Cable companies, automakers try to derail FTC, FCC quest to kill misleading fees
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And then how about an extended warranty? Want to finance through us so we can double dip?
Buying a car in America is one big show and dance as to who can screw the customer the most. And then god forbid you need to get service on the vehicle, they will do everything they possibly can to make sure it's not covered under warranty.
"I'm looking to buy a used car and wanted somewhere to give it a once-over? Do you do that? If so, how much and do you have availability on (day)?"
A couple of times, I've been fine with buying the car first, but with a clause in a sales contract saying that I have the right to return the car within 3 days for a full refund (basically replicating the effects of my state's lemon law. The lemon law only applies to new car purchases).
But the mechanic's check has never actually revealed any issues that the seller hadn't already disclosed to me. People tend to be pretty honest about those sorts of things.
I've never been burned or disappointed buying from a real person. I've bought two cars from used car dealers and deeply regretted both of those purchases.
And yes, you might have to pay taxes, but you get that with the dealership as well. Dealerships aren't immune to taxes.
More reasonable people acknowledge that there are obligations both ways: Society has an obligation to the individual (private rights and ownership), and individuals have an obligation to society (taxes and limitations on what you can do to private property).
I do agree that sales taxes seem kind of weird and arbitrary way to collect society's obligations. Personally I prefer something along the lines of Georgeism, where only property is taxed. This makes the ownership / taxation thing symmetric.
If you aren't getting much value for your taxes, perhaps elect better people to handle that tax money.
Because in most cases it's literally illegal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_dealerships_in_the_United_...
The exception is service, because that's actually a separate market and not just a middle man on sales in the original market. Prohibiting manufacturers from operating service centers and leaving it to independent mechanics is essentially a ban on vertical integration and still makes a lot of sense. Because service for a particular model of car is in many ways back to being a consolidated market, since that model may need specific parts or tools and you still want to maintain a competitive market for service for customers with that model of car. You also want to make sure mechanics can service cars of multiple makes, since that fosters competition too.
Most people go into a car dealer expecting to haggle. For better or worse, we know they're going to screw around and so we're prepared to do battle. If you go into it with a different mindset, it can be pretty painless most of the time.
Walk in the door and offer them MSRP. Then fill out the DMV registration paperwork, give them your payment, and leave with the car. It won't be quite as smooth as Tesla because you're not pre-filling this out online, but it is still pretty painless.
During the pandemic this wouldn't work because the market was commanding premiums on available stock. That means mark-ups from dealers, but Tesla is hardly immune -- go look at what a Model 3 was priced at later in 2022. The difference is that dealers at least have -some- competition. Tesla just tells you what you must pay.
So does Dell or Samsung. That doesn't mean they have no competitors.
And the carmaker is ultimately deciding what the dealer has to pay, so what's the difference except another middle man wanting a cut?
Manufacturer-to-consumer sales make the most sense for big ticket items and things that can be easily sold over the internet. Retail stores can make more sense for perishable goods and things you might want to inspect before purchasing and convenience purchases and things with a high ratio of shipping cost to price etc.
Still not as ideal as other countries, but cest la vie.
Last renewal, the Nissans were out of my budget so I had to go with a different car, and I was brutally reminded of how absolutely awful the experience is: after seeing an ad online and emailing the salesguy to confirm the complete pricing, once I got there he started the dog&pony show of "let me talk to my manager", "that was actually just for one specific car which we already sold", "but that doesn't include these 7 fees we're adding to all cars", etc. It was disgusting.
This is what Saturn did in the 1990s across the entire brand and customers loved it.
Then they stopped making their own cars. The Saturn Ion was a Chevy Cobalt with a Saturn badge. But that doesn't work because they can't set the Saturn price in a way that saves both the customer and the dealer the trouble of haggling or customers wouldn't go to the Chevy dealer, whereas if they set the same MSRP for the same car then customers go to the Chevy dealer so they can haggle for a discount. And you can't split the difference or customers self-select and nobody pays MSRP at the Chevy dealer. Then when that didn't work they discontinued the brand instead of going back to the original model.
She's not dumb by any means, but I don't think this was legal in the UK where she came from. That was a bit of an eye-opener for me.
Then I remember getting kinda depressed, because the pricing system here (in the US) isn't going to change anytime soon. I recalled an article about Ticketmaster, which basically said that their system of showing the final price only at checkout, after a bunch of screens/clicks, is hugely profitable for them, almost everyone still purchases the tickets, regardless of the fees, because the process is so painful and there's really no alternative. Back to reality. Advertised ticket price = $100. Final price = $165. Ugh.
Fun fact: India also has a system called MRP or maximum retail price. This is a price printed on the product at the factory, above which a shop cannot sell it. So no up-charging based on where you're buying it.
I did some POS work for a company years back and tried to integrate 'taxes'. I was replacing an earlier system, and I used modern tax SaaS (avalara, IIRC). The client was telling me all my taxes were wrong, but... digging in... Avalara was correct, and the client had been calculating and collecting taxes wrong for... about 15 years. I had no way to try to figure out how they were doing it 'wrong' to match how they'd been doing it. This had to do with 'service/labor' income vs 'product' vs 'chemicals' they used. Different counties in the same state had different rates (which changed over different months/years historically). Tribal lands had different rules still.
The biggest lesson I took from that was... if you do something (tax calculations), do it consistently and uniformly. Should they have been audited, it may have looked a bit better that they were at least consistent in their tax issues, instead of looking like they were explicitly trying to somehow intentionally scam customers or the govt.
1. Allow companies to advertise a price exclusive of tax (but inclusive of fees)
2. Require companies to list a single total price where the final price the customer pays is less than or equal to. So their advertised price would be inclusive of the highest tax rate the customer would be required to pay.
The oft-cited tax calculation "problem" is just an excuse.
But that's what they want -- to advertise the price exclusive of tax.
And some of the fees are the same thing. They depend on different factors and aren't necessarily fixed. You could say that fixed fees have to be included, but that's an obvious loophole; they'll make the fee $5 if you're in California and $4.99 otherwise. Or $5 normally and $0 if you meet some esoteric condition that hardly anybody does, if you require the minimum fee to be included.
> Require companies to list a single total price where the final price the customer pays is less than or equal to. So their advertised price would be inclusive of the highest tax rate the customer would be required to pay.
But then they can't advertise the lower price even if that's what many or most of their customers would actually be paying. Suppose San Francisco has a weird law that would add 300% to the price of the product but only for people who live there, and you're advertising across the entire state.
Also, then they bypass it by advertising a product which is only available to be shipped to addresses in states with no sales tax or expensive regulatory requirements. When you show up and ask for that product they say it isn't available to you but here's one that is which is really the same thing under a different SKU, for the same price exclusive of local taxes and fees.
But the collection and remittance of the taxes to the specific taxing authorities is a whole other ballgame. Whether or not you see "$499 + $17 + $12 + $34" or you see "$571" on an item... the 'correct' amounts need to be identified, accounted for and sent to the specific taxing authorities. Doing that well enough, at scale, is not trivial, depending on where you're selling to, and how much.
India has two, maybe three, levels of taxation: central, state and maybe local. In America, you may have dozens of overlapping cities, counties, water districts, school districts and high school districts before we get to municipal, state and federal.
The big one that tripped up the client was not charging/collecting tax on shipping. They weren't, but the tax engine said that they should be. I think the rules on that had changed sometimes perhaps 10-15 years earlier in the areas they served, but they never kept abreast of that change. This was already several years ago, so my recollection is a bit hazy now.
You can't honestly believe that only the US has different tax rates depending on which state/city you are in?
Obviously it could be difficult but once the sale happens you need to know the final price. So if you can figure out when selling the good you can figure it out when advertising the good.
"Impossible" to have one single price that is applicable to every single potential buyer in all cases.
Easiest example: if a computer is advertised as $2199 "including all taxes!" and a buyer who is tax exempt is buying... they wouldn't pay the $2199 advertised price (or... shouldn't).
What is this nonsense?
Businesses advertise "Widget is $PRICE + applicable tax". When you go to an individual store you pay ($PRICE + applicable tax). On the receipt it can show a breakdown of what that is.
If that's hard to do on the backend for the business too fucking bad. Consumers should know exactly what they're going to be asked to pay upfront.
Be transparent with the price, tell the consumer precisely what they're going to be paying upfront. If it's hard, too bad, figure it out or don't be in business. At least that's how it should be.
This is less about "show full breakdown of price in final bill",which is what I see debating here and what level should that be taken to,and more "don't advertise $X and then show $x+$y+$z unexpectedly" on final bill which I assume is less controversial .
I'm somewhat sympathetic to billboard advertising, as that is something that can't really do this. But the vast majority of advertising can, in fact, show this level of detail quite easily.
This is what is done now, and what the FTC/FCC are trying to make illegal. The sticking point is that these specific industries have gotten very creative about what constitutes a tax or government fee, so it isn't as simple for consumers as knowing you have to tack on sales tax.
At least in MA, you have to pay the sales tax in order to register the vehicle. It doesn't matter what state you bought the car in.
The regulators aren't letting that loophole slip in. Everyone here goes to NH to skip out on sales taxes, including the regulators that pass the sales taxes.
While there are a vast number of people from different localities laws and regulations here,for most people the issue we are trying to solve here is simple and the surcharge is not tax or regulation based. In particular, when buying vehicles dealer surcharges are one massive entry and taxes are a) already separately listed b) in great detail and c) not typically that variable. Similar with various telecom completely BS charges which are variations of "we need this money to actually be profitable" - which is fine as such,you're a business and need to be profitable,cool. But don't make me drive 50km or spend 3 hours signing up based on advertised price and then add on BS surcharges that have nothing to do with local regulation and everything to do with your business and marketing plan.
that is the problem we are trying to solve,and again,arguments here seem to veer from "let us definitely let the perfect be enemy of the good and not solve anything until my favourite clever unlikely edge case is addressed" , to "shirley I have a vested interest somewhere to be protesting this much" :)
P.s. and then there are Ticketmaster convenience fees and other companies service fees. I want to see somebody stand up and defend them here as a complicated problem and undue business burden and the right thing for the consumer :)
Which is all to say that dealing with variable costs is part of doing business. That they are currently able to dodge responsibility for some things by attaching them after the fact as "fees" is kind of upsetting to me. Consider if you had them send out a service unit to fix a line in the neighborhood, and they decided to line item send you a fuel bill for the work. Was something they always had to deal with, but finding a way to keep an expense from cutting into profits by directly passing it to users is a touch crazy.
It is EXACTLY that easy: "$PRICE + applicable tax".
It's truly bizarre to see people here hurling themselves to defend slimy, deceptive business practices and acting like in 2024 this is some utterly complex insoluble problem.
And finally: too fucking bad for the businesses. Prices should be completely transparent, consumers should know precisely what they're going to be asked to pay upfront, if that creates a burden for businesses tough shit.
What next? McDonald's $2.00 value menu plus $5.99 Oxygen and Water Fee at checkout?
"Leave it to Congress" is tantamount to deregulating literally everything.
And the Chevron doctrine is not "unelected agency heads rule your life" - remember those agency heads can make rules because Congress said they could. By doing nothing, Congress implies approval. If Congress doesn't like what they're doing, Congress can easily pass a law overriding it or even abolishing the agency.
I understand there is an infinite number of possible policies, but in a representative democracy there are usually only a couple possible policies to choose from.
What is the actual thing that will happen if the Supreme Court rules one way or another in the Chevron thing?
Very roughly, the Chevron ruling ensures that federal courts give deference to executive agency policies when those policies are reasonably based on the law passed by Congress. Federal judges, lacking detailed knowledge of some specific set of regulation, cannot impose their judgement during a case - they must defer to the agency.
Overturning Chevron could allow lower-level, unelected judges impose their personal views when hearing cases (vs deferring to the agency tasked with enforcing laws). The argument that an unelected bureaucracy is "making law" doesn't pass the sniff test - those agencies are reviewed by Congress and limited by law. Federal judges have no such oversight - our primary recourse when they go off the rails is impeachment.
Super-simplified example... Boeing doesn't want the FAA to regulate airplane doors, so they sue on the grounds regulating doors isnt explicitly listed in law as a something the FAA can regulate.
The judge hearing the case believes Boeing should be able to build doors however it wants and rules against the FAA (under Chevron, judge would be required to defer to FAA's industry knowledge).
Impact: Boeing can now install doors with fewer bolts that required without risk of being grounded by the FAA.
Figure that out, and then you’ll figure out why Congress doesn’t just make all the decisions.
There’s no inherent reason why any business must work in the interests of consumers. Without social or government regulation, the dynamic reduces to an oscillatory predator/prey system, where maximal profit is extracted at any cost until the consumer base is damaged. The damaged consumer base reduces profits and causes the company to extract less, allowing the consumer base to recover… repeat.
Apply this everywhere, including restaurants, delivery services, etc.
Make it so that anything beside price and taxes can be ignored at the discretion of the customer. If it not in the price and it’s not a sales tax, I’m free to ignore it.
They add their own misleadingly named fees to give the illusion that they're direct taxes paid to the government. For example, Vonage: https://support.vonage.com/articles/answer/Regulatory-Compli...
> The Regulatory, Compliance and Intellectual Property (RCIP) Fee covers regulatory, legal, intellectual property and compliance-related expenses, including those related to customer privacy protection, anti-fraud protection, number portability and innovation, all of which enable our services to enhance your communication experience. The RCIP fee is not a government mandated fee.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/verizon-wont-sto...
> Verizon Wireless customers may get up to $100 each as part of a $100 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit over Verizon's monthly "Administrative and Telco Recovery Charge."
> But as is typical in class-action settlements, Verizon isn't admitting any wrongdoing. It also plans to keep charging the monthly fee and says it may raise it in the future.
Either their fee is wrong and they should both have to stop charging it and pay a settlement or the fee is totally fine and Verizon should pay nothing.
To what degree is this actually true?
My experience with regulators is that they often do not have "very tailored knowledge" - they are just cogs in their own machine. They are often generalists whose skills are more transferrable to other regulatory branches than they are to the industries in question.
But guess what? There are plenty of underhanded businesses that could care less about a bad rating from the BBB, because the type of customer they're fleecing is not particularly savvy. Think elderly folks who are a little too trusting, or immigrants with a bit of a language barrier who aren't familiar with the BBB.
This kind of stuff will break down trust in each other and we will all be cultivating cabbage to feed our own.
Maybe you balk and refuse. Sure, we've got EquiConsumer, LLC ready to go and backed by a $30M grant and an ad campaign by WPP. And we'll wait and try again with the guy who replaces you as CEO. Or you can play ball and take the flight and the steak and the four tickets to the Sphere.