The choice they have (as is mentioned near the end of the article) is to pay them themselves (cost of running business) and include them in the advertised price (like it probably is anywhere in the world outside the US)
It was very weird going to a restaurant for the first time and paying the price listed on the menu, and not 30% more (sales tax + tip)
You can buy New Zealand produce around the world for less than it costs us in New Zealand. So going for a meal costs what it says on the menu and no more, but that cost is steep.
Isn't it mostly just economies of scale plus transport costs?
Or are our industrial relations laws really not as good?
Discussion on the European system for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Agricultural_Policy#Ove...
https://simplenewzealand.com/cost-of-living-in-new-zealand-v....
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/money/2021/09/shopper-s-recei...
https://thespinoff.co.nz/money/12-08-2021/how-do-nz-grocery-...
Japan is better: there's absolutely no tipping, at all. The price you see advertised is the price you pay, and they won't even take your tip. (There are a few exceptions: some American-style cafes have been putting tipping jars at the register; very annoying.) The only caveat is the tax: that's not always counted in the price, so many restaurants show two prices, the pre-tax price and the post-tax price just below it (usually in a smaller font).
The other thing that's MUCH better about Japan vs. Europe is that water is free. In Europe, if you want any drink with your meal at all, you have to ask for it, and if you ask for water, they'll bring a fancy glass bottle of very expensive bottled water. If you ask for tap water they'll give you dirty looks. In Japan, it's more like America: water (tap water, but it's really good) is free, and usually given without asking. Some places put a giant carafe of iced water on your table, which is great during this ridiculously hot summer.
The other thing that's much better about Japan (this isn't really about restaurants, though it does apply to the food court restaurants in malls) is that public bathrooms are free. In Europe, they usually expect you to leave a tip or some kind of fee for the cleaning people. Japan is again more like America: public bathrooms are just that: open to the public, for free. The big differences are that 1) there's a washlet on most toilets, and 2) they're actually clean.
"Geld" is not gold, its money. "Gold" is gold.
Also, aforementioned aid doesn't have to be free, the person benefiting from your aid owes you the cost of that aid.
But at least public toilets tend to be free whereas I believe in Sweden these tend to cost money.
Sure, you can say that you aren't "required" to tip in these cases, or that they're taking advantage of tourists who don't know better, but still, they're asking for a tip. To me, "no tipping culture" means that tipping simply does not exist. Europe has a tipping culture; it's just different than the US's.
I haven't seen it in this form in France (yet?). But I do see more and more payment terminals that are asking for a tip when they're presented to you. The amounts usually seem fixed, and you have the option of picking 0. I've mostly seen this in bars and similar situations.
Some stores may also ask you to "round up" to give to some charity. Fun fact: these didn't use to work with Apple Pay, so if you said yes, the assistant would have to cancel and restart the payment process.
No, it’s not. Europe is more than one country, and there are local differences. And even in several places where it is common, nobody is going to be upset if you don’t tip, because they have their salary regardless.
> The other thing that's MUCH better about Japan vs. Europe is that water is free. In Europe, if you want any drink with your meal at all, you have to ask for it, and if you ask for water, they'll bring a fancy glass bottle of very expensive bottled water.
Depends on the country, I assume, but in most of those I know they are happy to bring you some tap water. In France, they are required by law to offer tap water for free but IIRC that’s not the case in the Netherlands or Germany, for example. So generalisations are not helpful.
I find it very annoying that even have to ask. Especially when in many places they'd just bring you a €3-4 tiny glass bottle (which IMHO might be the most idiotic consumer product to ever exist) if you just asked for water.
You have to explicitly ask for tap, which is just awkward so way to often I just end up ordering a beer.. which is not ideal either.
To be fair that's also the case in New York, California and some other states (and minimum wage in these states is higher than in pretty much any European country).
It's not exactly common. In Belgium, the behavior is like when they thought it's really good or if people worked on a restaurant before.
But nobody expects that anyone would tip.
Last time I went to Hungary it was added to the bill though
Ps. A bottle of water is free in France and some other places.
Giving 50 cent for a restaurant when only using the bathroom is just a sign of good behavior in my view. Depends if I'm hurried, but I'll usually buy a glass of water. Then I'm a customer ;)
Why? If you're already eating there, why should you pay to use the toilet? And if you're not eating there, then why are you there to use the toilet? Just use a public one. If there aren't sufficient public toilets, that sounds like a failure of the municipal government. Any good city should have lots of public toilets outside, in train stations, or in large shared buildings.
Also, my experience in Germany at a mall food court is that they DO charge you to use the toilet there, even though I was eating there.
If there even are public toilets, if they are open, if they are in a state to be used (and not just an uncleaned mess), if they are free... plenty of reasons to go to a restaurant to use their toilet.
Which might be also paid (assuming they even exist)
I'm not sure I'd say either of those chargeable toilet scenarios is well correlated to clean toilets, but I assume mostly they do that to try to avoid various kinds of mischief.
https://switcher.ie/broadband/ireland/dublin/?eircode=&tv_in...
In Cincinnati, the Cr^H^HTime-Warner Cable rate rose every month of every year for as long as you remained a customer. Complaining would get you a story about it being a "billing mistake" and "a credit on your next bill". The credit usually didn't arrive unless you complained again. And even then they might randomly switch tactics to "We're so sorry. We'll give you [1 | 3] months of [HBO | Showtime | Starz | all premium channels.".
I'm still wary of comparing charges across metros. /-:
It’s one thing to have a monopoly and gouge your customers if the product you are providing is unimpeachable but they are far from that.
In France, if you look at your EDF (national electricity company) invoice, you'll see that you pay VAT (a tax) on top of other taxes.
They also levy VAT on the "Greffier"'s fees. That's a clerk at the "commerce tribunal", which is basically a part of the state administration with which you interact whenever you need any administrative changes for a company. Say, you need to declare a change of address.
They don't advertise prices such that you can take the advertised fixed fee, add your consumption times the advertised kWh price, and have your final amount due. No, they add a "tax on energy consumption", a "contribution to the public electricity service", and a "contribution to electricity delivery". And, on all of these, they levy the VAT.
> they would just recalculate the base fees accordingly
And I think this willingly done, to give the impression that taxes are lower than they really are. Which makes the whole thing seem dishonest.
Very much this. The law should be that you must advertise the price you will charge, full stop. Same goes with tipping mess. Just compute the total price internally and tell me what it is. Nothing additional allowed.
You should look at all these fees on your ISP bill and get pissed off. The issue here is that the taxing body's ploy worked: you got pissed at Comcast and AT&T instead of them.
The same argument goes for including the sale tax or many gas taxes in the displayed price, (or displaying the price including VAT in EU).
FTR, I do get that by listing the tax explicitly you get to appreciate your local tax is lower than your neighbor's or get annoyed that it's higher (and then vote to change that).
My internet provider in Poland offered me the internet service for 60PLN/mo. Guess how much I'm paying for it? 60PLN/mo. They obviously pay many taxes and fees to different organizations but I don't need to care about it.
I think I got an offer like this from Sonic on the Bay Area. They would eat up all fees exceeding the declared maximum. (Or I'm making this up, was in 2018)
Aren’t there stories in the news regularly about ISPs adding additional “fuck you” fees just because they can? So this does not seem to be working. At the end of the day, when I buy a beer I don’t care that €0.20 is going to their administrative overhead and €1.28 to their installations’ maintenance. That is not supposed to be the customer’s problem.
> and two, so that customers who want to lobby their elected officials to reduce or eliminate any of the charges can identify the specific charges applicable and each of their amounts, without which no meaningful political activism is possible.
This does not seem to be working well either. And at the same time, other countries without this issue seem to be doing fine with their broadband prices. It looks very ridiculous from the outside, in any case.
Yes they do sometimes add their own fees like you say. But those are usually clear flat amounts per line per month, so calculation of that is easy enough. It’s still worthwhile for customers to be able to catch accidental or intentional overcharges versus their published fee schedule, since that ability is part of what keeps companies relatively diligent and honest in this area. Widespread mistakes can and do lead to class action lawsuits or easy boilerplate individual arbitrations or government investigations, in the US.
Additionally, some customers qualify for exemptions or reductions for certain governmentally imposed fees. Transparency as to what is being charged is important to make it easy to notice whether this kind of exemption is or isn’t being applied.
(Tangent: the above is discussing consumer-targeted prices only. Business-targeted prices often don’t include VAT in the advertised price, even in the EU, because most EU business can get a credit for VAT paid on inputs to a product or service in which they themselves charge VAT. Of course, receipts and invoices still break down all the details of which VAT rate is charged for which item, and sometimes why.)
The situation for disclosure of multiple overlapping sales taxes in the US (as is usually the case in NYC for example) is much less detailed, sadly, but even there it’s still usually clear which items are taxed or tax-free.
Very much a fan of the EU's Consumer Rights Directive, especially where it pertains to advertised prices. Even if some things have now skirted it, like sugar-tax and pfand in certain countries.
In my country at least, any business with a VAT number buys most things VAT-free and the end consumer is charged the whole amount, for the sake of doing less paperwork. Don't know how exactly it works when something is transformed into a lower-VAT output.
Mexico, like Europe, does include the VAT in prices advertised to consumers. That part of my comment was accurate.
As for Pfand (bottle deposit), that’s an interesting case. At least in Germany, they usually have to advertise the Pfand amount and list it individually on the receipt. But also, it’s similar to the situation businesses have with VAT: both for cultural reasons and due to the sums of money involved, it’s quite common for Germans to actually bother with returning bottles for the Pfand, so the extra cost effectively gets rebated for most purchases subject to Pfand. The whole system and the underlying psychological incentives would not work as well if the Pfand cost were more hidden than it is.
You should look at all these fees on your ISP bill and get pissed off.
You're right, we should be pissed at Comcast and AT&T fraudulently misrepresenting the cost of service. They chose to pass these fees along (conveniently marked up for their "costs" associated with administering this fee to their customers) and are pretending that they don't have a choice.
The thing is, "service fees" aren't government-imposed. They're fees entirely made up by Comcast and AT&T for the privilege of providing the service that the customer is already paying them for. Since they're not optional, they can and should be rolled into the advertised price.
Most consumers aren't going to care that a portion of the price is Comcast structuring prices so that it can cover mandated costs of doing business. I've never encountered a company listing, say, that it's charging additional pennies so that it can meet its Social Security tax obligations, for example. That level of granularity simply isn't that interesting for consumer-level prices.
If Comcast thinks these fees are unreasonable and wants to lobby voters and politicians to work against them, it is free to do so via other means.
The point is that the fees are charged to the ISPs, and then the ISPs want to pass it onto the consumer but not actually say that that's what is going on.
Yes, some localities will charge more things. Hell, listing them out would add pressure to make these fees go away! The FCC isn't the one imposing these fees. But ISPs are choosing to charge the users, but also not advertising these fees ahead of time! Advertising "this service costs X" but actually costing X + Y is something that feels pretty unambiguously bad.
Then again the US is the land of "every locality sets its own sales tax" so....
I get what you're saying about the fee being for the consumer. It's just like... OK then, well tell the consumer how much they are going to pay. You mentioned that the lobbying is to get rid of these locality's taxes, and I'm not pro-federalism so hey why not.
But all of these places have to collect the money anyways, so there is _a_ logic to how much to charge. Many places in the world, the price of internet is "type your zip code into a box and then we tell you". This seems eminently reasonable. This precludes a nationwide campaign to say exactly how much the service costs (unless ISPs just decided to eat the costs themselves!). But wouldn't it be good for people to know how much something costs?