Hacker News Reader

Comment by sxp | Hacker News Reader

It's unclear whether this junk fee law will have teeth. In theory, California has the same anti-drip pricing law, but restaurants have a specific carve out [1] which is bullshit because the drip pricing that most people complain about is the X% "service charges" and "lifestyle fees" that restaurants have at the bottom of their menu in small print.

From what I can tell online, NYC rules won't have this carveout, but I haven't eaten there recently so I can't confirm.

[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

View on HN

The worst part of restaurant fees are the people (both owners and somehow the patrons) that will justify the existence of the fee as if it's too difficult to just print the final price in the menu.

I live in a touristy part of the world and effectively all restaurants above baseline level will have a "+7% service +11% tax" line.

To me this is clearly deceptive practice.

> I live in a touristy part of the world and effectively all restaurants above baseline level will have a "+7% service +11% tax" line.

In Germany and Croatia, there is no % at all, the prices are final and include all taxes and fees by law and no one will bat an eye if you pay straight cash - however I personally always tip around 10%, simply because I was happy about that when I worked in hospitality myself.

It’s not just Europe, most of the developed world works like this. Except for the United States

and canada

When I was in high school my German teacher taught us to tip by default by rounding up and paying with exact change. Is that still a thing when everyone is paying with card?

Yes. Usually you tell the waiter the final round amount including tip you want to pay and then they start the card transaction with that.

Paying in cash is still common at German restaurants though.

I'm German and in the rare instance I eat out in an actual restaurant, I still do that "rounding up" if I've been happy with the service. Cash or card is not really an important factor for that scenario.

Let's say the bill says someting between 67€ - 72€, I would round that up to 80€.

Or sometimes (not every time though) when I'm getting a Döner kebab and it's ~7.50€ I'll round that up to the next full €.

The secret for Döner is to tell the Dönermann beforehand that you'll tip, then it usually results in a bunch of extra meat!

My friend, you have reinvented something called a “purchase”.

What happens if a tourist refuses to pay the fee? Or asks for resolution by a neutral third party like law enforcement?

Seems like a kind of practice that could quickly become impractical if people simply DDOS it by disputing it.

> if people simply DDOS

DDOS attacks are only "simple" when you can easily coordinate all of the distributed peers. In this case one or two people doing it might be a small annoyance but they're going to have a hard time convincing all the other tourists to turn their trip into a political direct action.

This is an odd response. I've been to countries that have special tourist police trained in english who frequent tourist locations to prevent this kind of behaviour.

I've never experienced it personally but I've heard stories from other travellers who said that they actually went and got a cop to mediate a despite like this and the cop reamed the merchant out and made him apologize in front of other customers and hand the disputed money back.

Some places understand that perpetuating this kind of fraud against an evergreen pool of tourist marks while lucrative to the individual is ultimately damaging to the whole commons that is the tourist industry for the region.

I'm afraid that police wouldn't do a thing if a practice is widespread and accepted by most. Legally speaking it's not a scam because it's not a hidden charge.

The 3% credit card charge on the other hand... but I'd rather pay cash than confront the poor cashier.

I will just respond with a 1-star review.

The police are paid and trained to organise against crime. That's quite different than disconnected tourists beginning to organise, which was the idea I responded to.

It's printed on the menu so it's effectively legal, just dishonest.

> What happens if a tourist refuses to pay the fee?

Just about what would happen if you refuse to pay the bill, most likely you'll end up being shared on some Facebook group or worse.

Fees on one time services are not what this is targeting. This legislation is not meant to address that, and wouldn't apply to that.

They are going after recurring billing (that's what the headline means by "subscription"). It mentions things like gyms, online subscriptions etc.

It would be pretty wild if they had managed to get service fees at restaurants when they were not at all targeting service fees, restaurants or one time in person purchases.

From TFA:

  > Rule from Mamdani administration ... targets ‘junk fees’
  > The city is also targeting so-called “junk fees” that raise the final price of everything from apartments to sporting events, with a proposed rule that requires sellers to “advertise the total price for any good or service, including all mandatory additional charges and fees, up front”, according to a release shared with the Guardian.

> proposed rule that requires sellers to “advertise the total price for any good or service, including all mandatory additional charges and fees, up front”

This is going to be tough to enact, anywhere in the USA, even New York. There is nothing quite as American as "not knowing what you're going to pay for something until you have to pay." Whether it's your doctor bill, restaurant bill with tips and service fees, your hotel stay with a hidden resort fee, or just general purchases where tax is computed at the very end right before you pay... We are culturally so used to this abuse.

I mean culturally we're used to it, but it seems really easy to test for and therefore fine businesses doing it in NYC? Just go ring up some purchase and see if they add a tax onto the listed price, and if they do report it.

Agreed, this is totally solvable. You could even set up an email address for people to send pictures of their receipts to so they know who to investigate. Imagine if you could just screenshot a bill and send it to "junkfees@nyc.gov" and then they'd assign someone to look into it!

Also pre-emptively accepting defeat is by definition self-defeating.

You don't know it won't work if it's not actually tried and as noted there's no particular reason to think it can't work.

You may find some bits of culture are easier to change than others and I wager this one falls squarely in the ‘surprisingly easy’ category.

FTC has mandated all-in pricing for hotels since last year.

Oh does that explain why Priceline has started quoting prices including fees and taxes up front?

> This is going to be tough to enact, anywhere in the USA, even New York.

You followed the link to the poll in the article, right? I haven't seen poll numbers that high on any poll in my lifetime. It shows people of all political affiliations know what junk fees are, and they are all hungry to have them banned.

Keep in mind that Mamdani's first "press conference" was nearly[1] all questions from influencers. I'm sure they are hungry to publicly record themselves encountering a junk fee should this rule pass, starting with the fitness influencer.

1: I counted one journalist ask a question. For free fake internet points, name that journalist. (Hint: it was a three-part question, and it wasn't a soft ball.)

Not me. I always get the real information before I pay. But you have to be persistent and have a desire to know. Medial fees is the same you have to contact them and have them look up the code for the fees. We are in this situation because people don't challenge this shit.

When you're in your doctor's office and discussing the tests they want to order you're very unlikely to be able to get the cost right there during your appointment.

You would probably need to have the doctor print you a list and then after the appointment contact the hospital/provider to find out... which could be a huge delay in getting the tests done and involve a lot of extra travel time. And I can only imagine the effort required to shop around for the cheapest place to have your blood drawn that also orders from the cheapest lab for whatever tests and that also takes your insurance.

The best I get is my PCP will be like "I want to do this test for this reason but it is usually more expensive so I won't order it if you're worried about cost".

The latest one for me is renting a new apartment, getting told it cost $XXXX a month, then being told I'm required to have $XXXXXX amount of renter's insurance at $XXX a month and oh, by the way, click here to use ours.

The insurance requirement isn’t uncommon where I am (California). Though I would avoid whatever plan they are pushing. I got mine through my existing insurance provider and it worked out to ~$15 per month IIRC.

A requirement to obtain renter’s insurance is not an example of the type of fees this legislation is targeting.

It should also be illegal. If I want to risk loss of my personal property that should be my decision to make.

It’s not your property they care about. They usually want this because it includes liability insurance if you damage their property or someone else’s, or your negligence causes harm to someone.

In Australia we have very strong consumer protection law, here it’s expected (by the bank usually) the landlord has at least a minimum “landlord insurance” that covers all that stuff.

For anything not covered, where a tenant does damage thats what the bond is for.

Renter insurance should be optional.

Actually I’m surprised that landlord insurance is not already occurring, imagine a building with 100 apartments, I’m sure the bank would ask the landlord to have a single cover over 100’s of little crappy policies.

If renter insurance is required by regulations, this is likley another good target for policy change.

Americans really do get screwed in so many ways.

Same here. This has only been a thing recently when landlords figured out they could make money selling the insurance. When I was a renter, insurance was never required from me.

It was required in all my boilerplate leases going back to the late 90s. Just rarely if ever enforced or even asked about.

You’d just end up with some giant uncollectable judgement against you if you ended up burning down the apartment complex via negligence. Landlords insurance company would potentially come after you, but probably not since it would not be worth their time for most tenants.

The liability limits on most renters insurance policies are low $100Ks, because most renters don't have many assets they need to protect. This would be pretty inconsequential in the scenario of "burning down the apartment complex."

Landlords/owners have their own fire and liability insurance (ultimately paid for by the tenants as part of their rent); it's unnecessary to demand that the tenants provide their own. Renter's insurance is for the tenant's protection, not the landlord's.

My leases always point out that the landlord's insurance does not cover the tenant's personal property or liability, and recommend renter's insurance. But it's not required.

> My leases always point out that the landlord's insurance does not cover the tenant's personal property or liability, and recommend renter's insurance. But it's not required.

I generally agree, obviously for a "burn the place down" incident the renter's policy is going to be rather inconsequential, and likely not even actionable.

But for more "medium" stuff like "flood the unit below me because I left the bath on and left for work" where the liability is in the low $10k's, that's where I see landlords (and their covering policies) wanting the renter's insurance to kick in and cover.

I personally find it a bit slimey - if you're a landlord this is just part of the risk of being a landlord. If you don't have the capital to cover such incidents, then you should simply not be a landlord. Sorry.

Trying to squeeze an extra few dollars per month out of tenants is ridiculous, but seems to be the way everything is going when you get hyper-financialization and PE type firms buying multiple buildings.

Plenty of places have required renters insurance going back the last two decades I've been an adult. My parents were landlords in the hood when I was a kid and they required it (as a lease provision, never enforced).

However, it is landlord and location dependant - it's pretty much the norm in NYC, for example (see https://www.reddit.com/r/AskNYC/comments/11bl350/does_your_a...).

> Americans really do get screwed in so many ways.

Absolutely. I assumed the parent was talking about the US because that's the only place in the world I've encountered this.

If everyone is required to have an insurance - why not bury it in property tax/rates instead?

In NZ we are not required to have third party medical cover because everyone is already covered by yearly car registration fee.

The answer to every question like this in the US is "because the wrong people would benefit".

In the past (and still today but less so), that literally meant black people. Now it mostly means poor people of all races.

It's been shown over and over that it's practically an American cultural value to accept lower benefits to yourself in trade for denying benefits to what you see as an undeserving group.

What about people without cars?

I’m pretty sure EVERYONE is covered under the public system, a levy is added in the car rego fee that is the funding mechanism. You don’t need to be a driver to be covered.

Are you talking about ACC? It levies basically everything, not just cars.

But then it should be included in the quoted price, right? It’s mandatory after all.

I've never purchased rental insurance from a landlord or their recommended place.

I used my insurance company I already had.

Most people will purchase through their car insurance company for a bundled rate.

Should car insurance be included in the price of a car? You have the freedom to purchase insurance from whoever.

That’s a legal requirement though. If I rent a car and the rental company requires me to also insure it or they won’t give me the keys, surely that should be included, even if the insurance money isn’t going to the rental company.

If you are leasing a car they would certainly also require you to obtain insurance as part of your lease agreement. Same deal with an apartment.

Why would they? Would they not just sue you for the damages if you break the car? Why would they care? I never leased a car but I thought they checked that you have enough money for the lease to prevent people from defaulting.

But even if it is true, I think the price of the insurance (or at least some reference value for comparison, assuming there are multiple competing offers) should be included in the sticker price.

First, legal proceedings are expensive and may cost more than the car is worth. Second, the lessor may not be solvent enough to pay the damages all at once (“you can’t squeeze blood from a stone”). Third, the money to take the car off the lot in a lease agreement is fronted by a third party, a lender. The lender is likely calling the shots here. See https://lessee.cula.com/documents/CULA-Lease-Welcome-Brochur...

For the same reason, purchase-money lenders (in a buy-vs-lease situation) typically require the debtor to hold a comprehensive insurance policy until the vehicle is paid off. It protects their interest.

Then they should include it in the rent. My landlord wants a Porsche too, he doesn't get to add a separate Porsche Fee or mandate me to pay a Porsche payment, he has to take some of the money coming out of the rent and put it towards his Porsche.

If you’d rather pay $500 for the landlords insurance rather than $200 from your own policy, that sounds like a great plan. You’re paying for the Porsche either way.

Sounds like the landlord has an easy opportunity to earn an extra $300, why doesn't he?

Renters insurance protects the landlord from liability claims. They don't care if you insure your own property, but I don't know of an insurance company that decouples liability and property.

Also, renters insurance is cheap, I haven't rented in more than a decade but when I rented I was only paying less than $100/year for it.

I just looked it up and currently the average premium for renters insurance is $15 to $22 a month.

Renters insurance is primarily protecting the landlord. If you cause a flood, if a guest slips and falls and sues you, etc.

Your building would be fine if you found a renter’s insurance that didn’t cover your own goods (which would cost like $3/year less).

Renter’s insurance is not a fee.

i think drip pricing was already cracked down on by the FTC as of 2025

At least in CA they need to disclose them now. Previously some restaurants would just hit you with a surprise mandatory tip.

Usually by the time people are seated and you read the fine print on the back of the menu, inertia has taken over.

Some people say they use the fine print as a reminder to cut back on the tips proportionally.

Exactly. Already decided to eat there and sat down. At that point, "whatever", for any noticed or not additional minor charges.

> CA

Wasn’t the argument for tips that tipped workers had a low minimum wage, but CA now has a minimum for tipped workers of $16.90 (actually the same minimum wage for non tipped workers too)?

> which is bullshit because the drip pricing that most people complain about is the X% "service charges" and "lifestyle fees" that restaurants have at the bottom of their menu in small print.

I don't think I go to the same restaurants as everyone else.

It's unfortunately somewhat common these days and personally I actively avoid any place which does this. At least it's only somewhat common rather than the standard so it's still possible. Couple of examples:

https://sushiconfidential.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/sc_... "3.5% Living Wage Surcharge added to each bill which allows us to provide the service you have always enjoyed!"

https://www.pacificcatch.com/menu/ "NorCal - A 3% surcharge (5% in San Francisco) will be added to all Guest checks to help offset the rising cost of wages and benefits. This is not gratuity."

Because increasing prices by that percentage is too hard?

They're trying their best to make it seem that government policies and regulation compliance costs are responsible, hence the names of these charges.

Yea, it's basically restaurant owners trying to get their customers involved in their political whining.

Notice how you never see things like "Business License Fee" or "Restaurant Electricity Bill Surcharge" listed out as separate line items on customers' bills. Those are things restaurant owners have to pay, too, so why don't they get their own charges to customers? Why does only "Living Wage" get a line item on the customer's bill?

The elephant in the room would be an ‘employee salary surcharge’

Hey now, let's not get carried away, these jackass restaurant owners want to make it clear, the "Living Wage" guilt trip is the tip part, and the fees THEY put on are to pay for "benefits like healthcare" and you're not allowed to consider it part of the tip.

Nevermind that California doesn't even have a lower "tipped" min wage like some states do, so by supporting tipping, we're just saying that servers simply "deserve" more money for some reason than people who stock shelves or pick orders at Amazon or Walmart.

If it is hard to find staff the wages go up. At least that's how it works in my country.

Although I will admit service is notoriously bad over here but in honesty that's secretly how we all want it.

> Nevermind that California doesn't even have a lower "tipped" min wage like some states do, so by supporting tipping, we're just saying that servers simply "deserve" more money for some reason than people who stock shelves or pick orders at Amazon or Walmart.

Isn't this the thing the government is saying in California? They passed a law requiring restaurants to pay the same minimum wage as jobs where workers don't get tips, on top of the tips, essentially making it the law that people in tipped occupations have to be paid more than what can be paid to people doing any other kind of work.

Unless the point is to get customers to stop tipping because a) the workers are now guaranteed the same minimum wage as anyone else even if they don't and b) they can't afford the tip on top of the prices that now have the higher minimum wage priced into them anyway.

> Electricity Bill Surcharge

"Fuel surcharge" on flights. Which should be illegal: the cost of hedging fuel cost risk should be included in any ticket price.

A friend said that Uber was charging a fuel surcharge here in New Zealand, but that it wasn't passed on to the driver (who pays for the fuel). If true I would find that interesting.

> A friend said that Uber was charging a fuel surcharge here in New Zealand, but that it wasn't passed on to the driver

I did a bit of a dive on this and I think it’s not correct. I have a low threshold for hating them, after the reports of how females staffers were treated a few years back, but this new thing seems to be untrue.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/128042303/uber-introduces-f...

Great link. Sounded suss to me. Could easily have been a bullshit taxi driver, or a social outrage story. I should have tried to validate before repeating, sorry.

> "Restaurant Electricity Bill Surcharge"

Unfortunately you’ve spoken too soon on this one. I recently had an energy surcharge added due to the “Iran war” (as explained by the server) added to every check.

Well, they are responsible.

If you want to claim "we have the lowest prices in town" in advertising, you can't increase the "price".

That's why you don't say _in town_. That's verifiable and specific. You just say _lowest prices_ (nobody cares if you aren't specific), or add fine print that specifies a time/location (Amazon renewed: comparison price is the brand new version of same item on Amazon itself) or _only at $store_ (your competitors aren't participating in your branded sale).

Restaurant owners interviewed in the media here in SF are directly quoted saying they can’t do that because “customers would notice”, or think “oh that’s expensive, I can’t eat out twice a week”.

These are arguments for including the fees that make the customer __still pay the same higher price__, implying that the whole point is that they won’t notice. And reporters don’t seem to even register the absurdity of those remarks or question them in any way.

https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/sf-restaurants-junk-fees...

https://www.kqed.org/news/11992412/californias-junk-fee-ban-...

It’s the same thing with any “menu” vs actual price.

Airline baggage fees are probably the prototypical case for this. Airlines that did not display the lowest price during flight searches got outcompeted by those that did. This led the entire industry to change since it took an entire decade long marketing campaign centered around it (Southwest) to try to stay even.

Consumers make irrational choices all the time, and this is one of them. They absolutely notice the final bill and complain while continuing to patronize businesses that engage in such behavior.

Consumers would need to reward honest pricing if they wanted this to change. Or vote for regulation.

More akin comparison would be charging for carryon vs condiments.

I just did trip with family where our allowance was 8 suitcases of 184 kg total weight. Buying same on a budget carrier we used on our leg would cost more than flights itself.

I think it’s a little different.

The restaurant fee isn’t a fee for something “extra”, it’s just a blanket extra charge on everything.

It’d be like the airline sold you a ticket for $500, but as you step off the plane at the destination they say “actually it was $550”, because it said so in the fine print.

They need to price it in to the menu.

I run Union electrical jobs and I don’t list out every fringe benefit they receive on an itemized invoice. It’s $163/hr with everything baked in.

If restaurants want to pay a living wage, charge more money for food.

I tried searching for what a "lifestyle fee" is and all I could find is references to "living wage fee" which is essentially a forced tip added to the bill.

A service charge for large groups though is understandable as they typically will require much more attention and work from waitstaff than the typical small dining party.

Large groups are also the most notorious non-tippers.

I'm somewhat skeptical that they actually require more attention per person. Does an 8-person group require more than 2x as much attention as a 4-person group?

They do need more attention per person. Doing anything with a group of eight is just more complicated, and you’re more likely to have a person in the group who slows things down for whatever reason plus people trying to help them which can slow things down more.

They’ll take longer per person to order because they’ll be coordinating appetizers and who’s sharing what, etc.

They’re more likely to be celebrating a special occasion which means people less familiar with the restaurant or even people who don’t eat out much at all.

And the group is big enough that people will be having side conversations while one side of the table talks to the server, which also slows things down.

> They do need more attention per person. Doing anything with a group of eight is just more complicated, and you’re more likely to have a person in the group who slows things down

More likely to have such a person in a group of 8 than in a group of 1 maybe but that's meaningless.

> for whatever reason plus people trying to help them which can slow things down more.

And group members helping each other never saves the restaurant any time?

> They’ll take longer per person to order because they’ll be coordinating appetizers and who’s sharing what, etc.

Appetizers they would likely have never ordered if they did not have people to share them with.

> They’re more likely to be celebrating a special occasion which means people less familiar with the restaurant or even people who don’t eat out much at all.

So they're even bringing new customers that would have never given the restaurant any money on their own.

The fact that Scott Wiener made that carve out for restaurants via emergency legislation (SB 1524) made my blood boil and I vowed to vote against him in any election is runs in.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com