually illegal as well, but most servers would rather keep their job than complain. So you might think you're not paying the restaurant, but then it's the server who suffers.
In other words, literally everything about this sucks.
This only works if you have enough cash on hand to cover the main bill or you're able to be really pushy and get them to run only the main bill on the card.
Again, literally everything about it sucks.
I'm not sure how I would respond to sneaky surcharges since I haven't encountered it. Most likely, I would pay and never go back. If the amount was excessive and I was on my own, I would likely protest it and never go back.
Still only 7.25 but let's be accurate.
In the 90s I delivered pizzas for one of the big companies. I raised that if I didn't make tips the company was supposed to pay me $5.50 instead of the $3.25 that was my wage. The boss said, ok, but if we do that then you have to report your cash tips" - the "agreement" was quite explicit
But it also means that if you snag a $40 dollar tip or something you're basically down to $2 an hour for that day. By comparison some states like California requires minimum wage + tips.
One could also argue that its a means for companies to intentionally under-pay their staff while also re-directing any anger at being exploited from the company to the consumer.
Perfect divide and conquer tactics that has somehow become culturally engrained to the point that if anyone refuses to be part of this macabre tragedy they are framed the villain.
Just tip, so your server can get closer to a living wage for their hard work.
I also try to tip everyone I can when I have the means. Yes, I’d tip janitors, their job sucks, as do most jobs where you have to deal with the general public, and they’re underpaid.
I say tipping is unnecessary because there exist a few states like California who ban the practice of paying a lower "cash wage" and allowing businesses to keep tips for themselves. Anecdotally, I notice that typical restaurant bills in California are not any more expensive than nearby states like Nevada, Colorado, or Arizona.
If its true what others say tips are deducted so their employers pay below minimum wage then why not pay the server outside of the transaction so the employer is forced to do what they should have been doing in the first place?
I am, admittedly, a leftist and incredibly untrusting of anything where workers are not an equal part of the ownership in a business, so I know I jump too conclusion/assumption quicker than I prob should. But, I think there is no doubt that there is a lot of FUD around what would happen if staff were paid a living wage, all meant to distract to keep profit in pockets of the owner.
(Anecdotally, I don’t remember tipping being the norm when I visited Europe. But it was some time ago.)
Australia has some of the highest minimum wages in the world (with its own negative effect on small business owners) and you pay exactly the sum total of what you ordered on the menu as all prices are quoted inclusive of applicable taxes. Tipping is your prerogative if you feel the service was exemplary.
The US needs to get rid of the idea that it is the customer's responsibility to pay servers' wages over and above what they're already paying for the food.
I believe the kind of character(capital owner) utilizing the current system is going to be best tuned to exploit; a process made easiest (in regards to US service industries) by our “tipping culture.”
> And nothing prevents 'workers' from pooling their resources
You are “technically” correct but really so very wrong in practice. That same exploitation driven by capitalism makes it so hard to “pull yourself up by bootstraps” even in a group, if you’re always (by design) one paycheck away from homelessness. (Also a caste kept alive by design.)
> The US needs to get rid of the idea that it is the customer's responsibility to pay servers' wages over and above what they're already paying for the food.
I completely agree!
I am always surprised that a country like France protects its invisible market hand better than the US that is more capitalist minded. Information symmetry is absolutely essential for market actors to behave in their own best interest.
Usually the owners prop one or two of the middle pages of the menu and a page of the seasonal menu in a wall display by the entrance.
The US now serves 'capitalists', which is different than serving the free market or a capitalist economic system.
Of course, nicer restaurants will retain waiters because it is nice to be waited on by another human being, but you need to pay for that experience!
Let's assume you can make the meal yourself at home. You'd pay for the ingredients, but probably ignore all the other costs.
A) labor is the obvious first candidate. Purchaser, chef, server, host, barman, dishwasher, table cleaner- there are lots of people involved. The price of your meal should include labor at fair rates, including benefits etc. (in the US it doesn't hence the need for tipping.)
By contrast your home-cooked meal uses your (free?) time so already has a head start.
B) location. Your living room is free. Your plates are free. Restaurants pay a lot for space (rent etc). They also pay for equipping the space, and for breakages.
C) wastage. When something goes bad in your fridge you throw it out. Restaurants take this straight off yhd bottom line.
I could go on - marketing, regulation, health standards, parking and so on. It all adds up.
Most restaurants fail because margins are tight - and if there isn't sustained volume small things will drive you under fast. And frankly the food offering at most places is inferior to home-made with only the smallest amount of kitchen skills.
So yeah, small establishments with very low overhead (think food trucks) can be both good and good value. But most places either have to skimp on quality (think most fast food) or try and externalise the cost (via tipping etc)
Put another way. Teach your children to cook. It's not hard. And it's a LOT cheaper than eating out.
And yeah, your cheeseburger at $20 is a bargain.
Option C: charge sustainable prices and honestly post them, like nearly every other business. Why is this so hard for restaurants especially? Imagine going for a haircut and having to choose between 1) a minimum viable haircut administered by a minimum wage unskilled teen, or 2) navigating a byzantine pricing structure where (among other gotchas) you're supposed to pay more than the posted price by an undocumented amount determined by cultural osmosis.
I've left notes on my bill explaining to "management" why I'm not returning to a particular restaurant. I don't like doing it, but I think someone needs to call them out.
It's likely much more effective explaining in a review why you're not returning.
But I realized that it was not encouraging for management to have complaint emails. And I hardly had a reply back (I assume most businesses just don't care)
Nowadays I'm once again just the silent customer who doesn't come back.
However, I can hapilly reply to polls, reviews, or send thank you emails to businesses that I liked, to encourage them.
I get a lot of _you welcome_ replies. And a small company even indicating that they would include my review in their staff training, to show what points customers liked.
So instead of being negative, I found it was more constructive to have a positive perspective on services that were worth it, to make them more stable.
Now, the last 2 times I've eaten out the automatic tip calculation was done on the post-tax amount. I live in Alameda county where the sales tax is over 10%, so this is a big difference. Not only that, the default tip options were something like 18, 20, and 25%.
The only reason I can see for restaurants to do this is that the minimum wage here is $15/hour, and if tips alone don't make that rate, the restaurant pays out of pocket because it is illegal for them to pay below minimum wage. This seems like yet another example of restaurant owners passing higher labor costs onto customers in a less than ethical way.
Has anyone else noticed a similar practice?
These are also low-margin businesses. A post-tax surcharge keeps your overall bill lower than if they had raised prices, which would also raise the tax amount. The high labor costs are going to be passed on to consumers regardless. The surcharge shorts the government (which most of us are probably fine with).
It's mainly because the sales tax is over 10.25% in our county. If the tax were only 5-6% like in most places in the US, it wouldn't be as big of a deal.
The food prices are also quite a bit higher here than in most places, but that's just due to cost of living. It is not uncommon to spend $200 to feed a party of 4 even without alcohol, so that tip on the extra $20.50 starts to add up.
Say your food is $12, and with delivery + fees it comes to $20.
The first “tip %” screen is based on the $20 figure. So 20% would be $4 extra.
If you decline that, you still have the option to tip before/after your food arrives. However, you’ll notice now the percentages reflect the pre-fees figure. So the 20% tip is now only $2.40.
There is no exception to minimum wage in California for tipped employees, and many cities in Alameda county have a higher minimum wage than the state minimum (Oakland for example, is $15.97/hr this year and Berkeley is $16.99/hr).
Wrong implies that there's a right way to tip and that it isn't just a way for employers to get away with paying employees less.
Another comment here pointed out that the FTC is aware of this practice and has solicited comments from the public. Quoting from their linked article on `ftc.gov`:
> FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz asked consumers to share their drip pricing stories with the FTC. Consumers can call us at 1-877-FTC-HELP.
I gave them a call, and the first thing the automated system informed me is that one can file a complaint online: https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/
Instead we're focusing on chat apps which were born in the past decade, require no 2yr plans, and for that matter, dont even cost money and have 50 free competitors.
Great prioritization.
For an unlimited plan, there's really no variation month-to-month. It should be the same freaking bill each month - yet it's always a few-to-a-dozen cents different each time.
Also, the calendar can be calculated for the entire year (or the next 100 years for that matter.) It makes no sense that you can sign a 2yr contract and be locked in yet they cant present a table of actual charges for each month for the next 2yrs when you're signing up. Mortgage paymnets also vary by days due to interest accruals, yet they have developed the "sophistication" (read: regulation) to create a chart of what each month's charge will be for the next 30yrs. Not to mention, you could also calculate the yearly regulatory fee and just amortize it on a 30/365 basis if you so desired. There are 10 ways to slice this cake, this isnt rocket science, this is straight up customer abuse and the FTC is just as guilty for ignoring it.
Imagine any other industry that could get away with this. Imagine you sign up for a $13.99/mo Netflix plan and you mysteriously got charged an additional $3 or $5 "because we cant calculate days per month in advance, because reasons."
Or imagine you buy a burger at McDonalds but get charged a different amount once you pay and commit to purchasing the burger "because we cant calculate in advance whether you get 30 fries or 33."
If Eversource fucked up and didnt have enough resource to deal with a storm, and the state paid with our taxes to bail out, how is that different than them charging us a line item for that same end goal?
This is one of the big problems with these add-on fees: they claim to be for one service, but there's nothing preventing the company from using the money for something else entirely.
They then proceeded to pay that lease fee for decades, ultimately paying hundreds or thousands of dollars more than the cost of the phone, and continuing to pay that fee even when replacement phones could be had for $10 or less.
Meanwhile my conflict-averse friend is paying $94/mo for less bandwidth than I get for $25. It's psychological discrimination, is what it is.
However, I am no longer convinced that it would be worth the cost to upgrade. Too many people have reported overall degraded service in the face of rising subscriptions. Moreover, my DSL service includes static IPs, so I can't simply switch over.
Based on their privacy policy it looks like Trim takes a lot more than just a cut of the savings. They collect a shit ton of very personal data. They sell your personal data to advertisers, their "partners", and other "businesses and third-party websites". They keep your private data for as long as is "permitted under an applicable law". They promise to spam you with third party offers and to promote their own services and while you use their service they subject you to ads and let their "advertising partners" collect your data.
"Our advertising partners may also transmit cookies to your browser or device when you click on ads that appear on the Services...use tracking technologies with the Services. This may include the collection of information about your online activities"
If you go anywhere near that service read their privacy policy very very closely and make sure you know what you're getting yourself into.
Therefore consumers would benefit on net from fair pricing. Certainly some hard negotiators do benefit from discriminatory pricing, but their gains are less than the losses incurred by those who aren't.
Possibly, if you think short term. Perhaps not if you think long term. Here are things we would consider purchasing if we could get a real price w/o first signing a 2yr contract
- SIM chip/plan for apple watch (x2 for me + wife)
- SIM chip/plan for iPad (x2 for me + wife)
- SIM for Child 1 in case of emergencies
- SIM for Child 2 in case of emergencies
But I have no clue if the cost of the above would be $100/mo or $300/mo, really there is no transparent pricing that I can see. Would have been great to just bundle all these into my single Verizon bill but i'm so afraid to even touch the plan.
Bastards. They were right though. They’ll get ~$80/mo from me for the rest of my life.
The next challenge is that even in the face of competition simple economics can break down in the face of uncoordinated cooperation even without collusion . It may be superior for major providers to collectively increase the price even without literal coordination simply by a small number of providers acting legitimately on shared interests.
In theory someone with more than one option could ping pong between providers during sales that offer free installation but this is for obvious reasons undesirable insofar as internet is a vital service and switching can incur unacceptable costs and the more people actually do this the bigger the incentive to find a way to resolve this. For instance limiting such promotions to those who haven't had them before.
As a buyer I want this to resolve down to a simpler pricing model like T-Mobile even if its not as advantageous as initial pricing offered because I would like a predictable and sane price and for providers to compete on price/value but its likely that the current opaque and complicated pricing model will continue because its more advantageous for it to be complicated.
The biggest threat to this model is probably municipal broadband.
Still, it's tempting except AT & T also doesn't let you bring your own device. The best you can hope for is to put their device into bridge mode, rather than terminating the PON into one you own. Something you could used to do, but apparently they've made it much harder recently to extract the certificates needed to authenticate with your own hardware. IMHO, if someone is sophisticated enough to deal with injecting their own certs, they are arguable sophisticated enough to deal with a little troubleshooting.
Hopefully Comcast get off their butts and start rolling out DOCSIS 4.0, which will bring their service closer to parity with AT & T's.
Sure, Comcast is legally required to let you use your own equipment. How do they square that circle? You can bring your own equipment for a very crappy, lower speed, insanely low data-capped, highly restricted service. If you want actual Internet service that is reasonable, you have to get the special upgraded plan which requires you to use their modem-router combo. that upgrade cost extra money, although you get the extra fee waived for the first year or two depending on the current promotion. So the net effect is it’s a technicality forcing you to use their hardware (with the explicit threat of higher prices in the future). Technically complying with the letter of the law, while completely screwing over their users. A very Comcastic thing to do.
(for reference, I am in San Francisco, but in a part of town that has no other options than to use Comcast or slow DSL. Comcast policies and trickery very widely across the country.)
The company I'm with was almost apologetic when they raised their rates, twice over the past decade, even though their increases were lower than inflation and the major ISPs were increasing their rates nearly every year. They don't play games with customer retention. If you want to cancel, they cancel. If you don't really want to cancel, well, you won't get a special rate.
While a part of the independent ISP's advantage is due to the rates they pay being regulated, I get the impression that they also keep their costs down by not playing games. It also keeps my costs down since I don't fall prey to their games. It also reduces the stress in my life since I really don't like playing exploitive games.
Choice is good.
EDIT: clarification.
Do you mind sharing your speeds and cost?
I'm not sure if this is still the case, but internet service had caps in most parts of Canada a while back. Around here, it is unlimited from all of the ISPs. It is also worth noting that a lot of the complaints come from rural customers. Living in the city, I have very few issues. (For example, the download speeds are over the advertised rate. It is supposed to be uncommon to get the advertised rates in rural and even suburban areas.)
So it's not actually industry-wide... and hopefully even serves as a differentiator?
$50/line for 2 lines, $10/watch for 2 watches, $5/line for international plan adds up to 130/month and I pay 130/month, nice round flat numbers for years now taxes/fees/etc are all rolled into the advertised price and not hidden after the fact.
https://old.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/10gowkx/...
If a government watchdog like FTC doesn't stop this or a new explicit law that only allows "total final price" clearly displayed before purchase, it means every type of business will want to play the "Ticketmaster-convenience-fees" game by creatively coming up with new fees.
If businesses are trying to get more money, they should do it by transparently raising prices instead of tricking people into paying hidden fees.
Yup. This seems like a terrible long term strategy. If I'd eaten expecting $X, and the total is now $X + $Y, and they have the nerve to remind me it's not a tip, I'm probably not leaving a tip, and I'm -definitely- not coming back.
Most cities are rather static in populace. This is a great way to see yourself out of business for a tiny short term profit.
But those restaurants are highly dependent on Yelp reviews et al; such fees are a great way to get bad reviews.
I thought it was my hair strand and tried to remove it. I realized it was not my hair and then suspect my monitor has damaged. Opened a new tab and finally realized it was the page haha.
We decided to simply reduce our normal 20% tip by 2% and pay that. We don't like the fact that the city has stepped in to mandate additional fees like this and think this practice should stop.
I would have thought the price of surrendering one’s decency and regard for fellow humans would be somewhat more than two cents per dollar, but I suppose I was wrong.
What is unreasonable to me is the locality thinking by mandating a 2% tip the problem they claim to be solving will somehow magically disappear.
A 20% fee only disclosed after you’ve already ordered and eaten is just fraud.
This isn't true with dining out, where you see a price list, order, eat, and then get a bill at the end. You can no longer opt to eat elsewhere. You either make a scene or pay the undisclosed fees. Restaurants should at least put a notice on the menu in a highly visible location, but even that isn't going to be foolproof.
Really, this practice should be banned everywhere. As a consumer, I largely don't give a shit what expenses a vendor has; I only care about the final price. I can see an argument for disclosing regulatory fees, because as a resident/citizen, I can at least lobby politicians to change those fees. But, even that's a bit of a crap argument.
People like to act as if wait staff are completely innocent, but when I was younger I had a policy that if a female waitress started touching me close to the closing out of the deal she got no tip.
I personally find that behavior gross.
This is true whether I'm a developer, a ski instructor or a waiter.
No, as we all know the service staff has no power over the restaurant policy.
They are, however, the communication agent between customer and restaurant, so they should be informing the customer about these surprise charges up front. If they don't, they are indeed complicit.
Logically pay the bill then leave a negative review and never eat there again.
Is that actually a crime? My understanding is that you can leave your contact info, walk out. I’m not aware of any cases where police have gotten involved in a payment dispute. I used to work in a law enforcement adjacent field, and when the topic came up, the cops said it’s a civil dispute, not a crime.
Edit - after searching online, there are a few cases of diners being arrested, though it seems the charges are always dropped. Also those cases involved posted notices of the fee before the diners ordered.
They have violated the contract, added new fees after the fact. They have violated the contract, refusing to accept the agreed upon payment.
Instead of relying on your fictional understanding of how the law works in every state of the union the more logical thing would be to either vote with your wallet or work to pass local laws against such fees or hell why not both.
You're completely right, the case will get thrown out. If you remember, in your scenario it is the restaurant suing the customer for not paying the 20% fraudulent fee, it's not the customer suing the restaurant.
Trying to add a fee after the price has been agreed and the food consumed is plain fraud. That's why they won't take you to court. If you dispute it while in the restaurant, they will let it go. Because they know the justice system will side with the customer.
Imagine for example if Ticket Master would charge extra fees after a concert, preventing you to leave if you do not pay. Not even they would do such a thing.
>Try this at retail
I do this all the time in retail, paying part in cash and part by card. No problem at all, cashiers often ask if I have any cash I'd like to use towards the bill first.
1. The human is the master 2. The machine is the slave
There is always a way to change an order in a POS system. If there is no button to do that, that is not a concern for the customer.
You ought to inform management that you disagree with the fee and won't be eating there again now that you know about it. You of course can no longer claim not to know about the fee after this point.
Deleting the fee case by case would be shitty policy because it adds constant friction. Deleting it wholly and raising prices is the right thing but as mentioned in the article there is a strong incentive to keep the fee structure to avoid losing our to places that do so.
The correct thing therefore is to get with city government and forbid the practice because now everyone is incentized to do the right thing.
Your suggestion to throw individual temper tantrums all over town is manifestly ineffective compared to my suggestion to pay the piddling fee then fix the underlying problem.
I've managed restaurants and worked professionally with implementing POS systems. Any restaurant owner who tries to force customers pay an extra, hidden fee, after the food has been ordered and consumed knows that what they are doing is fraudulent. Maybe they don't know it is illicit.
Every POS system has a way to delete fees and parts of an order. Business would be impossible without this, since waiters make mistakes and have to correct them. And if the system doesn't have that function it is a problem for the restaurant, not for the client.
Many people share the same misconception that you have, that somehow the machine or POS system decides what the customer has to do. The purpose of a POS system is to make life easier for your staff - if that is implemented in a way that makes life harder for the customer it means you have failed badly. The human is the master and the machine is the servant. Therefore you as a customer politely but sternly refuse illicit fees when they try to force them on you.
Your talk about "going to city government" shows that you don't understand that these kind of fees already are illegal on state and federal levels. Recently the Federal Trade Commission in the United States has committed explicitly [1, 2] towards cracking down hard on these hidden fees, that they call "junk fees" in the hospitality industry. Let me quote for you:
"Unavoidable charges imposed on captive consumers: Consumers may be forced to pay junk fees because they have no way to avoid or opt out of them. They might be dealing with a company with a monopoly or exclusive rights that can extract fees because there is no competing option. Or consumers might get hit with fees after they have already sunk costs into a product or service, and they can’t easily walk away."
This is from the White House [3]:
"Surprise fees that consumers learn about after purchase. Surprise fees that consumers do not expect – and which may not be mandatory – similarly make it hard to comparison shop and can burden household finances."
Are they throwing temper tantrums? Are the state attorneys who are successfully prosecuting large hotel chains for junk fees throwing temper tantrums? Is the EU throwing temper tantrums about this?
Back in the real world there are countries where it is customary for restaurants to add a service fee - usually 10% - on the final bill. This is clearly stated on the menu, and usually the waiter will ask you for permission to add this fee before bringing you the bill. This system is used instead of tips. If the customer don't want to pay the fee they have the right to refuse it and all restaurants accept such a refusal. Imagine if the waiter said "Sorry, our machine doesn't allow us to remove the fee, so you have to pay. You pay now!". Most would laugh, you would pay.
[1] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/prepare-for-renewe... [2] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/10/... [3] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/blog/2022/10/26/the...
You say "most would laugh" and I feel like perhaps you haven't made much of a study of the human species. Most people are wimps and afraid to look like an asshole over a few bucks. This policy is pervasive enough to bitch about because it's damn near trivial to bully people into compliance if it would make them feel or look like an asshole and the cost is small and more importantly if they feel like it's normal and a social faux pas to complain. An authority figure even one as trivial as a waiter or manager telling them that this is normal and customary is sufficient to inspire conformance especially with a room full of people who are paying and leaving and not making a scene.
For myself I would have read the signage and made an informed decision not to eat there on principle but had I sat down and eaten I would in fact pay a modest fee because it's not worth my time to tilt at windmills.
Can you imagine sitting at a table spending your afternoon fighting the battle of the sandwich fee with a "manager" himself paid a pittance and counting yourself the victor?
Winning looks like walking away and knowing they are slowly alienating their customers and they will be dead next year.
No. If they refuse to charge your card the agreed amount then they are refusing to take your money and that's no longer your problem.
They might well claim otherwise, and you might well end up in a scene, but please don't accept their fraudulent framing, or spread the idea that they are somehow in the right with that framing.
If it's prosecution you fear, then consider that they can prosecute you for anything at any time. Why not a 100% fee? A 200% fee? Ten times the agreed amount? At what point will you refuse to pay?
Photo of the menu, what i was charged and telling everybody to do the same.
Maybe in 1998 but it's pretty much standard now.
Are we gonna be tipping 50% in 30 years?
The only reason it's the norm is simply the suggested tip boxes generally have 18 as the lowest easy option now.
It's the same thing here. It's not my job to be fair to the employees. I'm generally a very fair tipper but if you put a % fee on my bill I consider it my tip. Most of the time it's less than I would have tipped regardless and I'm ok with that.
I also typically won't go back if a restaurant does this because I fundamentally disagree with it for all except large parties of people.
The whole argument behind tipping is that the servers don't get paid enough without it.
I am all for restaurants paying a fair wage and benefits to their staff. I will not eat at a restaurant that tries to surcharge me for it.
There is already a way to pass along costs to the customer: the posted price.
There's definitely no way I am paying a tip and a surcharge.
It's harsh to the worker, but in a recent market of high employment and many companies unable to find staff, should you feel bad? (Today, there may be a restaurant literally across the street hiring)
Then the receipt can break things out and charge less per line item + add in total tax and fees and leave space for a tip (with the default applied unless you choose differently).
Likewise with AirBnB: when browsing for specific dates either show the total cost or the amortized per night cost, inclusive of all fees.
If it was tiny fine print then it was intended to be missed.
Companies only pull this stuff because they get away with it. Don't make it worth their while.
These days I ask for a list of cleaning requirements before I book.
Mostly due to this, I've given up on Airbnb in favor of traditional hotel booking sites (specifically the one with a capital B). Many private apartments are also listed on them these days, and I value not having to play stupid pricing games more than the slightly higher availability on Airbnb.
When changing the country to Europe (or currency to EUR?), listings even include taxes and local fees, allowing a true apples to apples comparison between offers.
The roof of your property needs replacing. You call a few roofers to come by and give an estimate for work. You choose the cheapest roofer, who uses the same materials as the others and has been allegedly in the family-run business for the last 125 years. After the first half of day's work, the shingles of the old roof were removed. The proprietor contacts you and gives you bad news that there are several sections of wood that rotted away and they recommend you not apply new shingle to it as it will never fasten. It will cost additional to replace these parts, naturally, and the cost ranges from hundreds to thousands of dollars. The problem with this situation is that there is always wood paneling that needs replacing. You never just replace shingles without replacing a few wood panels.
The next scenario involves masonry. The limestone steps of your outdoor stairs is cracking and the brick needs re-pointing. You bring in a few contractors to give estimates for the repair work. Once you've contracted work, at the end of the first day you are contacted by the proprietor who informs you that there is nothing but sand holding your stairs up and they cannot work with sand. You have to rebuild the stairs, laying concrete for each step. Only then, can limestone steps be safely installed. It will cost several thousands of dollars more for this work.
Both contractors engage in drip pricing, waiting for you to be along the way with their work, leaving you to decide whether to stop the project, accuse you of breach of contract, and exploit your vulnerabilities for not having a roof or stairs. Both roof and stairs projects required work that the contractors were not forthright about. Both gave a partial price for estimates and wait to have you over a barrel before you pay the full amount.
There is just no justification at all for goods and services with a uniform sticker price, such as a meal in a restaurant. If you can program it into a POS, you can print it on the price tag.
They'll say, this is how much it costs to replace the roof tiles, here's how much it would cost to replace the framing if necessary. It's not like rotten wood under the roof is a complete surprise to anyone.
In the US, you walk into a store and have to become an expert at understanding local taxes in order to figure out how much anything costs. Hotels often have four of five extra fees tacked on.
I'd like "The price you see is the price you pay" to be the rule.
But generally your random consumer buying a random widget has some idea about what taxes are involved and roughly what to expect when they buy specific consumer goods / the machine tells them what to pay.
It's complex if you want to do the math and get the exact number each time, but for most transactions it's a fairly small amount / not something you need to think about / need to know the exact number.
If I go pickup a burrito I'm not worrying about if it is $10 or $10.25.
If I wanted to worry about that it is possible to figure that out without knowing all the taxes myself.
It's so bad that Ohio actually has a mobile app that uses your phone's GPS to figure out which jurisdiction you're in and show the applicable tax rate.
If I say mean things about Ohio from time to time, this is part of why.
Does this matter though? Even if the tax is different from one stall to another, they could still publish a price that includes tax.
Obnoxious to keep track of.
Is it? Kansas[1] has the same setup:
> Q:What is the sales tax rate in Kansas?
> A: The state rate is 6.50%. However, various cities and counties in Kansas have an additional local sales tax.
I feel like I've seen posts on HN in the past about how hard it is for online retailers to properly figure sales tax and should outsource the lookup to <insert startup here>.
For example, shoes are sales tax free in NYC (if they're less than $110). This can mean that the difference between a pair for $109 and one for $111 is close to $10.
When grocery shopping, I'm always surprised which items are taxed and which are tax free. Other than most (but not all) produce and basics like pasta, bread etc. I'd consider staples usually being tax free, I haven't been able to detect any underlying at all so far.
I'm curious how legally binding/legitimate that is, considering consumer-grade GPS can be fairly inaccurate at the best of times.
My gut feeling is it's a "don't quote me on that" good will guesstimate, but some professional insight would be interesting.
For webstores, require customer to disclose location so the right price can be computed; they have to do that when it comes to the billing page so it isn't novel work.
Everything else is bullshit reasoning to get away with false pricing/false advertising.
You should vote out all these idiots who try to change your tax rates every couple of months.
I don't think this is true. Sure, the state tax is the same state wide, but the county and city taxes aren't! To pick a random state: https://www.salestaxhandbook.com/kansas/rates
Didn't quite pass my seasonally congested anecdotal sniff test. Turns out[1]:
- 74% (37 states) vary depending on a local rate
- 18% (9 states) are fixed at a state level
- 8% (4 states) don't have sales tax
Ohio isn't really exceptional in this regard; a few examples that come to mind:
- San Francisco = 8.625% v. South San Francisco = 9.875% v. Oakland = 10.25%
- Julington Creek Plantation (FL) = 7.5% v. Fruit Cove (FL) = 6.5%
Similar situation with Julington Creek Plantation and Fruit Cove; both are technically in the same county (St. Johns County) and literally butt up against each other, and yet the former pays Jacksonville (Duval County) sales tax.
Totally agree. I don't care what other fees or taxes go into the price. They are all cost of doing business. Just wait until the baker charges you extra for the flour and yeast that went into the bread.
At least sales tax the company is basically telling you "this one's on your government, if you don't like it take it up with them".
This is what my itemized stay was for a single night:
2023-01-18 * Residence Inn
expenses:travel:marriott 171.00 USD
expenses:taxes:salestax:tx 10.26 USD
expenses:taxes:salestax:tx:plano 11.97 USD ; city hotel tax
expenses:fees:recovery 1.28 USD ; tax recovery fee
expenses:fees:recovery 2.13 USD ; parking recovery fee
expenses:taxes:salestax:tx .18 USD ; taxes on parking recovery fee.
assets:checking -196.82 USD ; date: 1/20
Resort fees are also becoming more and more common, even in hotels that shouldn't need a "resort fee" -- if I'm staying at an Embassy Suites in the middle of nowhere, Iowa, why do I need to pay a resort fee?
I have a company, and if I charged made-up fees to my clients after quoting them a price, they'd tell me to get lost and I'd lose their business. You can always tell who has inappropriate market power
Two reasons, neither of which is acceptable in my mind:
1: to reduce the price shown in aggregator websites (as the original article talks about)
2: to enact a stealth reduction in the value of points, since you cannot stay simply by redeeming them.
Changing prices is already regular maintenance, so the idea that this would place a burden on businesses is BS. If they have metadata at the cash register to know how to tax different items, they can have it at the label printer too. And for ecommerce, it’s even easier.
As to the wellness fee, I would be way more receptive to the 20% increase being included in the menu prices with a note about what that 20% does.
No no no no
Taxes should be listed for atleast 3 reasons
1. The company is not paying the tax, you are. You owe the tax not the company, the company is merely collecting the tax for the government. In many states the company is paid to collect this tax on the governments behalf. If the tax was not collected at time of purchase you still owe the government the money
2. Hiding taxation is never a good thing, Taxes we pay should be transparent to everyone as they are extractions from the economy and we should be fully aware of the amount of money the government is stealing errr extracting from us at all times
3. Tax increases are blamed on the merchant if they are hidden in the price instead of on the government where they belong, this makes is politically easier to raise the sales taxes if it is all hidden from the consumer. If a state goes from 8 to 10% people will notice that tax went up instead of the price. This is one of the reasons why of you look historically gas taxes have increased far more than the sales tax rate, because gas taxes are hidden into the price of gas where sales taxes are not.
Sticker : $100
Receipt
Price: $92 Tax: $8 Total: $100
Paying a different price at checkout than what was on the tag is dumb and provides cover for exactly this kind of fiddling-with-the-price crap.
To some of your points:
1. Isn't super important because on the <<1% of sales that could happen that way they're required to inform you of your tax burden.
2. Break it out as a line item. Bold it. Maybe a bit more transparency would help with the pattern of stores raking in record profits when any upstream supplier has a minor price hiccup.
3. Having to memorize the tax rates in every city for every class of goods and apply those accurately on the fly doesn't benefit anyone unless it finally pisses off enough people to turn our mess of a system into something simpler. Displaying the actual tax rate on the receipt should more than suffice.
The thing that worries me about the pattern of tacking on crap after a total had already been agreed to is that it conditions is to accept that as just something that happens once in awhile. Like how SF restaurants started tacking on a fixed percentage to cover employee health benefits when that law passed. You'd sit down to a meal, choose what you're going to eat at least partially based on the price and expected tip, and find out after the meal that they expect you to pay some amount greater than what was listed and societally accepted at the time -- and critically, on average it's a much greater fee than is actually required to pay the offending tax. That particular instance has gotten a little better since at least they usually have small-print signs informing you of that fact now, but it repeats itself in car dealerships making up line items passing on ordinary costs of doing business to consumers as if they were collecting ordinary sales tax, in toll companies separating out an additional fee for the envelope they're using to send you your bill, ....
Anything less is still hiding the taxation IMO
Also I am intrigued by the people that say they are "Having to memorize the tax rates in every city" and "apply those accurately on the fly" I am not sure I have ever in my life needed to that? Why would you need to calculate that on the fly? Unless you are buying a big ticket item costing thousands of dollars then the tax should not be a factor on if you are going to buy X or not so what purpose would it have to calculate it in your head like that?
Huge swathes of people in the US struggle to afford food, and an extra 10+% floating around makes a big difference. It's nice that you can afford to spend your time more productively, but that's a luxury a lot of people can't.
As something of a side note, it's a bit of an odd position to take that taxe hikes are important enough to make it illegal to even mildly obscure them but that they're minor enough they would never affect your purchasing decisions on all but the most major of items.
I am not aware of any us state that charges sales tax on staple food items. Also I feel sorry for anyone that lives in a place with 10% sales tax that is crazy high
>>a bit of an odd position
Not really one of the ways I believe we have to keep them low is by ensuring transparency. My state has less 7% sales tax less than 4% state income tax, less than 1% local income tax and a capped property tax of 1%
Transparency is key to keeping them low
Most major US cities are at 8-9%. Many smaller cities (and St Louis) are more than 10. Cumulatively it's a lot of people afflicted.
Also, I'm with you on staples not being taxed, but that's part of the problem with the tax being added later instead of precomputed into the total; if you're shopping at a general purpose store (the Walmart in Mt View AR has been an offender for awhile, but I rarely find perfectly correct tax calculations on receipts for all but the simplest of purchases at any store) and buy a mix of staples and clothes and whatever, very frequently you'll find that staples were taxed, and if you weren't tracking things closely you'll have missed where the extra few dollars went. You don't know till the register what the price will be and can't easily plan ahead.
Another related problem, especially in the poorer parts of the country, the cheapest calories you can buy, especially if you're working too many jobs to have time to cook, are often excluded from such tax exclusions to discourage unhealthy eating habits (note also how obesity negatively correlates strongly with income). If you go into it with a vague notion of food not being taxed you can get surprised with 10% sales tax, a 5% junk food tax, and often a 10-50 cent (on cheap food a non-negligible percentage) plastic use tax or some other crap.
And so on. The problems stemming from not knowing what you'll pay are common and real, and they disproportionately hit people who can least afford it.
I think the US Taxation is absurdly high and I pay in total about 25% to the government, many parts of the work 40-60% is common (when you factor all taxation), and that to me is out right theft.
Yes it's a tax on consumption/commerce. There's no point saying it's paid by the buyer as there's no transaction without the seller either, and if there were no tax the seller were able to raise prices. (And likely the new market equilibrium would be somewhere between the two extremes, so it means both parties pay it actually.)
And as others mentioned in many places the law says the receipt has to show the applied tax, so it's absolutely not hidden.
I would be agreed if they displayed/advertised both. but Only displaying / advertising the final post tax price and then itemizing it on the receipt does not change the psychology of the issue where by people will internalize the final price and not fully understand the tax component.
In the same way people are complaining about not being able to understand the final price if it not displayed
If a vendor wants to display information at the point of sale or on a receipt about how X% of the price consists of direct taxes, I have no issue with that. But having to pre-emptively apply it to every price signal or budgetary allocation adds a non-negligible overhead to the detriment of consumers. Consider a person doing grocery shopping on a limited budget, say $50. Before entering the store, the consumer must mentally reduce the $50 in their pocket to $45 (if sales tax is 10%) and then keep that limit in mind while shopping, in addition to evaluating product value by per-unit cost (which some retailers display clearly and others don't), nutritional content, coupon or discount offers, and much else.
For utilities and many other services, the opacity level rises drastically, making budgeting substantially more difficult. Add in the fact that pre-payment for things like phone plans often costs more than recurring charges, punishing those who try to manage limited or uncertain cash flow with thrift. And the people most likely to struggle with economic insecurity are the least educated.
In other countries where this is not the norm, prices of many goods seem high and disposable income correspondingly looks a lot smaller. But if you see something you want to buy advertised for €100 and you have €100 in your pocket, a winner is you.
A few US businesses take a different approach or clearly signal '$X out the door' on sales adverts, and I try to make a point of thanking them for the practice as well as just giving them my money. I think it's important that they get positive feedback.
I think if you disclose it, it's annoying but hey, free markets and all that. If you don't disclose it and charge people extra, I think that's just downright dishonest.
The upside is that they will take it off 100% of the time - the waiter will almost always do it, and on the rare occasion that they have to get a manager, the manager will always do it. I never bitch at the waitstaff about it, but if they make me talk to a manager, I absolutely bitch at the manager.
That's the inevitable outcome of this type of behavior. Like so many startup's attempts to squeeze customers in the short term, it works for a small window of time but leads to longer term consequences that are never properly accounted for.
For most tech workers an extra 20% on top of everything else is not that big of a deal, but for anyone who saves up for a night out that can be a big upset.
The only companies that can do this drip pricing and hope to get away with it long term are essential services without serious competition (for example telcos). All of the rest of these drip pricing schemes will come back to hurt companies in the long run.
I've basically given up on restaurants entirely. Even without ridiculous tipping and other surcharges, prices have gotten out of control. The food just isn't that great, and restaurant food is not known for being healthy, with excessive amounts of fat, sugar, and salt. The only function it fulfills is that I'm less hungry after eating it.
So these days I just prepare my own food. It's better in so many ways: cheaper, healthier, faster, no risk of disappointment.
The staff all get paid an award wage that is set by the government, and it is plenty, around $24/hr or more depending on age. This makes our food somewhat expensive: at least $20 for a sit-in meal, around $4.50 for a coffee.
But what you see on the menu is what you pay and includes tax: tipping is not in our culture, and I have never seen drip charging here except on public holidays (“public holiday surcharge”).
Our consumer rights laws probably protect our right to walk away and not pay undisclosed drip charges, although it has never happened to me.
—
Admittedly, the award wage makes it difficult for newly established bootstrapped businesses to hire their first staff. For example, we were looking at hiring a graduate engineer, but the award wage was around $40/hr after benefits (superannuation etc), and then there is mandatory Work Cover insurance on top of that. Legally we can’t hire anyone below this amount because Fair Work would have a field day suing us, so we put it off until we can afford to pay, but without financing the leap we are maybe stuck in a catch 22.
It's why, for example, the supermarket ogliopoly have a "if it's mispriced it's free" policy, they got fined for inaccurate pricing and tried to turn it into a PR win.
Airlines and ticketmaster are currently fighting to change it but now we have a less right-wing federal government again hopefully the ACCC will be allowed to do their job.
I used to do it all the time - it's great when they stuff up prices on expensive items like Razors. One time I went back every day and got a free pack and ended up with several years worth of (free) expensive razors in surplus!
Usually the manager needs to come because the basic checkout person doesn't know about it.
That's actually currently pretty much true of the USA too, especially after recent inflation. Unless exchange rates make the dollar-for-dollar comparison inapplicalble.
But either way, we're paying $20 for a sit-in meal too, but the servers are only being paid literally $3-$6 base rate plus tips, instead of your $24/hour. (Of course, depending on the restaurant, they may make $24 or more after tips... but it looks like median after tips is more like $16/hour, meaning half make more half make less...)
Where I live, waiters used to be exempted from the minimum wage laws, meaning tips were effectively their entire wage. Recently, my state removed the tipped employee exemption (meaning waiters earn minimum wage plus any tips) and nearly doubled the minimum wage.
But, did the expectation to tip go down? Nope, its been shooting up from 15% to 20+% instead. I've been dramatically cutting back on how much I tip to <10%, which makes me rude and a jerk.
I don't have time for scammers. Best remedy is to cut them out of my life.
1. https://therooster.com/articles/stubhub-experiment-shows-tha...
Businesses defrauding customers with brain-dead customers attacking people standing up for their consumer rights. Absolute insanity.
I'm sure that if one local restaurant implemented this they wouldn't last long, but if a lot of local restaurants started doing it at the same time, they'd probably get away with it. Maybe they're all waiting for someone else to take the plunge.
America is a big place, so is Europe. I wouldn't expect this to fly in a lot of places in America either. I've seen a place in America where they tried it and it failed.
Saying that I have started seeing gratuity automatically applied to some of my bills... So perhaps it's not as illegal as I thought...
Online, you can get away with (figurative) murder.
Many other places add it routinely and have it listed in their menus. Not just for parties of 6 or more, but two guests.
Let's say apartments were $1000/month. They announced that rent was going up to $1200/month, but if you signed a new one year lease the rent would be $0 for the first two months of the lease.
That meant that for the next year you would have paid 12 months @ $1000/month if the rate had stayed the same, and under the new rate you would pay 2 months @ $0/month + 10 months @ $1200/month. Those are both $12000, so you are still paying $12000/year.
A year later when it was time for people to renew their leases management said "Good news! No rent increase this year! Your rent is staying at $1200/month!".
I think I may have been the only tenant who realized that this was actually an increase of $2400/year over what we'd paid the previous two years. Everyone else seemed to actually think that the annual rent was the same as the year before and the year before that.
So this leads into my frustration with the proliferation of tipping, which seems to have started at Starbucks (edit: at least that's where I first saw it occurring for counter services), is someone working at Starbucks making tipped wages or at/above minimum. If it's the latter, then they shouldn't be tipped except in extraordinary customer service situations.
It would be interesting to see how tips in restaurants that have drip pricing have changed since the implementation of them.
All that being said, I love in France (and I'm sure other parts of Europe) where there's a service charge added to each bill and that's it. I can leave some extra coins if I wanted to, but otherwise additional tips are expected. There, wait staff are paid a livable wage.
In my experience, it existed before in the form of tip jars (in NYC area), but really blew up when tablet point of sale systems like Clover came into the picture.
They earn a percent of the transaction, so adding a simple option to increase the amount of the transaction is a no brainer for increasing profits. And the act of actually having to press no tip is better at guilting people than simply being able to ignore a tip jar.
And then the point of sale providers got even more greedy and removed the no tip option, and started making it so users had to press “custom tip” in order to tip zero or otherwise increase the friction of not tipping.
I have wondered about this as a possible motive. I assumed that shops paid a monthly fee, or perhaps a per-transaction fee. But they're paying based on gross revenue? Do all POS systems work this way?
Clover's fees are:
Card-present transactions 2.3% + 10¢
Keyed‑in transactions 3.5% + 10¢
So if you have a merchant acct, you'd have to negotiate rates with Clover et al. directly?
If you're a smaller actor, there are POS systems that make their money on your transactions, but even among those Clover is a really bad deal. Compare to Zettle for example, that comes with a POS system, has no monthly costs and a flat 1.75% fee: https://www.zettle.com/gb/pricing
(So yes, they’re incentivized to introduce friction to the tipping flow — it always means more money for them.)
But then I remember that a tip is for good customer service. Starbucks didn't provide me any customer service, they simply transferred the coffee from their vat into my cup. At which point I can feel justified in declining.
I guess they're taking advantage of people who aren't familiar with this view of tipping, which I'd argue is the standard view in the U.S.
It was common enough to be part of Seinfeld, at 1m10s:
However, I do not feel like there was any cultural expectation of tips for counter service. Or I did not notice because I never used cash anyway.
Now it's really got me wondering how far back those plastic tip buckets at mom and pop shops like pizzerias and deli counters go.
So, makes me wonder at every other place, how well the tips are distributed.
The other area I have an issue with (although I still tip here) is with my barber. She owns the business and she's the only one I go to. Technically speaking, she's keeping all the profit, so is a tip still warranted?
My water delivery company added the ability to add a tip for the delivery driver. I'm waiting for the county trash collection to offer the same option.
This happens, but it IS illegal in most jurisdictions.
I'm usually happy to tip at restaurants, and if there is any surcharge on the bill like this then I just consider it the tip, as they often tack on for large groups.
It might not be a great idea to frequent the place if that's your chosen form of social protest.
Tbh I think I got sick off my own food but I was doing the thing where I just honestly gave them all the info. I never really expected anything to come of it.
If the waiters or chefs hate your guts, at most they will swear in the kitchen.
If you used a card to pay, you may well find yourself listed by name at https://bitterwaitress.com (N.B., this used to be hosted on the open web, now it's behind the Facebook login wall, so I won't be looking at it).
Couple states in the US don’t allow tipped staff to make less than minimum wage and tips can’t be counted towards the wage to meet the minimum.
My colleagues just use the app which doesn't involve that interaction and then they go pick up.
It's probably a strange pet peeve of mine, but having to think about whether I'm disappointing this service worker or being impolite to them or pick the right price or whatever is costly enough that I'd rather just not interact with them.
It's also why I like the market delis, Chipotle, and Sweetgreen so much. You just show up, grab what you want, pay, and walk out. Smooth experience.
I'm very much tired of the explosion of tipping culture though. Now fast food wants me to tip workers. This was definitely not the norm when I was growing up, or even pre COVID, and as far as I'm aware, they're all hourly workers that started making pretty good wages in due part thanks to staffing shortages (McDonalds was hiring for 18-20 USD an hour, pretty big increase)
I feel like service industries and restaurants are doing anything they can to push costs onto the consumer without raising "official" prices. Like they all employed the same sociology consultants and they discovered what social levers they can instrument to get people to pay more without "paying" more. I been seeing these "economic recovery fees", "COVID safety fees" and other nonsense too.
I eat alot more at home now.
But then, if you order take out, that's either called in or ordered in person, a pre-detetmined "tip" is applied to your total, in essence a fee for takeout that is evenly distributed among the staff.
But *then,* if you order takeout online, not only are you subject to the takeout fee, but sales tax is applied to the prices that supposedly already include sales tax! What the heck?
Can you not pay the random additional charges on the bill? What are the consequences? In UK some restaurants charge an optional service charge and we are free to opt out.
What happen to you if you accept a job offer and the employer deduct 12.5% from it because HR service fee? Both situations are taking money from your pocket with a hidden fee. Would the discussiom be "do I pay tax pre or post HR service fee"?
They made a big public statement, emails, flyers, about reverting the fee and so on and eventually recovered.
In the restaurant industry, it isn't customary to provide health insurance benefits. (It shouldn't be that way, but right now, in the US, it is.) If a restaurant is going to try to treat their employees better, it's crucial for customers understand why they're paying more.
Otherwise, they'll just think it's a bad deal and go to another restaurant. Then the restaurant will have to stop providing insurance.
I don't think you can make it work if it's built into the price. You can try telling people about it and putting up signs, but you'll run up against two unfortunate laws of human nature: people don't listen, and they don't read.
This add-on fee should be disclosed beforehand as prominently as possible so that you don't get charge more than you expected. But I think it needs to be a separate fee. Otherwise, I just don't see how you can get customers to understand that your food prices are comparable to other restaurants.
Within the framework of the laws that exist today (which, like you, I think should be changed), there are tax advantages for employers that provide it, so that's the most practical approach right now.
Then who provides this insurance? Are you saying they should buy their own via Obamacare?
Not just the restaurant industry. It’s any place where you work less than 40 hours. And I’ve worked at many, and most of them will try to give you 39 hours so they don’t have to offer this to you. I think the number of hours have changed (it’s 30 hours now?) but the problem persists.
"1 star, they tried to add X% fee sneakily" can do wonders.
According to Wikipedia there were some strongly worded letters sent to some hotel operators... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drip_pricing
Adding government-mandated charges separately is not a big problem, in my opinion. The big problem is when businesses hide a portion of their actual price under "fees". And the fees are not disclosed upfront. As an example of various fees see the AT&T example [1].
[1] https://www.att.com/legal/terms.otherWirelessFeeSchedule.htm...
If you show me one price and zoink! charge me another price you are deceiving me. That pretty much fraud to me and I will avoid your services.
They didn't mention it during the order, I only realized that on the first billing.
The only solution is to make sure all tipping, taxes, etc. is included in the menu. Unless it is codified I am not sure anything is gonna happen soon.
And of course the addons are things that will guilt trip you into not being picky about them like “staff appreciation”, “healthcare fee”, etc. Why not “owners greediness surcharge” or “I’m too cheap to pay my people living wages fee”?
Till the deal expired, then they added a $10 a month "broadcast fee". I only wanted internet, but they denied my request to switch to an internet plan. I had to cancel the service and switch the bill to another person to get an internet plan.
Since then the broadcast fee has increased several times, it's insane.
This is just wrong.
I would refuse to pay their „out of thin air“ charge. Seriously. If those things, would be only visible after I payed like on a kiosk or something, I would dispute the charge and report their fraud to my credit card company. Good luck doing that often.
But yeah, I wouldn’t return to a restaurant that pulled this sh*t, and I’m not tipping if I get suckered into one that does.
You have various fees and taxes that are not part of the posted price, and then the high-pressure pushes to buy extended warranties, paint protection, upholstery protection, etc. all of which are nearly pure profit for the dealer.
I am also not feeling guilty about it, because I'm likely never visiting that establishment again.
This article reminds me of 'Meditations on Moloch' https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
The multi-agent trap.
In some competition optimizing for X, the opportunity arises to throw some other value under the bus for improved X. Those who take it prosper. Those who don’t take it die out. Eventually, everyone’s relative status is about the same as before, but everyone’s absolute status is worse than before. The process continues until all other values that can be traded off have been, but relative X is still the same.
There’s a passage in the Principia Discordia where Malaclypse complains to the Goddess about the evils of human society. “Everyone is hurting each other, the planet is rampant with injustices, whole societies plunder groups of their own people, mothers imprison sons, children perish while brothers war.”
The Goddess answers: “What is the matter with that, if it’s what you want to do?”
Malaclypse: “But nobody wants it! Everybody hates it!”
Goddess: “Oh. Well, then stop.”
Malaclypse: “But we can't, because everyone else is doing it!”
> the practice is spreading like a contagion into new vertical
Not where I live (Europe).
If you don't want BS, I recommend living near an airport that's a hub for an airline, and always book on that airline from their website if they serve your destination with no connections. Bonus points if they don't do a lot of BS anyway. Try to plan several months out, and prices will at least be OK.
Otherwise, call a charter company and they probably don't have a lot of margin or BS. It's just really spendy, because you're going to have to pay for the time you're in the plane as well as the time to get to where you can get in.
Eventually we will reach a new equilibrium where every company has sold their morals and then they have to either start competing again on a new front or find new morals to sell.
I don't have a pithy takeaway from this. It's capitalism.
Dining out should be cheaper than cooking yourself, since they can optimize the process and buy in bulk.