FCC refuses to scrap rule requiring ISPs to list every monthly fee | Hacker News Reader

FCC refuses to scrap rule requiring ISPs to list every monthly fee

arstechnica.com

384 pointsmfiguiere236 comments

Excellent news. When the ISP's claim it's "too hard" to do, you know something is wrong. Either the ISP's are lying (duh) or the taxes and fees structure is just messed up... or someone is trying to slip in bullshit charges.

Our world needs more transparency. It breeds competition... and hopefully bankrupts a few corrupt corporations.

The taxes and fees change all the time. As an ISP you have no control over what the government fees are going to be. How can you list a price up front when you are at the mercy of the people making up these rules?

List current rates and notify when there are changes. Banks do this already

Not only banks but countless other services and businesses. Stock markets change minute to minute. Cryptocurrency changes by the minute. Heck even a grocery store has thousands of items that change from day to day and they seem to manage to list current prices all the time. In Canada they even guarantee the price is correct or get the item free or $10 off if item is more then $10. So I think everyone can see this excuse is a non issue.

Grocery stores do not advertise with tax-inclusive prices, in fact the opposite. Heck, I live in a no-sales-tax state and even then, some items might still be taxed because they are considered "prepared foods" and fall under hospitality taxes, so the shelf price and total at the register may not be the same.

this is a US problem. everywhere else I've been manages to put the tax on the labels

You are able to charge me for all these taxes and fees. why are you not able to list these charges in details on my monthly invoice?

These invoices aren’t issued up front. The marketing copy gets ugly and confusing.

The fees are required to be listed 'at the point of sale' not on advertising. Basically they have to tell you at signup what they are going to charge you. Seems like an extremely reasonable requirement.

Ah that is a lot more reasonable. But what is the nature of these fees? Can they change over time or based on use? Does Comcast know at signup what the fee will be when billed?

So treat them like any other business expense and simplify pricing. They don't list the costs of their data centers, employees, etc. Pricing transparency >> marketing copy.

It doesn’t sound like these are like any other expense though. Comcast doesn’t control them.

Why does that matter? Pricing should be easy to understand for customers.

In places like Europe telcos are able to do it just fine. What you see is what you pay.

Why would a bill be a problem? Is this not about upfront advertising?

It's not about advertising.

> The rules require broadband providers to display, at the point of sale, labels that show prices, including introductory rates, as well as speeds, data allowances, and other critical broadband service information.

if they know enough to bill for it, they know enough to make it a line item on the bill. it's really silly to pretend otherwise.

It’s preferable that the burden fall on the ISP than on the consumer imho.

The ISP should be free to boldly call out on the billing statement that those fees are government mandated, if they choose to.

What a great gig! I ring a random doorbell. I say "You owe me $2" you say "What for?" I say "...I don't know but you still owe me $2 so I'll take that now."

Oh it's not a random doorbell, it's a customer who's lawn I mow. ok. Totally ok then.

Don't most businesses have to deal with varying supply/input costs to some degree?

They're obviously not lying. NCTA's letter made the issue clear: retail stores have items pre-labeled, and, under this new rule, they'd need to create thousands of variations of those labels. Unlike sales tax, where the business always knows what it's going to be charging every customer, pass-through fees vary based on the customer's home address.

Again: these aren't fees Comcast chooses to charge; it's money local governments are taxing from their residents, piggybacking on the ISP billing system.

That's NCTA's claim, and we should consider their side, but maybe we shouldn't take it all at face value?

We can take what they're objecting to at face value, because they're the ones objecting. So when I say that NCTA is objecting only to pass-through fees, I feel like I'm on pretty firm ground, because they have not objected to other labeling requirements.

I'm not saying we should ignore NCTA's public statements, but I'm sure you know that parties who are sophisticated public communicators will object to the thing they are most likely to win on, and which will gain them the most support, rather than the thing they care about most.

It happens all the time in public discourse, in politics and in business.

Thinking about it, that of course is fundamental to sophisticated negotiations - not revealing your true objectives. And thinking more, people use that same tactic instinctively all the time in social situations.

This doesn't make sense. They've conceded the rest of the issues, and were asking for a concession exclusively on this issue. You should read NCTA's filing.

They already know what the fees are from, they just don't want to tell the consumer. How else would they calculate them?

"NCTA's letter made the issue clear: retail stores have items pre-labeled, and, under this new rule, they'd need to create thousands of variations of those labels."

That's a bunch of bullshit though. The cable companies use vastly different pricing all over the place, so there's already "thousands of variations of those labels" - in fact I'm pretty sure those labels are produced regionally.

So we're clear: we're talking about labeling requirements that can change multiple times within the span of 10 blocks or so. This isn't a regional problem; it's about as local as it gets.

so why not regulate the other end too and force more consistency and transparency in pass-through fees as well?

Because Home Rule prevents those regulations.

I'm not sure what they are referring to with "label", but anytime I look for Internet service online the first thing they ask for is my address. So they can easily present the proper "label" on the webpage that they show me.

"it's money local governments are taxing from their residents, piggybacking on the ISP billing system."

I'm sympathetic to the point, and this feels like there's area for compromise here. Something along the lines of "We'll gladly support this change if local governments stop hiding taxes behind us."

I have to believe the NCTA made this issue clear; I wonder then if the FCC noticed, and if so, why there isn't a similar directive levied at municipalities to stop this practice?

To be clear, I fully support forcing ISPs to be transparent, period. But that is a messy issue they're dealing with, and I feel like there could easily a co-argument to localities to stop making it hard for them to be transparent.

Edit: Just saw your comment below about Home Rule. Drat.

Mostly my subtext here is that municipalities should stop being so sneaky with their taxes and just come out and bill residents directly, instead of pretending that their taxes are just Comcast being greedy.

I sense that perhaps a lawsuit targeting this practice might be incoming then, if the FCC forces them to proceed.

On what basis would they sue the municipalities?

The FCC did notice.

from the article:

Providers are free, of course, to not pass these fees through to consumers

That's even less transparent!

I don't care about any other company being "transparent" in this sense, I care how much what I am paying for will actually cost.

It's a low bar, I guess, but the excuses as to why it's too hard are just so insulting to the reader...

It's so incredibly strange to see a large corporation complain that figuring out how much its product costs is too hard with one hand while billing people those same fees just fine with the other.

I don't need to know how the sausage is made, I just need to know how much does it cost. If I'm given a fixed all included price upfront, I don't care how much of if goes where inside of ISP. Now, if they quote me one price and bill another - then we have a problem.

They asked to do exactly this and were denied.

If they want to simplify their marketing, just roll all those extra fees into their final price. I have that currently with my AT&T internet bill, the amount my card gets charged every month is the same as what it was advertised.

They're not allowed to do that.

Well, they do, I don't understand why they wouldn't be allowed to. Same thing with my cell phone bill through Mint, other than regular sales tax all the other telecom fees are all rolled into their price.

They just mess around with their actual price until the final price lines up with their marketing. Its not exactly challenging math.

I don't understand that statement. I have Google fiber and AFAICT that's exactly what they do, and have done for as long as I've been a customer.

Before buying, I only ever saw one advertised price for this particular product, and since becoming a customer I only ever see that same price on the statements they send me each month.

My understanding is that they are being required by the FCC to break these fees out, though someone else on the thread claims otherwise and for all I know is correct. Either way: hiding the fees and raising their rates does the opposite of what people want from this FCC ruling!

> ISPs could alternatively roll such discretionary fees into the base monthly price, thereby eliminating the need to itemize them on the label.

That's right from the article.

I don't know what "people" want, I just want the quoted price to match the billed one.

They are only being required to breakdown and include these fees if the ISPs are tacking on these fees in addition to their quoted base price that the customer was expecting to pay.

If the ISPs wanted to include these fees in their base price, they can, as long as the customer is paying for the quoted price and not surprised by a bunch of unadvertised additional fees.

Consumers cannot make informed decisions about their providers if ISPs are allowed to tack on these costs that are ultimately unknowable to the consumer. If ISPs decide to pass these fees directly onto the consumer, rather than work them into their base price, then the consumer should be able to know what these fees will be upfront.

The ISPs aren't tacking anything on here. Their objection is exclusively to those fees that governments are requiring them, by contract or statute, to add and pass through to their subscribers. They're not just deciding to pass the fees on to their customers: the municipal agreements instruct them to do so explicitly.

In his complaint to the FCC, Comcast’s VP of regulatory affairs, Jordan Goldstein, wrote that the government should grant their petition “to avoid the unnecessarily onerous burden associated with itemizing non-mandatory passthrough government fees.”

The ISPs are pushing back about non-mandatory passthrough government fees though. Unlike mandatory fees, which are required by law, non-mandatory pass-through fees are typically discretionary charges that ISPs choose to levy on their customers to offset expenses related to compliance with regulations or taxation.

Is this just not the cost of doing business? Do we pay a liquor license fee when we go to a bar? I think most people would find that absurd because that is just one of the business costs of opening a bar and those fees and taxes the business pays is baked into the price of food and beverages.

To most, this just looks like a way for ISPs to advertise their services at low prices while offloading the cost of doing business onto the consumer. Which the FCC is actually fine with. However, they are no longer fine with these providers lack of transparency in offloading these costs to the consumer.

Some non-mandatory pass-through fees (which FCC allows to be bundled into the base price if the ISP wants to do it that way):

Regulatory Cost Recovery Fee: ISPs may charge this fee to cover the costs associated with complying with various government regulations related to the provision of internet services.

Local Franchise Fee: Some local governments impose franchise fees on ISPs for the use of public rights-of-way or utility infrastructure.

State and Local Taxes: These could include sales taxes, use taxes, or telecommunications taxes that ISPs may pass on to customers as a way to cover the tax burden imposed on their services.

911 Fee: This fee helps fund emergency services like 911 call centers and systems.

Internet Infrastructure Surcharge: ISPs might implement this fee to cover the costs of maintaining and upgrading their network infrastructure.

Broadcast TV Fee: Though not directly a government fee, some ISPs list a Broadcast TV Fee on bills to cover the retransmission of local broadcast stations, which is influenced by regulatory requirements

Universal Service Fund Fee: This fee is used to support the Universal Service Fund, which helps provide affordable telecommunications services in underserved or remote areas (such as affordable broadband internet and phone service for low-income households, rural healthcare facilities, Tribal lands, schools, and libraries.)

Some other fees that some ISPs like to charge that are just literally the cost of doing business.

-Network access and maintenance fee

-Network enhancement fee

-Broadband cost recovery fee

-Internet infrastructure fee

-Municipal construction charge

-Administration fee

-Technology service fee

-High-speed network recovery fee

Some of these fees above would be like if a bar decides to charge a renovation fee after doing a remodel of their premises. Again, these fees are all just the cost of doing business and if they’re going to offload that cost to their customers, then their customers need to know exactly what they are paying for in advance.

The NCTA letter refers exclusively to pass-through fees imposed by governments. None of those fees are like if a bar decides to charge a renovation fee after doing a remodel.

There is an explicit exemption for mandatory charges.

If Comcast decides to change it's rate because of those fees it can explain that.

Again: they are exclusively objecting to labeling requirement for pass-through fees.

What makes something a pass through fee?

Does access to a conduit count? Does sales tax count?

Pass-through fees is a vague category that effectively means "I spent money" which is useless.

The contracts with cities literally refer to them as "pass-through fees", explaining that they "pass through" to subscribers. People act like this stuff is complicated or unknowable, but you're a Google search away from reading a franchise agreement. Most cities have them, and they're public records.

The only justification for avoiding displaying them is wanting to hide something.

To your point actual pass through fees are transparent. So what don't they want to show you?

The claim of packaging is a crock of shit. Cox won't give me a quote without an exact address since thanks to ISPs building up pseudo monopolies they charge everyone something different.

If it is actually a package you can't list the final price due to that anyway.

After all you don't know where someone lives based on where they buy something.

Remember if you have to deal with quoting accurately you did all of the work to label properly.

What exactly would they be hiding? They've asked to quote the maximum possible total amount assuming the worst case pass-through fees.

FTA:

>ISPs can meet the label requirement in alternate sales channels either by providing a hard copy of the label or by "directing the consumer to the specific web page on which the label appears."

There's already lookups for sales tax. If they can bill the address the fees, they can show the fees to the customer.

No: retail businesses don't need to "look up" their sales tax, because it doesn't change per customer.

I think here the parent is saying "the ISP must be able to determine the fees in order to bill the customer (the lookup), so they should be able to determine the fees before billing the customer"

I doubt the utility of mentioning what retail businesses do when we are talking about ISPs.

for online stores it does, based on shipping address.

They do when they open a new location.

Except when it does, as in the case of status Indian people in Canada, who are exempt from sales tax.

I'll take Falsehoods Programmers Believe About for 200.

I think you mean Indigenous people, as the Indians in my neighborhood in Vancouver aren't exempt from PST or GST

No, I think they mean status Indian. It's a Canadian designation. Their own (the Canadian) government webpage agrees with you that's it's outdated. I'm just commenting because the difference between him saying "status Indian" vs "indigenous Canadians" and "Indian Canadians [meaning indigenous]" is in having said status first

Tbh. I didn't know this either. But it seemed so specific to say "status" so I looked it up. Til for me

"About Indian status Find out more about entitlement, benefits and registration under the Indian Act and the Indian Register.

Use of the term "Indian" Many Indigenous people in Canada prefer not to describe themselves as "Indians" and view this term as rooted in colonialism and racism. Under the Indian Act, the precise legal meaning of the term "Indian" refers to First Nations persons who are entitled to registration."

FWIW, "First Nations" is generally the preferred term in Canada. But the relevant law is the Indian Act, not the Indigenous Act or the First Nations Act.

I just want to point out that while it might be true there are some local fees included that are hyper local and hard to disclose. Where I live Comcast and other providers advertise fake low rates, and then tack on multiple surcharges and cost recovery fees that they refuse to disclose, should be considered false advertising, and make it impossible to compare between the different relevant services, because the fees represent more than 20% of your bill.

NCTA isn't complaining about anything but the pass-through fees.

Yes but if you label all the pass-through fees then everything else is a non pass through fee right?

I don't understand your question, sorry.

You have fees. Some are government and some are actually just cost of getting the service - modem rental fee or bring your own modem fee.

The pass through government fees get labeled as such (small township build rights fee).

The other non government fees that are really just the price of the service are now clear because the government fees are labeled.

My understanding is that under the new rule all fees must be labelled, both real and made-up.

This is a problem they created for themselves. They engaged in sleazy, shitty business practices that made everybody hate them. We pass laws to make these practices harder and they find clever workarounds and loopholes to keep doing it.

So now the FCC is passing a regulation that will be impossible for them to weasel out of. Comcast has nobody to blame but themselves. And personally, the more miserable it makes Comcast, the happier it makes me.

These companies can't spend literal decades operating in bad faith then act surprised when voters and regulators say "enough is enough" and stop taking anything they say seriously.

> these aren't fees Comcast chooses to charge

These are, in fact, fees Comcast chooses to charge.

This reminds me of the confusion of some other employees when a start-up I was working for got purchased. The new owners proposed that we should sign documents agreeing certain conditions in exchange for which they'd pay us a "bonus" of an amount to be determined by a complicated formula at the end of their financial year.

So I glance at this document, it's as I think, and I explain this document requires you to work for them for a period of time, it's a weaker version of the document the senior people are signing or have signed -- but unlike theirs it doesn't actually pay us ordinary employees any money - therefore I explain you should not sign if you think you might want to work somewhere else any time soon. e.g. if your role makes no sense as part of the larger entity and you've got better things to do with your life rather than collect a salary for a few months until they realise you aren't necessary and fire you.

I got widespread objections - it has a bonus scheme. Yeah, the way that scheme works their accountants are going to decide whether they pay us money in a year's time. Guess what those accountants are going to say? They're going to say "No". If they wanted to pay us money, they would just pay us money as they did with our management. Employers can always pay you money. There is tax due on it if they do, but that's their problem not yours. When an employer doesn't give you money the reason is that they don't want to give you money. Don't ask for another explanation, it's demeaning for them to have to pretend and for you to listen.

In a year's time I got a call from the CTO, an old friend, was I on that bonus scheme? Yes, I said, it doesn't matter to me (then or now). He was warning people because he'd been tipped off that of course it was worthless, exactly as I had said, but whoever had told him had seen the numbers from the accountants now.

Comcast can choose not to charge these fees, but it wants to. It would like to be able to say "Our price is $49.99" and then bill you say $84 per month and blame the difference on vague "fees". They only need to justify how that adds up to $84 in the case that someone works very hard, maybe a journalist working on a story about rip off ISPs. And if it's bullshit? They just say "Oops" and refund some fees when caught if their lawyers tell them that's cheapest.

In the UK for a long time ISPs would claim their charges didn't match the advertised price because it didn't include a fee they paid to BT Openreach, the incumbent telco whose copper cables they're using to provide service. In a way they were telling the truth, Openreach did charge them a fee. Unfortunately that fee is published by law, fairly small, and it had been steadily going down, because "maintaining some copper cables under the street" isn't expensive. On the other hand the fee these ISPs would add to the supposed "price" for consumers was larger and going up over time. Eventually the regulator told them to knock it off with this bullshit and just tell people the actual price including this mandatory fee.

This is obviously not true. If you're in a municipality in the US (if you're not, none of this matters anyways), you can probably go to the website for that municipality and look it up; the franchise contracts for mine are the first search result, and they spell out the fees that Comcast are required to charge.

The reason I'm on this hobby horse is that I serve on my local village telecom commission and, after 2 years of zoning out and playing solitaire whenever the "franchise agreement" came up as a topic, I finally paid attention and learned that we were making high six figures every year in our general fund charging Comcast users a Comcast tax. It's a thing my commission works on: just how much we should soak local ISP users.

We've gone for several years without a franchise contract renewal because, apparently, Comcast doesn't want to do this anymore. I don't blame them!

> We've gone for several years without a franchise contract renewal

And so as a result there's no Internet in your village and you just realised you aren't actually posting on HN and the reply has vanished in a puff of logic? No?

I have no idea what you're trying to say here. No, obviously, we still have Internet access --- the current franchise agreement remains in force until we finally renegotiate a new one, which is stalled over these pass-through fees.

I'm still not clear on what your original objection was to my comment. Do you really not understand what a municipal pass-through fee is? I mean, why would you, but: the concept isn't that hard to grasp, right? It's a tax that the municipality requires the ISP to collect.

> It's a tax that the municipality requires the ISP to collect.

Really? How does this requirement supposedly work to your understanding? What exactly would happen if Comcast charged the wrong amount of tax to some customers. Do the customers get a receipt so that they know they've paid the correct local taxes?

The reality is that your village taxes Comcast via this "franchise agreement". Comcast have no obligation to "pass through" that cost to their customers in your village, they choose to charge opaque and vague extra "fees" which may or may not be adjusted according to the tax, and you are (presumably inadvertently) now here arguing that a giant corporation is the victim because they have to pay taxes like everybody else.

We would sue them, and collect in state court. The contract literally stipulates the fees as "passed through" to subscribers. You've writing very confidently here, but, again: this is one of the rare instances where I have strong opinions about things because I've had to work with them. I have the impression that I've read a franchise contract, and you haven't. Am I wrong?

> We would sue them, and collect in state court.

That would work if Comcast didn't pay you but that's not the scenario under discussion, I asked what happens if they don't charge their customers exactly what you wanted and the answer is "Nothing". You don't have standing to insist Comcast charge this fee to their customers, that's between Comcast and their customers.

> I have the impression that I've read a franchise contract, and you haven't. Am I wrong?

I have the impression that you haven't read the enabling law for this, and you've assumed that "pass through" establishes some sort of magical tax at a distance when it's merely permission for them to pass these taxes on to their customers. Comcast are not, in fact, required to do this but they choose to do so.

Specifically the 1934 Communications Act (yeah, I know, that's a super old law, it was updated to explain how cable TV works) tells cable companies that they may pass through such franchise fees to their end customer. Note the word used, not "must".

This is still misrepresenting it, though? They are free to not pass the fees through directly to users. They are required to pay the fee to the municipality. These are not, necessarily, linked things.

You are correct that it would somewhat increase their costs, such that they may have to increase their billing rate, but they are in no way required to pass the bill through directly to the customer.

Note that this is very different from taxes. Those are typically collected by the business, but owed by the purchaser. Right?

I'm having trouble understanding how they are anything other than taxes. They're called "pass-through fees" because the underlying contracts (or, in some cases, statutes) set the expectation that they'll be passed directly to the consumer. They're fees governments charge to their residents, through service providers, for services the government does not itself provide. They're not even tolls. They're taxes.

I like taxes! I'm a Democrat! But I think these particular taxes are pretty shady.

Snidely, they aren't taxes for the simple reason that I couldn't itemize them in federal deductions. That isn't quite as relevant nowadays, I suppose.

There is also usually a benefit for Comcast in this, as well. As such, it feels somewhat ok to treat them separate from taxes collected by Comcast. In particular, it is not uncommon for the franchise agreement to free up a ton of advertising concerns that the company would otherwise have to do.

I do think an interesting question is if this is counted as revenue for them? I'm currently assuming that they do count it in gross revenue? As such, it is literally them finding a way to get more revenue for places that cost more to do business, without open faced charging more.

That is, yes it is an expense that they have to pay, but so is, for example, the gas they have to pay to send a technician out. For that matter, the vehicle is also an expense of doing business. I'd be annoyed if those were line item added to my bill as a way to inflate what I paid. Not sure how this is any different?

I do not accept Comcast’s response. Nor do I accept your justification.

Comcast has alll the data it needs to produce an accurate bill and is free to price its service in a manner that hides municipal fees if it chooses. Or not and it can advertise low rates and break the fees out.

Comcast wants to make a profit out of lack of transparency and leverage that lack of transparency in marketing against competitors, public and private.

Explain how Comcast makes a profit by quoting the maximum possible price from all the municipalities in the region it serves.

I'm confused, what am I justifying? I am asserting that they are inflating revenue by adding line item costs of business to bills. That seems to align with your complaint?

Again, this is spurious. They can create the bill; they can label the charges on the bill. That's inarguable.

This argument carries no weight. Comcast doesn't show me prices until I give them my address, at which point they have all of the data necessary to show me the actual price.

This is not a difficult problem for them to solve, they just don't want to do it because these companies are run by greedy shitgibbons who don't want to tell you the actual price of their product until the last possible second.

How I know this is false is that NCTA's compromise offer was to quote customers the maximum possible fee (nonbinding) in lieu of tracking down the specific fee from the customer's zip code, which would allow them to pre-label retail SKUs, which is the problem they are trying to solve. I know "shitgibbon" is fun to write and Comcast is a convenient punching bag (I don't like them either), but they're not as straightforwardly the villain in this story as articles like these want to pretend.

That's a technical problem though right? The ISP could create state/county/parish/municipal maps that show which passthrough fees are in effect. Putting that on a bill would be difficult I agree.

What about listing the ceiling of the passthrough fees e.g. <$7.00 ?

They don't have to pass on the fees, it's their choice. Too hard? Charge fixed price, eat the fees and save the troubles. Want to nickel and dime instead? Disclose it then.

This doesn't make much sense as an objection. It's not Comcast that came up with the idea of charging subscribers these fees; it's their own local governments, who wrote contracts requiring fees to be passed through to the customers.

So your claim is that when the FDA says this:

> ISPs could alternatively roll such discretionary fees into the base monthly price, thereby eliminating the need to itemize them on the label.

they are lying and flat rate pricing is prohibited by the FDA? As somebody who does pay flat rate (not to Comcast) I wonder how my provider did pull off such an illegal feat. Also, T-mobile (not exactly an ISP but also a telecom) has "fees and taxes included" flat rate, and they are charging exactly as stated. Would be weird if this prohibition were applying only to ISPs but not to mobile providers?

They obviously ARE lying. Either a) they have the information to be compliant and pay all applicable fees or b) NCTA is admitting that the entire industry is chronically non-compliant and every state/municipality needs to launch an audit of every ISP.

I dont understand why you are getting downvoted, you are completely correct.

That is simply wrong.

FTA: "Comcast and other ISPs objected to a requirement that ISPs "list all recurring monthly fees" including "all charges that providers impose at their discretion, i.e., charges not mandated by a government.""

Sales tax depends on your zip code as well, so it is very much like sales tax.

I don’t have any sympathy for telecos. But… it is difficult. For example, the city school district in my city, whose boundaries are not congruous with the city boundaries has an excise tax on different classes of wireless service.

These types of rules may have unintended consequences, for example requiring that you collect a street address before providing pricing. It also may encourage telcos like TMobile, who embeds fees in rates to be more AT&T-like “executive retreat recovery surcharge”.

> These types of rules may have unintended consequences, for example requiring that you collect a street address before providing pricing.

They already do this. In fact, they will collect your street address before informing you whether they've run fiber to any part of your ZIP (postal) code.

They should be REQUIRED to provide service if they take an address and make an OFFER of plans.

If they can figure out what to charge me by the time they send me a bill, they damn well can provide a detailed breakdown of the charges. Claims of it being too hard should be derided as the utter bullshit they are.

According to the article: "all charges that providers impose at their discretion, i.e., charges not mandated by a government." So they wouldn't need to include your school excise tax.

If they charge different fees depending on address (again, not taxes) then it seems like the intended effect to provide the actual price the consumer will pay.

This does not match my understanding, but I am not an expert. You receiving those charges is not mandated by the government; rather, passing them through to the consumer is entirely discretionary and often done by ISPs or cell carriers. The article discussed this with the suggestion that ISPs instead simply roll it into the base rate if they do not wish to have to advertise the additional fees. This is exactly what T-Mobile does for their cell phone plans and I love it.

It is the telcos choice to bill regional fees directly to the consumer. They can also amortize regional fees across all their customers, meaning some may pay more while some may pay less.

That's true to a degree but it does create weird incentives where a municipality could charge a crazy-high tax and have the cost get amortized such that the bulk of it is paid for by people who live outside of their jurisdiction.

Stating the obvious: if the fees are too hard to list, then how the hell are ISP's going to bill those fees?

I want the FTC to crack down on unlisted fees in general, cause it's been getting out of hand lately. Like, I'm entitled to stay at a hotel at the lowest advertised price, not that plus some $100 "resort fee" they tack on after I've already paid once.

Are you even required to pay that?

Like, why would you just pay some random invoice some company sends you, without you asking for it?

Would they pay your “resort guest fee” if you sent them an invoice?

> Are you even required to pay that?

One sad part of the situation is that even if you aren't required to do something, it can result in you being completely banned from said business's services under the idea that they can refuse service to someone for any reason. With the business model nowadays mostly being franchises, a ban from an entire subset of businesses can be a substantial burden for someone, especially if the business takes up a large part of the market.

Edit: Not to say this will necessarily happen in this circumstance, but it is a very real possibility when refusing to work with certain businesses.

What will happen is much simpler. They won't give you the room key if you don't pay, and will eventually ask you to leave the premises if you're not a customer.

It's usually not a big chain doing this, so I'd gladly get banned since I'm never going back anyway. That's not the problem (see adjacent).

Hotels in all the major chains do this. Try staying in a Hilton or Hyatt or Marriott in a touristy place like Hawaii or Florida and not get a resort fee or something stupid. If you’re lucky they are advertised and you can filter.

If you’re unlucky you find out at check-in and your options are pay or find a new hotel while your family waits.

Or if you’re super lucky, you find out at checkout and just refuse to pay and be on your merry way.

Hilton etc will charge the fee when you book. I just tried with Hilton Orlando. It's mildly annoying getting a booking bill more than the widely advertised price, and it should be illegal too, but you know what you're paying when you pay.

What I referred to above is being charged a resort fee after you've already paid the initial booking fee. Last two places I saw this were Balley's in Vegas and VYE in Miami.

I stayed at a Hyatt on the Florida gulf and I didn’t pay anything to book. But I had a reservation with an amount. When I got to check in they let me know there was a $35 resort fee. It was frustrating.

It's after I pay and before I stay. I could refuse, but then I'd have no hotel and lose the booking payment.

If you have already paid 'in full', then I think you'd be morally in the right to just say you didn't bring your wallet because you had paid already online.

Yes I am, but morally right doesn't mean I get the room. Also, they tend to put the refundable deposit on my card when I check in, which actually makes sense just in case whoever they admit isn't me*, or I booked long ago and my old card is now defunct.

* or more broadly, whoever they admit (whether or not it's me) has enough credit at the time of the actual stay to entrust the room to

Exactly. I was once called 2 hours after I had checked-in in a new town and informed that I must pay extra to stay due to some booking confusion between them and the travel agency. It was a huge hassle to find a new place that night and check out of the greedy hotel asap. You can be sure I left honest reviews of my experience in a few places.

Even you fully pay online, you have to put down a deposit for a room and bring your id.

No you DONT. You must live in a very abusive country if you think that is normal.

It's normal, and I don't see any other way besides just trusting that nobody is going to trash a room (and eating the cost when they do).

wat. Literally every US and European hotel puts a hold on the credit card during check-in. Cash deposit is higher and probably almost never used except very rare cases.

This is specifically a hack to get around listing and booking costs. I'm surprised the big players like Expedia or Google or Booking haven't started cracking down on it themselves.

Sometimes, but not always. In some cases I only find out after I've booked. They could at least tell me about the fee on their site before booking if they only wanted to trick Google. They want to trick me too.

Well it depends on where you come from. If you book direct on Bookings.com you never see the website. And if you have a blatantly different price on Bookings than Expedia you might get dinged by Bookings!

I agree that resort fees are BS, but hotel listing sites are also an absolute coordinated shakedown on hotels and this is their response.

Even if you go through bookings.com, you still see a final $ amount before paying if they include the fees in the booking cost. That's their hack to show up higher when you look for low prices. Some places are so scammy that they charge the resort fee much later, in-person, as you're checking in or out.

Are EU residents protected from this? I never encountered any fees except booking price.

Again, Bookings.com takes up to 20% off of the entire price. So it's in the hotel's incentive to hide as much of the price from Bookings.com as possible by waiting until you are in person to charge you the rest.

I thought resort fees were a Las Vegas thing. Are other places doing it as well? I hope not as it get very expensive very quickly.

Yep. Most places with a pool or on-site spa.. I've seen them in San Diego, Chicago, and Hawaii of the top of my head.

I've seen them a lot of times for nicer-ish hotels in any major city. Sometimes it will include things like Wi-fi or breakfast, but usually it's mandatory with the stay.

They are also in a race to the bottom.

Some booking sites will have an option to show prices after all fees, but it will never be on by default.

In the EU they are now mandated to show the full price everywhere after they tried to pull that same stuff here.

https://www.acm.nl/en/publications/airbnb-will-now-use-clear...

https://www.acm.nl/en/publications/bookingcom-commits-adjust...

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_...

So that's (part of the reason) why booking was so relatively painless for my recent holidays. Another thing to thank the EU for.

Amen. This is the government intervention we need. Way too many services are tacking on large hidden costs as a run around to prevent price comparison. If there is no way to opt out, it is the price, not a fee.

Reaction: If $ISP can't even list all the government taxes, fees, charges, etc. that they're collecting on my bill...then it seems darned unlikely that they can correctly keep track of all those different types of funds, and properly remit them to all the various units of governments to which they are due. Clearly the DoJ, SEC, State Police, State Atty's General, etc. need to move in on $ISP's Accounting Dept., and "un-gently relieve" $ISP of all the "accidentally unpaid" funds they've retained. Along with some "extremely generous" penalties and interest for their "oversights".

OR and this might sound crazy, not implement a stupid system of taxes and fees to begin with.

The US is quite a large place, you cant just say that different localities and different areas of emphasis need the same fee and to draw from the same fee. At best you're asking to hide the fees behind yet another level of bureaucracy that we'd then need a foia request just to see the breakdown

OR and this might sound crazy, if they can render the cost onto the customer's bill, they can damn well list the components that went into that bill to begin with.

I'm actually struggling to understand this a bit.

So an ISP needs to advertise a "$29/mo + local fees" plan as "$29/mo + $0-$80/mo in fees"

I guess other than making the advertising super annoying, I don't understand the ISP objection. Assuming every provider is faced with roughly the same kind of fees and it's a level playing field.

> Providers are free, of course, to not pass these fees through to consumers to differentiate their pricing and simplify their Label display if they believe it will make their service more attractive to consumers and ensure that consumers are not surprised by unexpected charges.

This is a surprisingly snarky response from the FCC. "If you are so worried about the label being confusing why not just raise your prices?" It's hard to believe that they are suggesting this seriously.

It's an important point for the FTC to emphasize, IMHO:

Businesses in many domains love to claim that any increase in their cost - taxes, suppliers, etc. - must be passed on to their customers.

That is absolute ripe BS, and anyone who knows any economics, finance, or has run even the smallest business knows it. More bizarre is that consumers - and others who know better and have no vested interest in the BS - all repeat it.

Did you know that money doesn't come from a magic tree?

And since it doesn't come from a magic tree, it has to come from customers or from profits.

And a lot of these businesses have low profit margins to begin with (ie health insurance). Those businesses that are already low margin do have to pass the costs on to customers otherwise the risk adjusted return of their business is not worth it compared to savings bonds.

Ultimately if the cost of doing business is higher whether its because the government has imposed additional fees or because your money tree died, the cost of the producing the product has gone up and this has to be an upward pressure on prices. Unless you're running a money tree farm which must be the "smallest businesses" you're referring to.

I'm sure you have some great ideas and we could have learned some things from each other. See the discussion below, for example.

> And since it doesn't come from a magic tree, it has to come from customers or from profits.

As a fairly impartial outsider (I'm from the UK and the price we see advertised for broadband on the website after entering our address is the price we pay), I'd like to counter that by simply agreeing that yes, the obvious outcome is that the customer pays for the fees. However, that's not what this discussion is about. The discussion is about whether the customer is told the price will be $X and then they have to pay $Y where Y is considerably more than X.

Instead of appealing to the magic money tree, companies simply need to be honest when they tell customers the price. They are free to keep the same prices, they just now need to say the price is $Y, and can choose to say that it's comprised of $X and then all these other things or just say it's $Y and leave it at that.

The reason companies don't want to do that, is they want to compete on having the lowest number for $X and sneak as many extra charges into the real price $Y in the hopes that customers don't discover it until they're locked into a contract.

Part of the problem is that the US has had this tradition for a long time with sales tax. Now I can understand online shops listing prices without sales tax, because it genuinely depends on where the customer lives. But in a regular real-world shop, they know exactly where the shop is and what the final cost of an item will be when it's sold, regardless of who buys it.

You have the same thing with tipping - you buy food at a restaurant, and then get told some nonsense that amounts to "because we don't pay our workers a fair wage, we're going to add an extra 20% on top of the price we offered and on top of taxes and all the rest". With your money tree argument, I'm surprised you're not in favour of your restaurants advertising a steak at $20, then when the bill arrives it's $20 plus $30 for the ingredients, $20 for the cook, $10 for the dishwasher, $10 for the waitress, $10 for the supervisor, $5 for the parking lot because the company rents that from someone, $2 for the company's phone line, $2 for the gas and electricity used, $1 because they need to clean the tables between customers, $2 for the condiments you might have used, and and did we mention that we want 20% tip as well. Yes, this is all the cost of business, but the customer doesn't need to know all that - they are, after all, just buying a steak.

The situation with broadband should be just as simple - "I want an internet connection. How much do you want to provide it to me?"

> yes, the obvious outcome is that the customer pays for the fees

That's false. See the GGP.

> That is absolute ripe BS, and anyone who knows any economics, finance, or has run even the smallest business knows it.

??? Are you arguing that increases in costs are not passed on to consumers at all?

It's also worth pointing out that the FTC is not just talking about passing along random costs - they are specifically talking about things like the Universal Service Fee (basically sales tax for ISPs) and local regulatory fees. Things that are assessed on customer billing.

> ??? Are you arguing that increases in costs are not passed on to consumers at all?

Now that you point it out, I can see how it might be read that way. Beyond a doubt, in practice, many cost increases cause some increase in sale price, and that always will be true (and should be true). I'm objecting to the word must, in "must be passed on to their customers". Businesses have a choice, and making that choice every day is a fundamental task in business. I might also object to passed on, but that's a technicality.

> It's also worth pointing out that the FTC is not just talking about passing along random costs - they are specifically talking about things like the Universal Service Fee (basically sales tax for ISPs) and local regulatory fees. Things that are assessed on customer billing.

That conflates what is with what must be. The ISPs often do show it on customer billing, but they could aborb the costs and not show it. That's the point.

If an ISP advertises $49.99/mo, then they need to itemize on the bill anything that makes the final charge greater than $49.99. Right now, ISPs generally have a "Fees" line, with no insight into what said "Fees" are, unless you jump through hoops to contact them. ISP are complaining (presumably because the increased transparency will make it harder to milk the customer) by trying to claim that itemizing the invoice will be confusing since they have to pass-through all these state and federal fees. The FCC is saying "tough shit", and if they want to keep it "simple" then they need to roll these fees into the sticker price.

Basically, either itemize or be upfront. If the ISP doesn't want to itemize, then the bill must match the advertised price. If they want to keep the advertised price lower, they need to itemize all additional fees being added to the bill.

This is not what the FCC in the article are saying at all:

> Providers must itemize the fees on consumer bills, and we see no reason why consumers cannot assess the fees at the point-of-sale any less than they can when they receive a bill.

The FCC's entire rule is to make providers itemize fees on advertising, just like providers are already doing on their bills.

They are passing along fees like universal access fee. This is tax on the provider, not the customer. Some providers don’t pass it along like google fiber. It’s impossible to do price comparison if they don’t list out what random charges they are tacking on your bill. My google fiber bill is $100 for their $100 plan and that’s the way it should be.

ISPs are putting BS fees instead of raising their prices.

A lot of those fees are not usage taxes or similar, but rather costs of doing business that an ISP has chosen to pass on to customers as seperate fees so they can keep the headline price low.

It's like if your supermarket advertised their prices as $50, and then you go up to the till and it's $60 because they've included a "shelf stacking fee", and they claim that they can't just include that in their advertised price because their shelf stackers' wages vary by jurisdiction.

> A lot of those fees are not taxes or similar, but rather costs of doing business that an ISP has chosen to pass on to customers as separate fees so they can keep the headline price low.

This kind of fee hiding is already conclusively illegal for a variety of reasons and not at all what the FCC is discussing in this article.

This is much more akin to how, a grocery store might have to disclose a liquor tax as part of the sales price instead of the sales tax.

No, FCC said at point of sale, not point of advertising.

> I don't understand the ISP objection

American ISPs operate under a confuseopoly paradigm of customer interaction. A confused customer is more likely to shut down and just pay the fees they don't understand.

Forcing companies to enumerate each item that goes into the cost will allow customers to determine just how shitty a value proposition those ISPs are offering. These companies have been in full damage control mode for years, having earned themselves positions of significant scorn in the US already.

Good. Companies should be able to charge the prices they want, but if that's the case they should be required to disclose the full price and nothing but the price.

In this case, ISPs are charging prices they don't want, but rather are mandated to by local governments.

Those are expenses. The ISPs choose the price they want based on their expenses. Complaining about local regulations is no more or less legitimate than complaining about the price of copper.

No, they're not. Comcast's price doesn't float municipality to municipality. These are simply taxes that local governments are charging and forcing Comcast to collect.

Prices do change in different municipalities. I've paid different sticker prices in different towns that are within an hour of each other for the same service.

This is the real price though. The customer doesn't care normally - the price is what they pay, not the weird partial amount that the ISP itself gets in the end.

> customer doesn't care normally - the price is what they pay

A savvy customer should. If 90% of the bill is Comcast, I'm going to negotiate with Comcast. If 90% is municipal fees, I'm going to call my city council.

Ok, sure. And this is exactly why this rule is being put into place. So customers can see a list of fees instead of some nebulous “fee” added on that tells the consumer nothing about what they are actually paying for.

The US has a long tradition of separating taxes from sale prices. Every fast food joint lists a price w/o sales tax. You don't pay sales tax to the state individually. The state is taxing the businesses' sales, but the cost is passed on to you. Why should ISPs not be able to do the same thing Del Taco does?

In my area we have small shopping districts that have their infrastructure funded through a 1.7% sales tax on every retail business. Best Buy doesn't change the price of the iPhone 14 to reflect this. Should they? I don't know. Instead taped to the surface of every checkout is a typed note informing the customer of the improvement fund. I think a good compromise would be to allow advertising to remain how it is, but require a full detailed bill at the point of sale.

That's a normal part of business.

Really? In what other ordinary retail business do you need to get a customer zip code before you can quote them an accurate price on a standard offering?

Practically all of them. I don't see the final price from pretty much any online store until I put in my ZIP as otherwise it doesn't know shipping or taxes.

But at least I can see the final price before I choose to commit to buying the item. Many ISPs won't tell you what the bill is going to be until they've already wired you up for service.

E-commerce?

Zip code isn't nearly enough information to work out telecom taxes/fees, as they often cross political boundaries with potentially different rates and charges. You need a full street address.

Same for sales tax, if you are selling in a way where the applicable sales tax is where the customer lives rather than where the seller is.

Don't they need to know your address anyways to check if they can provide service at all?

"Separately, the order said the FCC rejected a wireless-industry "request to include potentially complex and lengthy details about data allowances on the label, and instead affirm that providers can make those details available to consumers on a linked website." To maintain simplicity, the labels must "identify the amount of data included with the monthly price," and "disclose any charges or reductions in service for any data used in excess of the amount included in the plan," the FCC said."

Good.

Just a reminder: the ISPs objected only to labeling pass-through fees, which aren't fees at all, but rather taxes levied by local governments and mandated on the ISPs (franchise fees are the most common example). Contrary to popular opinion, most of these franchise contracts don't include exclusivity; either way, it's money that goes to your municipality's general fund, not to Comcast.

NCTA asked instead to be allowed to label the maximum possible total bill customers would face, but FCC has, apparently, rejected that.

Any idea why they did this? What did Comcast stand to gain by not labeling these taxes? My imagination is failing me here. All I can think is that if Comcast wants it then it is probably bad for me.

Since they're willing to label the maximum possible price, which maximizes the sticker shock, I'm inclined to take them at their word that the problem here is logistical: they operate retail businesses (and work with partners at big box stores) where they don't know until they speak to the customer what the pass-through fees will be, and that makes accurate labels difficult to pre-print.

My stake here is just to alert people that their municipalities are taxing them for using the Internet, and hiding it in "fees" that most customers assume are Comcast soaking them (see: this very thread).

Because of the historical and contractual differences between TV cable and fiber, there are municipalities where you're taxed differentially based on whether you're with Comcast or ATT/Verizon!

> My stake here is just to alert people that their municipalities are taxing them for using the Internet, and hiding it in "fees" that most customers assume are Comcast soaking them (see: this very thread).

This is what surprises and concerns me most about the ISP's dispute. Why wouldn't they be excited to "pass the buck" and blame the government for your higher bill?

While these pass-through fees probably are a logistical nightmare for them, the fees themselves don't seem to be anything new thing so they must already be dealing with them anyways and the rule is just telling them share that information with the customer. Unless they've been absorbing the fees them as a cost of business and just charging higher service rates, in which case they aren't actually being passed through. Which seems like it would either make the whole conversation moot, or is something they could get in trouble for.

Maybe I am just being cynical, my opinion of ISPs has been soured of late, but I suspect there is more to than just logistics. Possibly, people are being charged "unfairly" paying different rates for the same service regardless of location, but in the other direction: I.e. "Everyone" is paying $X for Y Mbps Down / Z Mbps Up, but some of them are paying $10 in pass-through fees while others are paying $20, and the ISPs are pocketing the difference.

Alternatively, particularly if there is actually competition in the area, it may reveal that where ISPs appear to be offering comparable services at a similar rate have actually negotiated different pass-through fees are just charging more for the base service instead of passing those saving on to customers.

It's probably debatable whether these things are actually bad or just the market at work, but it does make sense that ISP wouldn't want people catching onto them. In general, the current ambiguity would work in their favor because every time your bill goes up they can just hand-wave it as, "Oh, that includes various government fees and so on" where not the bill would have to actually say who's rates are going up.

Comcast wants to list a lower list price for getting customers through the door. They want to make comparison shopping difficulty so customers give and just choose them. And then they sneakily add all the junk fees on the customer's bill, but deep down the UI so you have to download the PDF to see it, not exposed inside the UI itself, so few customers ever see it.

Again: they asked explicitly to be allowed to quote the maximum of all the pass-through fees in their regions, and were denied.

The proposed change allowed them to show a range which was comically broad and equally non-transparent. No dice.

We get some of this in oz, where larger entities often dont resell over smaller open access networks because maintaining a price book for 100 different networks is logistically very difficult for a large business.

What is tge FCC equivalent for restaurants? We need legislation to prominently display those bullshit "service fees" and "kitchen appreciation fees" everywhere, not just the final bill.

I don't know that the consumer expenses for dining out rise to the same level of importance as those for internet service in the digital world. On the luxury/need spectrum, the former is decidedly on the luxury side while the latter is increasingly on the need side.

That being said, I am curious what cities/regions or restaurant types you see this happening at. I don't think I've ever encountered anything like that where I live (southeast) except for things like the customary mandatory 18% gratuity for parties of 6 or more.

Bay Area and California in general. San Francisco was first with the 5% restaurant healthcare fee, which I think was a citywide tax that explicitly allowed businesses to list the fee separately. Maybe this inspired other restaurants in adjacent cities to start adding similar things despite not having any law like that, usually (but not always) mentioning the fee in fine print. It got even more widespread lately with the classic "covid fee" which later got changed to "inflation fee." The other less rigid thing is asking for a 22-30% tip on the credit card machine, often for things you don't traditionally tip for; at those places I use cash.

Highest I've seen is 8% while also asking for a tip, but at least the fee is clearly listed at the top of the menu: https://asliceofny.com/sunnyvale/menu/

"An 8% Co-op Wellness service charge is added to all orders and is split 40/60 between employees+managers and the cooperative. It is not a tip."

Yeah, this is the kind of bullshit I'm talking about. It's a percent-based surcharge, so why can't they just increase their prices by 8%?

Prices on the menu are meaningless at this point. With sales tax, the "obligatory" tipping and these new bullshit fees you'd be closer to the real price by mentally doubling everything on the menu. How people put up with this shit is beyond me.

It's more like 30-35% but yeah. Don't forget the credit card fee if you're using that, except that one actually makes sense since you can opt out.

Just deduct it from your tip and move on.

It's take-out pizza, shouldn't have a tip anyway.

With the absolute proliferation of hidden / undisclosed / hard to find fees since 2020, the trend only seems to be accelerating.

For instance, I went out to eat the other day, and I hadn't gone to a regular restaurant in awhile. Prices seemed reasonable. Then the final bill came, and had almost $7 dollars worth of various little fees.

Prior to 2020, this was nearly unheard of, and I certainly never experienced it.

I have vowed to not eat out for the foreseeable future without a really compelling reason.

The calculus would be different if that had to be listed in the price or otherwise disclosed in an obvious manner. This happens in other establishments too.

For another example, apparently, my apartment mandates a cleaning "charge". This is not disclosed in the lease, nor on the website, or anything of that nature. Its taken out of your deposit, non optional. Apparently, this is completely legal, and its frustrating.

Aside from cable companies wanting to hide fees, is there any reason why this rule should be scrapped?

the actual title explains the problem a little more acurately

>>FCC says “too bad” to ISPs complaining that listing every fee is too hard<<

No. In fact, given the dishonest behavior of ISPs, the FCC should go even further, and require all ISPs to list the full sticker price of any offered services, and ONLY the full price, in all advertising.

They shouldn't even be allowed to list a price that doesn't yet include the fees. No asterisks. No appendices. No see below. No fine print. Just list the real price. Always.

Imagine how many "bullshit jobs" would no longer be necessary.

How would that work when you may not even know where the person wants service? You might know a general area and there might be unknown fees that the isp cant know until after they negotiate with the various stakeholders to build service.

Don't cell providers across the country charge the same price regardless of coverage guarantees?

Generally you'd probably negotiate w/ stakeholders BEFORE advertising. I'm not sure why any sane person would advertise something before having a solid idea of what is possible, unless they are running for political office.

I cant even guarantee you we can build in any given building even if a resident wants the service. Cell providers don't have to deal with physical issues of access.

i think the same way it works everywhere else? Some customers are more profitable than others.

Often the more expensive service is more profitable but if you want simple pricing you can do the opposite.

If you don't know the price that you can charge, you shouldn't get the right to make one up for advertising. That's creating a special right for the stupid or lazy.

> How would that work when you may not even know where the person wants service?

No cost until the service location is known. It's a two way street, right? It's entirely reasonable that if you were to obligate the ISP to deliver precision in pricing they'd have no recourse but to require accurate disclosure of the service location.

This is all fantasy, however. This clown world we've built doesn't contemplate such things. The minor ask the FCC is making here is as far as it will go, and if the big ISPs put enough campaign money into the right "family foundations" we might not even get that much.

This sounds like a feature, not a bug. To the extent that is the case, all of those thousands of ISP lawyers would now become incentivized to reduce the complexity of the bullshit fee structures you're talking about.

lets also require an api and standardize the offers.

Just like one can see 2 jars of peanut butter side by side in the store.

Maybe it's different in the US but here in Germany I'm charged exactly the sum that was advertised when I signed up for the service.

Even if you do the "taxes not included" dance, I doubt US ISPs are incapable of just charging (and advertising) a single sum that covers everything. I'm honestly surprised this is not already happening (again I could be mistaken)

I'm sure they'll claim that it's too difficult, or too confusing for consumers, etc., etc.

Yes. Those who support it will be paid handsomely by lobbyists. Why doesn't anybody stand up for those people's right to make money at public expense?

I imagine some people won't be thrilled about the "Fee listing fee" that's going to show up on their bill.

Is there anything stopping them from charging a lump “fee” fee and then refunding whatever they don’t need?

Bold of you to assume they would ever refund anything. Most of these fees exist because they want more money and don't want to just outright say they want more money.

Some people are generally against regulations.

I think, playing devil's advocate for the ISPs here, the argument is over how they are supposed to be displaying local government fees on their advertising. Which would make for some pretty complicated ads if you could imagine, like, a billboard between 3 or 4 townships that all have different fees.

Here, the FCC I think provides a pretty reasonable suggestion that they can use "up-to" fees when displaying prices But it still means you have to know some of the geographic data on the person you are advertising a price too.

This is great. Kind of crazy that price transparency isn't available for healthcare yet in the US.

In the UK, the advertised price of a service must be the price that a typical user ends up actually paying.

And it can't be hidden in the terms - all the actual amount paid by a regular user must be the headline price of the advert. Taxes, fees, etc must all be included.

It works pretty well.

There are some things that get quibbled over - for example should the advertised price of an ice rink include the price of ice skate hire? Most people don't own their own ice skates round there, so have to hire them too.

But in general, it means there are usually no hidden fees.

The taxes/fees on telecom services are complicated in the US because we have multiple overlapping taxation authorities who might impose them. Unless you know a person's address, you don't actually know what they're on the hook for.

For the ISPs I dealt with in other countries, the lookup normally starts with: tell me your address so we can tell you what services we provide they're. Sounds like the price could easily come after that step.

The issue here is a requirement to provide product labels for broadband services, with the intent of letting consumers compare between providers, i.e., before the point where they inquire about service. I totally agree that they should be required to provide a complete (and accurate!) list of taxes and fees to a potential customer before any agreement.

You could still add on whatever the average customer pays in taxes.

This is fascinating, I live in a region where there are patches of competitive ISP area, and as a consequence, I have never seen an ISP advertise a price outside of a targeted mailing or phone call.

I had assumed that most of the rest of the country was like this, and you only got prices after you gave an address.

Even a medium size ISP that was running a "price for life" deal, didn't even advertise with the price was, and you got better deals if you were in a competitive area. (Based on comparing mailed advertisements).

Prices appear on physical mail advertisements I get for internet service, I get quite a lot of them, but billboards, television ads, and everything else simply lacks a price and touts product quality and speed.

Australia simply banned component pricing altogether.

You are simply not permitted to communicate any price other the total price, which must include government fees and sales taxes.

What makes this especially nice is that Australia also doesn’t allow employers to pay under a living wage (currently about USD $21 for casual staff), which means tipping culture never took off here, so your total out of pocket is always exactly equal to the advertised amount.

Aide: I believe in some jurisdictions in Australia it’s actually illegal to solicit tips, as it’s known to be discriminatory (since tipped amounts are known to vary by race, gender, age etc..).

I don't see why they can't just charge a flat rate that is slightly above whatever the sum of all fees would be and then they sort it out themselves. Is it actually better for the consumer that they charge us $36.78 instead of $40.00 so they can avoid listing 15 different local fees?

I'm honestly asking because I don't know.

I believe that the rules are that if you list something as a fee, all of that money has to go towards that fee or else you get in trouble.

The FTC suggests though that ISPs just raise prices and internalize the fees. But then your price is always going to look worse than the next guy, and you may just encourage local governments to give you more fees for you to bury for them.

I'm with the FCC on this one.

It's silly ISPs are fighting this, because if they can charge you a specific fee, it's obvious they can provide an CSV or Excel file with all the fees. I don't see anything too hard about it. It's literally a SELECT and maybe a JOIN with it.

Hell, I don't even understand what's so hard about it. Literally, Twilio gives you a nice CSV file with all the fees and tiers applicable to you and you can use it to ask for discounts. If Twilio can do it, you standard AT&T for sure can.

It's ironic how in The Land of the Free, ISPs are fighting to be opaque. If your corporate strategy is based on obscurity, maybe it's time for some serious consumer protection regulation?

So lets say I am a retailer.

I don't own the product (have a relationship with the person ultimately setting the pass through charges) and I sell the subscriptions to the end user for access.

Unless those passthrough charges are made available to me before the customer signs up, I cannot reasonably estimate them when advertising the service. Instead, I can only pass them through when they appear on my invoice, or absorb them. In fact those are the 3 options here. Pull out of the market, pass the costs through (and attract fines) or absorb the pass through fees.

Punishing me as the access provider doesn't make sense. Whether or not you have personal misgivings against the access carrier, it seems like the municipality setting the pass through charges should be asked to make them more consistent, or provide an API for lookup.

I dont know what the response here is going to be from the retailers, but I am betting its not going to be pro consumer.

After reading the FCC's statement this is clearly about elected officials and regulators wanting cover from corporations for the taxes and fees they levy. The corporations want to point out what goes into their costs on the bill, but it is impractical to advertise on price when each viewer of a TV ad may have a slightly different cost because of their location.

Either way, consumers are paying for it. The two parties are just arguing over how it is presented to the public. We will probably end up with even less transparency in advertising with tactics like: "plans as low as $X" or the like.

This reminds me of the notorious Hanlon's razor, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Similarly, in cases where a company claims complexity, "Never attribute to inability via complexity that which is adequately explained by greed." Call it Corn's Razor, if you will. :)

A published list of fees, while transparent, is a useless blizzard of data by itself.

One customer-useful approach would be a "dslreports.com" providing precise total average monthly bill amount for a specific address along with the breakdown.

If they can charge me, they can list the fee. Pretty fuc*king simple. Same bs hospitals, oh we can't predict what the bill will be but every time you have the procedure somehow a bill is able to be generated.

Jessica Rosenworcel once again stepping to bat for the people.

For all of AT&T’s flaws as an ISP, their billing has been quite boring and amazing. I’m charged $0.55 in fees on every bill and that’s it. So I pay $55.55 each month, pretty consistently for the past 20 years or so.

The bandwidth is mediocre and I could switch to other companies but just finding the price was hard because there were activation fees and equipment fees and state and local fees and an fcc fee and some random fee they decided to add that changes from month to month. It was so weird. And also odd that they would have different state, local, and fcc fees that att didn’t.

I cancelled my home internet, got tired of haggling with them every month. I’m posting this from my phone which i also tether to my laptop when needed.

Coming soon to a bill near you:

$50/mo FCC fee itemization fee

Can they at least offset some of my fees by paying me a dividend for all the data they sell to law enforcement agencies?

How can you budget anything in the US if you're never charged a price you can look up beforehand?

Good. Let ISPs charge flat fee without all that foolery with "surcharges".

I hope this will not result in FCC being dismantled or nerfed.

If you can afford to bill it, you can afford to list it.

let it be known this is biden's FCC

This should not be news. This should be status quo. The fact that it is not means our society is late-stage capitalism dog vomit.

It's been too long since the FCC last fulfilled its role as the benevolent dictator.

From what I can tell, that's mostly been limited to wireless spectrum regulation these past ~20 years, with a few exceptions.

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