From airlines to ticket sellers, companies fight U.S. to keep junk fees
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Hiding the actual cost with sneaky fees is getting out of hand and I have zero sympathy for "oh the poor merchants" or "showing the proper price is too hard." They made the decision to impose the fees, they can make the decision to put them in the price where they belong.
And yet somehow it's always possible to have the proper price ready when billing your card.
Here (Australia) if a manufacturer or dealership advertises a car at a price, they have to sell the car for that price and no more if someone shows up at your showroom. In practice this does make life complicated, I worked on Toyota's website a decade or so back, and there was a quite complex attempt to geo locate users so we could know which state they were in, because each state has different registration/insurance/on-road-costs, so depending where you were, we had to show a different final price. (It was usually only a few hundred dollars difference, and we also went out of our way to ensure we listed how much was state government fees and how much was the dealership pricing.)
(There was an "incident" before my time there, where the web agency fucked up and advertised RAV4s for way below the real price, and half a dozen people worked it out and showed up at dealerships with printouts of the web advertised price and got a RAV4 for a _lot_ below retail price. Toyota ended up making the web agency pay to difference, which was well into 6 figures. But they were getting billed close to 7 figures a month for the website, so...)
It would also neatly solve the extremely annoying problem of tax not being included in the total listing.
I don’t care if it’s “hard” for sellers. There are already existing softwares like TaxJar that help with this. It should be a cost of doing business
They added a 15% fee in, and it’s unavoidable. I called them up and said I wouldn’t be ordering from them anymore as its deceptive cost. Just raise your damned prices!
Was just traveling and the servers kept conveniently forgetting to mention we’d already been assessed an 18% gratuity. It just makes me suspicious of the waitstaff.
It was on the bill, but I missed it. It's not anywhere on their menu, and the server did not mention it at all. That's garbage.
As for all the other fees, I get the point and even sorta agree with them. But again, be up front that they'll be applied and whether or not it should be considered part of the gratuity.
And most other restaurant-imposed surcharges on top of listed food and beverage prices, which aren’t bona fide service charges, are categorically forbidden. A mandatory blanket extra percentage that isn’t a bona fide charge for some service, like handling a large party or splitting a bill, is likely illegal in NYC even when labeled as a service charge, although not as rare as it should be. (Taxes can still be added on separately.)
Sadly for the rest of the state and country, these requirements are just local rules and regulations, not state or federal. But some other places do have similar laws.
I thought that was rather sneaky but clever, because the overlap of “people who eat expensive burgers in that area” and “people who tip” and “people who can’t read Thai” probably covers a majority of their customers.
This should be made illegal; I can't understand why it hasn't been already.
I would.
Check the Shipping Info on any of the Stamp Description page in store. It says extra dollars for shipping & handling.
Being nickeled and dimed [1] never feels good, but it's somewhat fair. Why should you pay to check luggage if you're not checking luggage? Why should you pay for two pots of gravy if you only want to eat one?
[1] I realize this expression probably doesn't translate well to speakers of English that use the Pound as their currency. I apologize.
The coffee shop added an automatic and mandatory 19% gratuity. I always thought I was only forced to pay 18%!
The buffet this morning did the same thing. The receipt says "18% is gratuity, 1% is for operating costs."
I thought paying for a meal included the operating costs. I'm shocked to find out those were provided for free up to this point, I feel so grateful that the restaurants didn't need to pass these on to me.
And, I'm a little surprised that neither of these two experiences required anything from the servers other than handing me or my kids a drink.
I assume this is because this hotel probably has a lot of tourists from countries where they don't tip. And, I always tip my barista at least 20% but that's because I go to the same place and know them beyond just as a server, and a hotel in Clearwater will never foster that relationship between anyone.
This comes down to the same reason why when you click "buy" on some website, they can't say "oh look we added a secret X% f** you fee!". Similarly, this is the reason why when you negotiate a rate with a lawyer, accountant, gardener, or other professional, they can't add random fees that weren't discussed. My climbing gym has had big signs up and has sent myriad emails over the past few months leading up to a new credit card processing fee for this very reason.
If you had great service, I would still recommend fighting this and then tipping the server directly with cash. These "mandatory tips" don't go to the server, but are usually pooled and mostly taken by management. If the restaurant is one of the few ones that is equitable between the staff members (e.g. if the tip gets automatically split between front and back of house), then that might be the one exception where paying a surprise mandatory fee would be okay.
but not the auto-added tip? never challenged those I just dont leave an additional tip or revisit those venues as often
I really wish it were outlawed. The price paid should be the price displayed, unless the circumstances are exceptional. You cannot display prices without VAT so how it is allowed to display prices without the forced tip?
“It’s optional”. Sure, if you enjoy having your food spat in the next time you return.
Unless you're in California and some other states where there is "tipped" minimum wage and you get both a full wage and the tips.
And even in other states I got the impression that most (or at least many) waiter and other tipped stuff prefer the current system to getting the minimum wage and barely any tips
Why should the minimum wage bartender at Brewdog get an automatic 10% tip when the minimum wage employee at Tesco doesn’t?
Well many waiters earn considerably more than the minimum wage in the US. In large part because of this system. I'm not sure why does the society value their work that much (in relation to most other service workers which is of course unfair). However, essentially what you're advocating is lower wages for some service workers just because the rest are possibly overpaid?
How have you arrived at that conclusion? I am arguing that a) the tip should be included in the price, and b) people should be paid a fair wage by their employer WITHOUT sneaking hidden fees onto customers.
Also, I’ve made it abundantly clear I’m referring to the UK, yet you keep bringing up America. You seem determined to misunderstand me.
Like do waitresses in California, earning the full $15.50 minimum wage plus tips (and tipping is no less prevalent in California), really end up making 50%+ more money than waitresses in Massachusetts where employers can claim a $8.25 tip credit to cover more than half of the $15 tipped minimum?
[Edited because I find the terminology of "tipped minimum" confusing.]
(Legally, they have to make up the difference if you didn't make enough in tips. But most servers make more than that via tips, which is why they often fight efforts to eliminate tipping.)
I’m sorry but tipping 20% for coffee is nuts.
(I'm Russian who lurks in the English-speaking segment of the internet way too much)
I've personally stopped tipping in most places I go to. I might leave 10% at a high-end restaurant with really good service, but in general I leave a very minimal tip at sit-down restaurants, and pretty much never leave any tip for any sort of takeout/counter service.
I know the wait staff see that and think I'm an asshole, and I don't care. I'm fine with being an asshole to avoid getting fleeced, and I've not yet had any issues with service, even on return visits.
Sure, if I go to a nice restaurant, and the waiter chats me up, figures out what I like, suggests some dishes, does some non-standard stuff to make my experience at the restaurant memorable -- I will tip that. But if all you're doing as a waiter in my locale is tapping a few buttons on your POS handheld and then later bringing over a couple of plates, I don't see that as being worth much of a tip.
His rant also convinced other people on that table because there was no flaw in his reasoning.
Everybody I know who visited the US was bewildered.
Some places where you pay at the counter would have a tip jar, or even a small electronic device you tap your card on to tip a fixed amount. These are ignored by most people.
I acknowledge that it's a workaround for a larger problem, but I have low confidence that the US will actually address that problem within my lifetime.
What's more, from the discussions I've read, the expected amount has increased vastly over the last decade.
A reasonable person would look at the price on a menu and conclude that this is the price that they will be paying.
And no an asterisk and a tiny piece of writing somewhere does not make this not fraud.
A word that means, both free and unjustified.
I also don't understand the US practice of not including relevant sales tax charges in the cost of a good. I know that many US states operate a sales tax (which seems like a bad idea as opposed to a VAT or similar system).
I don't mind having actually optional extras be charged separately, but if they aren't really optional (like a service fee), it should be part of the price.
I'd be very interested if someone has a link to the text of what is actually being proposed.
> I also don't understand the US practice of not including relevant sales tax charges in the cost of a good.
Sales taxes in general are a horrible can of worms, and IMO every area should migrate to income tax exclusively.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/cnn-underscored/travel/how-to-avoid-reso...
Compliance-wise, it's easiest to calculate and collect the tax on economic activity when an economic transaction occurs. From a fairness perspective, it's clear when an indirect tax applies; with income taxes you need a convoluted code to address the many types of income possible in a modern society.
Do you? You could tax all income the same way, but governments seem to like having the ability to use the tax code to incentivize certain ways of making money over others.
What if I bought a house and flipped it as a business venture? What costs count toward the business and what doesn't? You have to define all of that before you know what you've earned.
Income is complicated, whereas a single transaction is very simple.
that's arguable when they're not progressive and arguably regressive. Rich people earn more, but they spend less (as % of income) than poor people.
"Luxury" items and other goods are subject to higher tax rates. Educational items are treated as their own category of goods in many places. Alcohol is often broken out from the luxury category and taxed at an even higher rate. Some places tax sports events but not cultural events.
And those are all things that are very easy to do at the time-of-transaction because all of the necessary information is available and the calculation is trivial.
>medicine
Semaglutide is a weight loss treatment that costs $10+k a year. It is ostensibly a luxury for the well-off. Does it fall under the 2% rate for medicine?
>and some foods
How is that determined? For instance, Parmigiano Reggiano DOP aged 48 months is arguably a luxury, but generic parmesan cheese isn't. Even if you could draw a line somewhere between the two, it's hardly trivial to do this for good ever. You either have to accept some absurd situations like the above, or have a sprawling bureaucracy tasked with determining what's a "luxury" or not.
> E.g. jewelry being at 20% will only impact well off buyers.
And what of a poor couple that's getting married? I agree such a tax might be approximate progressive (ie. on average the top 20% pays a higher tax than the bottom 20%), but it leaves much to be desired from a "fairness" perspective. A multi-millionaire driving a Corolla gets taxed more than some army recruit that just blew their signing bonus on a BMW. You also can't implement higher brackets on higher earning individuals as easily. How do you tax the likes of Bezos? It's not like they buy 100x more luxury items because they make 100x more. Most of their money is spent on investments, not consumption.
Your argument is based on ignorance of how sales tax/VAT codes work. Believe it or not, but tax people and businesses have been dealing with these issues for over a century now and they've mostly figured it out.
It is ostensibly a luxury for the well-off.
No, even for the well-off it is still a medicine.
Parmigiano Reggiano DOP aged 48 months is arguably a luxury, but generic parmesan cheese isn't.
In places where it matters, the sales tax codes can get as granular as they need to address this. They don't need a dedicated bureaucracy to make these determinations: it's either handled by the legislature or a very small team, since determinations like this are infrequent and don't require dedicated staff.
In this particular case: both DOP and regular generic parmesan are classified as foodstuffs by CA and neither would be subject to sales tax.
but it leaves much to be desired from a "fairness" perspective
Someone buying a budget car should be taxed less than someone buying a luxury car, regardless of the wealth or income of either buyer.
It's not like they buy 100x more luxury items because they make 100x more. Most of their money is spent on investments, not consumption.
Indirect taxes are not consumption taxes. They are transaction taxes, and investment transactions can be taxed under a sales tax, GST, or VAT regime. Some jurisdictions do tax investment transactions. In the U.S., taxing investment transactions has been proposed many many times over the past few decades. Wall Street have managed to beat off that proposal through profligate lobbying but every time the proposal pops up it gets more support...
Trivially resolved. In France only medicine which can be reimbursed by social security (so only actual things that can be prescribed and work, not optional luxury or homeopathy crap).
> Parmigiano Reggiano DOP aged 48 months is arguably a luxury
In France I doubt there's any differentiation of fancy vs non-fancy versions of foods, let alone cheeses. It'd be insulting to the nation to contemplate such a thing.
> And what of a poor couple that's getting married
I didn't know jewellery was a prerequisite to getting married.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Semaglutide has been approved (ie. has proven to work) for the treatment of obesity.
>In France I doubt there's any differentiation of fancy vs non-fancy versions of foods, let alone cheeses. It'd be insulting to the nation to contemplate such a thing.
Do you know this for a fact or just simply guessing? I find it very unlikely that France (or any other free market economy) doesn't practice product segmentation for foods.
>I didn't know jewellery was a prerequisite to getting married.
But poor and middle class people buy "luxury" stuff as well. When that happens, how is it fair that they're getting taxed the same as Bezos buying a mega-yach?
I knew about it and expected it because Vegas but it still felt slimy.
The idea is that if it's just baked into the price, customers will ignore it but if it's applied separately customers will consciously recognize the amount of money the government is taking from them and presumably apply pressure not to increase that amount.
The king of those is Las Vegas. I have literally removed Las Vegas as the possible destination for trips before when I remembered their resort fee bullshit and got pissed off. I don't know how those things are even legal, other than the government gets their cut too so screw visitors.
Sales Tax is an indirect tax on consumption that is deferred until the end consumer makes a purchased, and taxed in the area they made the purchase (even online since 2018). Some end consumers are tax exempt and can avoid paying Sales Tax. Companies can write off taxes paid where appropriate. Everyone else in the value chain is tax exempt assuming they filed their paperwork correctly. Ultimately this means that there is no equivalent to a VAT recovery, reverse charing, etc, and the governments that collect sales tax don't see any money if something is never sold.
Sales tax is not included in the price because it is based on the price. If a widget is sold for $10 today, there is less tax paid if you sell that widget for $1 tomorrow. It doesn't matter if $9 of additional value was created along the way.
States, counties, and cities can have different sales tax rates for various reasons. For example, my city voted to add to the sales tax to pay for road improvements. There is a lot of travel into our area for consumption so it ends up that visitors pay for roads even if they don't refuel their cars in the city.
Sales Tax and VAT are not bad ideas, they're just different ideas. At the end of the day if your government wants a Dollar, a Pound, or a Euro, they'll find a way to raise it.
That is to say that the retailer needs the recipient’s address before shopping, rather than after. Also, if sales tax is handled by an external API call, those costs would increase drastically if the same call must be made for each product listing price, as opposed to just a few at the end of checkout flow.
Charge everyone $100 inclusive-of-taxes. Keep $93.50 of that from a customer in Phoenix, $92.75 from a customer in Los Angeles, and all $100 from a customer in Oregon. If you have approximate knowledge of how your demand breaks down, you could come up with an all-inclusive price that produces the average bottom-line revenue you want.
Still not a good user experience.
Given all that, why would we use a VAT system rather than sales tax? So that the revenue is more evenly spread across the lifetime of a good or service?
Or to put it another way, for historical reasons?
(I'm playing AC Unity right now... Set in Paris during the French Revolution... And you know what the contemporary city walls were used for? Tax collection purposes...)
This kind of stuff should be settled in trade agreements IMHO...
Which made me think about a future EU-US trade agreement... But guess what? Fucking Trump torpioed it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Inve...
If you voice your objection, follow up in writing, and have a decent credit card, you can almost certainly get it charged back. Because the hotel is not going to say, in writing, it isn’t optional. (You may not be welcome back.)
Perhaps it's better to leave a review about deceptive pricing on Google Maps, TripAdvisor, etc.
Still think it’s sleezy, but it wasn’t a surprise at least
I think most stores prints their pricing labels locally.
Maybe, there could be a case for national TV to be exempt.
But for prices listed in a store, on a menu card, I don't see any excuse.
Sales tax is complicated. I get why companies would rather outsource that to the register to look up at the end.
The US gives way too much control to local governments.
European companies sometimes have a "No VAT" promotion, which of course doesn't actually mean "No VAT", merely that prices are reduced by what VAT usually is.
I just don’t see how this is better than literally every other country in the world which sets sales tax at the federal level.
And please don’t hit me with ridiculous hypotheticals “if it’s set at the federal level, the government could just increase the tax to 7000 billion trillion percent to steal everyone’s money”.
Then the County you live in can levy a sales tax. This is to serve the people who live in unincorporated places.
Lastly, Cities levy a sales tax.
So yea, it really isn't that simple in the USA.
Hell, how many countries do you know that have different income taxes based on where they live?
It isn’t that simple in the USA. Yet it literally is that simple in every other country in the world.
I don’t understand why the average American has such main character syndrome that they genuinely believe their country is so unique that they are unable to solve problems every other country in the world has solved. Ridiculous.
States in the US are analogous to countries in the rest of the world.
But they aren’t. States are states, it’s literally in the name. Almost all countries in the world have states or an analogy to states.
Again, only an American would consider each of the United States as seperate countries. Totally disconnected from reality.
Very many countries are more like many US states are with their subordinate counties: that is, a top level sovereign with general powers and negative limits with subordinate non-sovereign entities with limited positive powers granted by the top-level sovereigns.
Australia also has a similar setup to the USA, and has also managed to solve this problem.
I don’t know the inner workings of every country, but I assume there are more in the same position.
I’m sorry, but the USA is not in some crazy unique position that no other country has ever faced before. You just choose believe this inaccuracy.
"State" is the usual legal term for sovereign juridical entities with territory, while "country" is a less formal term that often corresponds to a state.
(And the "countries" that make up the UK aren't sovereign even in theory, though some of them have some degree of home rule granted by the central sovereign.)
> the USA is not in some crazy unique position
Unique? No.
But common? Also no.
And it structurally does make solving some problems quite hard, and it makes changing the structure to resolve those problems also hard.
Only 27 countries in the world are federal states, which is a very far cry from "almost all countries." The entire notion of a federal state is that both the federal government and the state government have independent loci of powers, and there are times when the state governments can tell the federal government to fuck off if the federal government wants it to do something. The exact degree to which this is possible varies from country to country.
For example, you seem to be comparing the US to the UK. But Scotland is not like a US state--it has far fewer powers than a US state, and what powers it does have is entirely dependent on what the UK parliament is willing to grant it. So trying to draw an analogue between a US state and a partially-devolved country within the UK is itself a mistake.
German VAT is also not simple. Before we had a temporary (so another layer of madness) law change, you either paid 19% VAT or 7% VAT, depending on whether you ordered your food to go or sat down at a restaurant. So the same item, for the same person would be taxed at a different rate depending on whether that person walks out with the food or carries it to a table. The restaurants simply advertise a single price and eat the difference [1]. Or to be more precise: the different tax values are priced into the single price, potentially accounting for the rough split between dine-in/takeout orders.
Despite all of this madness, we see a single price at the menu, we can pay exactly that price, and for takeout it actually is not uncommon to actually pay exactly that price. No sales tax, mandatory surcharges or gratuity, just a single, final price.
As for differences in the income needs of the counties/municipalities: this is handled with taxes on the profit of companies based in that area [2]. So the consumer never sees the differences in taxes, accounting is pushed to companies. If McD wants to advertise a fixed price nationwide, their franchisees need to eat the difference.
I get that in the US the states are more like countries in the EU, but we still manage to have the same VAT in all of Germany while apparently US sales tax can vary on the city level.
[1] there are exceptions, e.g. explicit to-go foods are advertised as such [2] there are more ways for this, but this is, IMO, the most similar way to the local sales tax in the US
Do you genuinely believe this, have you done any research, and are you happy to stick with this argument?
The resounding misunderstanding is their customers don’t care. I didn’t notice all-inclusive prices until a German friend pointed it out to me. I grew up, in part, in Europe!
Also, no, they may not. Not before you buy. Some counties in America vary their taxes marginally. That means your tax rate on some product today could be different from tomorrow, based on that store’s sales.
I also don’t hate the side effect that it somewhat points out to you that it’s the govt taking a cut
It sure is nice in most of the rest of the developed world to buy a product or service and immediately know how many dollars have to go from me to them because it’s the one price, though.
In every place I have been to, the receipt or invoice has a line item saying how much tax was payable on the transaction. Not least so that business customers can reclaim VAT in countries that have VAT. Different items also often have different tax rates, which is especially noticeable at somewhere like a supermarket where you might buy food, other goods, and alcohol in one transaction.
Here in Canada too, but I don't mind. When I feel the pain in my wallet, I want to know where to direct my bitterness. Credit card processing fees should be broken out too IMO.
For some reason they also have no other way to reach support other than phone.
EDIT: Googling around it looks like it's standard operating procedure for some airlines: https://www.reddit.com/r/frontierairlines/comments/10svdqb/a...
This is nice. But the US will also need sales taxes included in the advertised price.
The EU have generally driven a lot of transparency around fees. Usually under the banner of fostering competition.
This is totally separate from junk fees, which are controlled by the seller.
Sales tax exclusive is a common complaint from visiting Europeans. It is seldom an issue for Americans because most aren’t paying with exact change or calculating budgets to the penny. Go to low-income neighbourhoods, where incomes are closer to those in Europe, and you’ll find tax-inclusive pricing.
This is a pretty funny but largely ignorant dig at Europeans.
Every country I've ever been to except the US includes VAT in their prices and I've been to over 30. It's not just a European thing but a world thing, where the US once again is the odd one out.
I agree. That doesn’t make it an issue.
It also doesn’t negate that the U.S. is the odd one out on (a) income and (b) local government. Those are the factors, together with less cash use (though this bucket is less exclusive), behind the phenomenon. My life would literally not change in any tangible way for having keeping menus and price stickers up to date; if another store gave me better service for forgoing that work, I’d probably notice that first.
Put another way: I’ve travelled a lot in the world, and I genuinely hadn’t noticed tax-inclusive pricing until a German friend pointed it out in Frankfurt.
Transparent pricing is a fundamental necessity for the free market.
More importantly not having puts an additional burden on those with smaller incomes (they most certainly also exist in the US).
How many tax regimes do they contain within themselves on account of local governments?
I’m not saying America can’t do it. I’m saying we don’t care to. This is literally a non-issue for most Americans. I understand the aesthetic preference. But it’s such a strange hill to die on.
> Transparent pricing is a fundamental necessity for the free market
Transparent pricing doesn’t mean pricing with no math.
Junk fees, on the other hand, are not transparent and not set by the state. (Though I haven’t yet seen the business lobby try to distract by shifting the debate to tax-inclusive pricing, which would be admittedly clever.)
Well, you’re not used to being able to rely on prices being accurate. Surely if you’re used to accurate prices you might be paying more attention if suddenly they’re no longer correct.
I think this is because of the minimum turnover for VAT[0] at least on paper, but there are places obviously making a lot more that just don’t bother with it, so there is probably a lot of adventurous accounting as well.
Lovely place, you should add it to your 30+.
[0]: https://www.aseanbriefing.com/news/a-guide-to-taxation-in-th...
Only for local purchases, at least in Europe. In fact for non-local purchases, the US is much simpler.
I am, right now, in Italy, ordering an item from Germany, and it priced at N euros "plus 19% VAT". Because receiving countries differ in amount of VAT, vendors outside those countries cannot include it in their prices.
But it's "0% VAT" shipping to US -- that is, the primary country where you pay the vendor exactly what's stated is the US.
This is a good illustration of valid trade offs between two cultures. I find it absurd to have to enter my address before even being shown pricing (let alone deciding to purchase). You, on the other hand, prefer all-in pricing.
These are both reasonable takes! They’re just different.
Moreover, most of the websites change the location based on IP addresses anyway.
In America, you would. Various municipal and county lines can create separate sales tax obligations based on address. Even barring that, I would find it intrusive and absurd for someone to demand my state of residence prior to even being shown price. (My IP address only loosely correlates with my residence.)
But again, that’s a preference. One most Americans share. Multiple equilibria.
The US is one of the counties where the value that is duty free is high, and as I understand it, there’s no tax collection in advance. Most/all purchases will be 0% tax from the vendor side, but you are still responsible for assessing and collecting this tax yourself.
They can and they do; smaller shops who don't sell as much abroad use their country VAT while larger ones include buyer country VAT. Works fine.
I know it's true -- when I loved in SF the fact that I couldn't tell what things cost just made me give up looking at the price altogether :)
I just picked things in safeway and payed without even listening to what the amount charged was...
But it's probably a bad idea to encourage this kind of behavior.
If you want the free market to work, you'll need engaged customers who at-least reads the price tag.
I'm sorry that it's so hard for you to multiply by 1.1
12:00 - after a delightful morning checking out the history of genocide in North America, you decide to drive the Turquoise Trail (NM14), a national scenic byway, south to Albuquerque. You stop to wander and eat lunch in Madrid, NM. What's the sales tax rate? Wrong, you're no longer in the city of Santa Fe, but Santa Fe county.
17:00 - you arrive in Albuquerque and go to buy something at a regular store. What's the sales tax rate? Ah, now you're getting it: you don't know, because now you're in Bernalillo County, NM.
There are around 15-20 different tax rates in my metro area, between state, regional (multiple county metropolitan council), county, and city specific taxes.
From the central city area, you can reach all of the 15-20 different sales tax rate areas within 30-45 minutes.
There are tax regimes where how much of an item you buy changes the calculated tax.
If the sales tax rate ends being less than 10%, it’s money saved. If it ends up being more than 10%, that would be my new multiplier that I’d use as baseline.
If you’re that price sensitive, you can probably save a lot more money by just visiting five to ten stores to comparison shop for every item since you can likely save far more than one percent that way.
Or just fork over the extra penny per dollar when you visit Santa Fe the city
I didn't think the point was penny-saving. It was knowing what the final price will be.
I also didn't really get the GP's point that just assuming a rate of 10% is a good enough estimate, so there's also that.
> the history of genocide in North America
Ah, I see where you're coming from.
You almost certainly do not.
My ATT receipt for my mobile phone shows 8 different state and city and county taxes, from general sales tax to 911 specific ones to mental healthcare tax.
Zero reason for all this to be broken down for the end customer.
So yeah, there's plenty of reasons. Oh no, a long receipt. Won't somebody think of the ... ignorant people?
The amount of money coming out of your pocket is the only number worth caring about. The rest is for government auditors to worry about.
I especially love it when business types tell me what I should be caring about with regards to my money.
We can take this even further and demand cost-plus pricing for all things (with a regulated and controlled definition of 'cost'). This idea that pricing should scale to the customers' means needs to die. Good business means leaving money on the table, sometimes lots of it.
> with a regulated and controlled definition of 'cost’
Perhaps we can start with a breakdown of your quality of life and come up with what is and is not necessary.
I can start by suggesting getting rid of your detached single family house, greater than 3 liter engine car, restrict eating out to once per quarter, and foregoing vacations involving flights. And that would still be better than how the majority of people in the world live.
Obviously, I mean that as a rhetorical device to show the futility in trying to define what costs are and are not acceptable. The market is capable of figuring that out. The businesses that have the better price will have the appropriate costs.
People are not businesses, we do not exist to generate money for shareholders. The logic does not apply. Quite the opposite: business serves customers, and an expectation of servant leadership should apply here.
When I feel a price is unreasonable, I want to know whom to complain to. If the taxes are what's making it unreasonable, I want to know to complain to the government rather than the merchant.
When I buy something here in Europe it will say €2 on the sticker, and then my receipt will say that the price was €1.66 with a VAT of €0.34 for a total of €2.
"Charges can only be labeled as a tax if 100% of the charge goes to a government entity."
Anyway, are universities covered by these policies as well?
No one asks for a tip at my preferred dirty old fast food spot of choice still using a cash register from the 80's.
As a result, I mostly never eat out anymore, fast food or otherwise with costs gone absurd with or without tips. Let the fools that tip 20% for their coffee keep murica great.
I mean, that's silly I know. But in more seriousness, I feel all that BS of extra hidden prices gets worse when everything becomes just a slightly-higher number that the clerk types on a pad when you're paying with card.
Pretty much you need a law that says sticker price is actual price, fuck all the excuses they make about whatever local bullshit.
At ~$190/person, that honestly strikes me as low. A single last-second convenience fee to an entertainment venue can be tens of dollars. Monthly, it feels like almost every service I use has an unstated fee above and beyond the quoted sticker price.
What I don’t understand is whether doing this really protects their profits. If everyone does it, then it’s a race to the bottom anyway. Is it during this “transition period” where profits are made?
And if everyone in the US does it, then the natural outcome is for everyone and anyone to avoid doing any business or travel in the US.
Every year, you need new ideas to make business better. This is something that you can usually futz with, and maybe get a little bit of bang.
It's not necessarily about pricing template being better universally. It's just that these are factors you can move around, "optimize."
Having multiple levers is just helpful.
This is also an orthodox negotiation model. It's always helpful to negotiate multiple items simultaneously. Salary, benefits separately, pension separately from that, days off, personal days etc.
It's very common that one is a hard no, but others are not.
I know it seems to make sense to transparently aggregate everything.. but... The phenomenon exists regardless.
I know what you mean, but some behaviors have a chance of destroying an industry (think US auto industry or China’s melanin scandal).
Yet businesses are forced to adopt because others in the vicinity do this.
Some additional ground rules seems like it would beneficial.
At least for me, I get very incensed when merchants pull those tricks on me, to the point that I abandon carts on the last stage and start comparing prices everywhere else.
Price changed at the last minute? The seller is being dishonest.
It’s the psychological trickery where I wonder: Is there really value there in the long term?
* plus applicable taxes and fees, taxes on the fees, and fees for assessing the taxes and fees
As someone who always pays extra to choose my seat, no. It is not my problem if people can't be bothered to do the same thing.
Does that always work? I flew on Southwest a few times recently, and by the last one, I learned to check in right when it opened 24 hours before, and I still ended up in groups B and C on the 2 legs.
I think it’s probably a mix of more people having status because of COVID causing the airlines to extend their rewards periods and then more people deciding to pay the $25 ish to not have to deal with checking in on time.
I was with you until you went off the deep end here.
It's really all about how you perceive this. You see it as a hidden cost, others see it as a discount.
I don’t want to have to explain to a kid that they need to put their phone in silent or use headphones, I don’t want to have to keep them from kicking the seat in front of them, etc.
The reality is that there is a base level of decency that should exist. That includes not splitting up children from their guardians.
If you want to charge people for picking their seats, fine. Charging parents to not be separated from their kids is just plain evil. Choosing your seat for $50, and seating a person with their legal companion (or disability aide), even if you didn’t pay extra, are possible at the same time.
As an aside, I’m not entirely convinced that my ticket is $50 less than it would have been with seating fees.
Your complaint has to do with price discrimination. Different levels of service have different prices the same way a Volkswagen costs less than an Audi made in the same factory.
I’m also wondering if before the fee was added as an option the price was $50 more since everyone got to choose their seat. I suspect that the fare is about the same, but now you get to pay $50 more to choose your seat.
You are also missing that there is an external cost of splitting up parents and children. The airline is shifting the cost of babysitting onto other passengers when it should be forced to be a responsibility/cost of the guardian.
By the logic of the airline if I don't get to pick my seat, and get placed next to a minor, shouldn’t I get compensated more for that than someone who is sat next to a person who doesn’t need my assistance in an emergency? Should I also get compensated for not getting a drink, what about if I don’t use the restroom.
At a certain point, it is ok to say that a part of living in society is that you don’t get to separate parents from their children.
I understand the economic argument (You’ve used “price discrimination” incorrectly here, incidentally, since price discrimination has to do with receiving the same product at a different price, not receiving an additional service for an additional price). I’m just saying that this is irresponsible and unethical corporate behavior even if it is economically maximizing profit (in the short term anyway)
At some point it will become your problem whether you are active or passive.
If you want, you can wait until you have a lapful of juice and snacks spilled on you.
And it provides a method of price discrimination between people who care where they sit and those who don't.
A hidden charge would be if you had to pay for seat selection to sit anywhere at all and it wasn't included in the original price.
Airfare is (generally) cheaper than when it was regulated.
That being said the US rule that requires airlines to give you 24hr window to cancel a flight after booking is great.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/airlines-flight-sexua...
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article279873...
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/woman-groped...
https://nypost.com/2023/06/07/doc-allegedly-gropes-woman-on-...
https://abc7chicago.com/delta-airlines-flight-lawsuit-sexual...
https://www.deccanherald.com/india/karnataka/bengaluru/51-ye...
https://news.yahoo.com/alaska-based-army-officer-charged-220...
https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2023/06/23/californi...
I could go on...
I can also probably find some news reports of cannibals nabbing people at the grocery store. Does not mean I am going to avoid shopping.
Please find any such instances over the past 6 months and list them. If length(your list) > length(my list), you win.
Yeah, this has turned into a length measuring contest.
It may be rare, but it absolutely does happen. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12311871/The...
Until a few years ago, an extra fee for a child to sit next to their parent on a plane was not the norm. Safety is being reduced for profit.
Also, there's always Southwest, right?
Travelers seem to buy flights in one way; sort by price ascending and pick the first result. To be in that first position, you have to figure out what you can "unbundle" from the cost of transport. Things you can unbundle include food, checked bags, and now picking the seat you want. Some people are super price sensitive and will gladly save $50 to sit in a middle seat. So everyone's happy, right? The option to choose a seat in advance is still available, but now there is the option to NOT choose a seat and save $50.
The airlines are masters of figuring out what price you're willing to pay.
We largely don't go "it'll be $5000 for your website, but $7000 if you want me to write it without XSS vulnerabilities" though.
Insert basically every other dangerous event that for practical purposes will never happen. People worry too much.
Kids sitting alone on a plane is a very solvable problem. It used to be unheard of just a few years ago.
There's a whole protocol followed.
Only way to guarantee seats remain together is to select seats ahead of time. People complain about "junk fees" because they're mandatory parts of the cost. If a website is upfront about a benefit you're losing, it's not a junk fee.
Lastly, these basic fares are really designed for single travelers on a tight budget with fixed plans. Delta's website makes this clear, and websites that don't make it clear really should.
Until the last few years, this wasn’t even a thing in the US on major airlines. Then United launched their Basic/Shitty Economy and it’s been a race to the bottom ever since.
When complex, confusing pricing structures exist.. fiddling with them becomes a salesman / marketers main tool. It's what they do everyday, how they operate, the wins bring to the table.
These are the knobs that they twiddle, and have for decades been producing reports quantifying the value of their work. They are now panicking, that they won't know how to do their job.. and reporting to CEOs that profits/sales in all those reports will disappear.
Irl, this is pulling a Band-Aid. You could make all service charges illegal, from cafes to airlines.. and the industries we'll have forgotten about it within weeks or months.
It is weird how much easier it gets for customers to compare offers. Comparing political systems, in the US the gov protects revenues and the EU it protects consumer rights.
You can experience this for yourself: try booking a flight with a old fashioned carrier like lufthansa.de and then go to a "we will rip you off for sure" travel-portal from uk to book the exact same flight or a low-cost airline like ryanair. You find the portal by a simple google search, as they are so "cheap" compared to the official price.
The portal shows a price that is 20% less then the carrier price, but somehow you always end up paying at least 30% more, even IF you are really good at the game of "avoid bullshit upsell checkboxes".
The govt talks about how this costs Americans hundreds of billions of dollars, which makes it sound like the money will magically be transferred back to consumers.
But the reality is more complicated, and likely involves businesses migrating these fees into their base prices.
More transparency is good, for sure, but I wonder how much money will actually be saved.
I sell services and I give my customers one lump sum price, where all of my costs (including taxes), overhead, and profit are included with no gotcha fees.
Travel (hotels & car rentals) in the US are industries where the average tax rate is much, much, much higher than the standard sales tax rates for goods sold in the same location. There are all sorts of taxes at that are levied because most of the customers who pay them, don't live there and therefore can't vote against the politicians that imposed them.
It probably will bring some prices down though, by making comparison shopping easier, and by preventing some sales where the customer would have accepted the fee after getting partway through the buying process, but would have rejected the true price up front.
Companies can charge whatever they like, but you have to be told. If it's a mandatory fee it has to be disclosed upfront. Money will be saved when competitive pressures save money for consumers.
I don't agree with regulating late fees, especially since there are cards without late fees at all. I did agree with banning over limit fees since there was no way to instruct your bank to decline transactions that would take you over the limit.
They say that the actual total price has to be displayed from the beginning.
If Ticketmaster wants to break down a $250 concert ticket as $180 for the ticket and $70 for an issuing fee, that's fine. But since the fee is mandatory, they have to advertise it as $250, not $180.
They still get the same amount of money but people aren't being lied to, and are better able to make smart decisions about what to buy without having to wade through a morass of fine print.
It’s not unreasonable people might think proposals are to end the not just makes the visible when scrolling hotel rooms, tix, etc.
As in any "free-market" system, the cost structures of each business will govern its competitiveness and the amount of profit that competition will allow.
And, as usual, the government will find out that further regulating free markets (a three-word oxymoronical phrase) will not achieve the stated goals of lowering the public's costs of goods and services. It might, however, level the playing field in ways that appeal to voters who rely on government to solve all their woes.
Free Markets require information symmetry to function properly and efficiently. The sticker price is ideally supposed to include every cost along with profit margin, such that the buyer pays exactly that price and receives the product/service that's the end of the transaction. Externalities and hidden fees are anti-Free Market, they distort the core fundamental incentive that is supposed to make it work, allowing more expensive products/services to deceive people into buying them over less expensive ones they would have chosen otherwise.
>(a three-word oxymoronical phrase)
Only if you have an extremely understanding of how these tools work. Free Markets are meta-stable constructs without any inherent service to humans, without regulatory maintenance keeping them functional and linking them to people they'd collapse in various ways, or at least be extremely inefficient which defeats the whole point.
>will not achieve the stated goals of lowering the public's costs of goods and services
That is a systemic, long term goal, not just the next week or month. Information symmetry allowing people to make more efficient decisions is the basic driver of competition and sellers improving the value of their offerings. That is what creates lower costs/high value over time, in the same way that breaking up monopolies or monopsonies might well temporarily increase the price of goods/services in certain cases, but leaving them be indefinitely always results in lower efficiency/productivity long term.
Ridiculous. Transparent pricing is a fundamental feature of market economics and distorting that distorts that feature
In US even basic stuff, like going to restaurant for dinner, is "an experience" that requires reservation and generous bakshish.
I do hate those taxes not being included in the price, and I complain every time :)
They could, but choose not to.
The irony being that by figuratively speaking marketing this effort as being against "junk fees", the government itself perpetrates a deception.
Yes, that’s the stated goal: if I’m looking for plane flights, I don’t want to think United is cheaper because I haven’t gotten to step seven of the checkout flow where they say that oxygen is billed separately and the bathroom takes all major credit cards.
Companies are adding these fees instead of raising prices precisely because it makes comparison shopping harder, and that’s never good for society as a whole. They’re keenly aware of the psychology here: once people start putting in the cost of filling out forms, etc. they’re less likely to abort halfway in even if the additional fees bring the total higher than they would have picked at the beginning. The companies have spent a lot of additional time and money redesigning their systems to exploit this, and you’re paying for all of that.
Nobody made companies hide the prices in the first place. It was a deliberate tactic to trick buyers.
In the EU the advertised price has to be with all fees included. No surprises, and I don't have to care if the hotel is €75 + €25 service fee, or just €100.
if prices are presented side by side or are otherwise compared by consumers, they should not have hidden post-comparison mandatory additions that distort that process. price comparison is pretty much the bedrock of a market economy, allowing market participants to distort that process for unfair advantage is clearly a problem.