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Comment by themitigating | Hacker News Reader

"Then there’s the misc fees. A random X% Covid, inflation, health insurance cost."

????

A bunch of places in the US have added additional percentage fees in lieu of raising their marked prices (someone in another thread mentioned an “employee wellness fee”, for instance).

Here’s some news about it.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2023/1/25/23570024/restaurants-...

An additional 3% fee (for whatever) is common. You can ask to have to taken off, but then I feel like an asshole. I get that things might cost more — rent, raw materials, staff, etc. The business should build that into the price upfront. It feels like a dirty trick to disclose it at the end and puts me, the customer, in an awkward spot that makes me feel bad.

As a muted protest to municipal, county or state mandates requiring employers to pay for employees' health insurance, some businesses -- restaurants especially -- have taken to exposing this cost to the customer in the form of an added fee.

I feel like what's wrong with it isn't the exposure of the price breakdown to customers, but the lack of exposure of the final price until the last moment.

So they mark how much employee insurance is costing them, do they also breakdown their profit? Since business like restaurants often price based on a margin doesn't inflation sometimes increase profits?

I also don't understand protesting inflation a global phenomenon (in varying amounts) that is difficult to solve.

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