Hacker News Reader

Comment by cogman10 | Hacker News Reader

"Fees" on top of the top line price should be illegal. It's just a way to smuggle in a 100% increase in the purchase price to get an initial buy in for a product. It is super scammy.

Heck, I would even take this a step further and say that taxes as well should always be fully included in the topline price. If a company wants to add a breakdown of how much went to taxes, I'm ok with that.

The sticker price should always be the full price.

View on HN

As a British person this is always so alien when traveling in the US. You could go one step further and suggest that perhaps tips which are practically mandatory should be included in the headline price but that might be a step too far.

Many restaurants have tried this, and end up switching back because comparing prices to other restaurants puts them at a disadvantage. I think the only way for it to happen is regulation that forces it. Might as well include taxes in that price too.

Staff often doesn’t like it either. Probably some combination of actually making less money and being overly optimistic about what they would be making if they were getting tips. a bar I was aware of that advertised paying $20+ and hour with no tips switched to a tipped model due to staff complaints.

it sounds like what happened is management simply did not replace the tipped wage with an appropriate flat wage. if management provided a satisfactory wage, nobody would complain.

there would be a rough transition period, but i do believe that in countries where tipping is not the norm, places just pay more to get better stuff the way non-tipped labor already works.

one of the breweries i live by recently moved from non-tipped to tip, and it's generally a disliked change from what I hear because most of the time the brewery is open it's not busy enough to make up for the loss in wages, and then people fight over the really busy shifts.

The best employees complain loudly. End of discussion on that one.

The trouble is that sales tax can be different in every municipality. National advertising would be a nightmare. However, I think prices at brick and mortar stores should be tax included and, when shopping online, if my address is known, the tax should be include as well.

I also think "plus Tax/Tax included" should be featured more prominently but I think that businesses would likely do that themselves given the conditions above so that, when comparing prices, you would very noticeably see that whether tax was included or not in your price. ie, Amazon would put in green letters near the price "Tax included" so when I compared their price to another place I would know why Amazon's price might be higher.

I agree that tips are stupid. But they are technically different as you can pay the price without them and be fine. This is unlike "convenience fees" and tax which are required but not displayed in the advertised price.

I definitely believe that you should be able to purchase something for the advertised price. Maybe that is "starting at" but you should be able to check out at that price.

tipping culture is so annoying here in the Bay Area. the other day i was at a coffee shop and cashier handed me a device that had suggested tips from 18-22% with no obvious Cancel button. i was infuriated and the cashier had a smug look on her face. she knew what i was looking for and she didn't bother telling me how to skip it. mind you, this was for a coffee to-go order.

I get very annoyed at things like that where there shouldn't be a tip. Tip is for service quality and counter service there is no differentiation in service between different servers. People do go to restaurants and ask for their favorite waiter. There often is a difference in service between different waiters at the same restaurant - enough that I like the ability to pay for good service (if you always give the same tip you are doing it wrong - you should be giving as many 10% tips as 20%.

Taxes should also be included in the advertised price, then. Just imagine!

That would be nice, but there is a LOT of background work before that is feasible (in the US). As it currently stands, for many products a vendor would need to know who you are and where you live before they could quote you a total price. That's unacceptable.

other countries have figured that out even countries with multiple levels of taxation like in the U.S. it's not an unsolvable problem.

> not an unsolvable problem

I never said it was. In fact, I specifically said that there is work to do before making the rule about listing all prices inclusive of taxes.

but you did say that figuring out the final price is "unacceptable"? why is it unacceptable? my point is that other countries have figured out a way to display the final prices, but USA still hasn't figured out how to do it or they don't have any plans to do it.

As things stand currently, it would be unacceptably intrusive as you have to collect information on all shoppers whether they purchase or not.

Do the pre-work first, and then make a rule about displaying the final price.

In Europe they make a best guess based on IP location, and if logged in using the account address or previous delivery address.

Then the price may change at the checkout if you put in a different/unexpected delivery address.

Actually there's a purpose to keeping taxes separate. Policymakers want the tax burden to be visible, it is not part of price transparency because the vendor has nothing to do with the tax rate.

Taxes are also hyper local and can differ between dine in/out making it hard to show the final price up front.

US policymakers want this. Euro/Asian policymakers have moved beyond this - whenever you travel you pay the sticker on the tin.

It's a solved problem but we can't make it happen here. Why?

Interestingly, in some states it's illegal to post the "price" as one including all applicable taxes.

Do you mean states of the USA or states as in "country"? Which ones?

I meant states of the USA. It looks like it's not as bad as it used to be (time for me to read a few more laws I guess). A decade ago WA prohibited the practice. I'm not sure where it might currently be illegal.

I mentioned the reason in another comment, it's an important govt transparency principle that the tax burden be separate and visible.

Yes, but much like cigarette lobbying, you want to look at who's paying for the given outcome. We have cigarette minimum prices because it increases profits for tobacco companies, and we have this fraudulent price reporting nonsense because lower advertised prices result in more sales. Transparency could just as easily be achieved via a tax breakdown on the receipts merchants are already required to provide on request, while correctly advertising what the consumer will actually pay.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com