Are those fees not included in the advertised price? The issue is not fees themselves but fees that are added on at the checkout screen.
Then an asterisk and tiny, tiny print somewhere below stating "plus taxes and fees"
So it depends on how you define "fees not included in the advertised price" but the last time I had a postpaid plan, I couldn't even know how much those added taxes and fees were until my first bill arrived.
As an aside, I don't know why AirBnB can't get their shit together and push all the fees to the map. My guess is that most of those fees are not per night? Well make the front matter say "$120/night + fees" and when you select your dates you know what the total cost is.
Everyone has an incentive to list as low a price as possible.
For fucks sakes even car dealers are pulling this shit, listing EVs with tax rebates - that people may or may not qualify for - already deducted.
Following Teslas lead, who for a long time showed monthly prices that included “estimated gas purchase savings” by default (you could see the actual number but you had to flip a switch to do so. At least now they have to have the sensible default).
The problem is that everyone says we want this then votes with our wallet that we don’t.
Stubhub once tried to be upfront honest about fees. Bookings dropped like a stone. People just didn’t want concerts at those prices. But an extra $20 when you’re already paying $80, ehhh sure okay I’ve already come this far and feel pretty committed to going.
> As the study found, “Overall, the StubHub users who weren't shown fees until checkout spent about 21 percent more on tickets and were 14 percent more likely to complete a purchase compared with those who saw all-inclusive prices from the start.“
https://boondoggle.substack.com/p/stubhub-and-the-case-of-th...
Let’s do airlines next
This is easy for us hackernews types with disposable income to say and very hard for the average person to implement. 57% of Americans can’t afford an unexpected $500 expense [1]
Always keep in mind the boots theory of economic unfairness:
> A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. ... But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/most-americans-cant-afford-a-50...
They probably should, but people just don't work this way. We aren't machines that strictly go by the best economical output. Unless you find a way to make people do that (and I don't think this exists, since we'll always be partially driven by emotions) we have two options:
a) let people be exploited by companies
b) legislate against exploitation by companies
I for sure think the latter is the better option, especially since it forces companies to compete on value instead of just extraction.
I don’t see that as a problem whatsoever.
i see this idea of “i need to manipulate people for them to give me money” as the problem.
“if i don’t manipulate and obfuscate, no one wants my product” should make one reconsider their business model to one where they can be upfront and people still want the product.
You see the full price of your stay on the map, when you click through you see the breakdown per night plus any fees