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Comment by flowerlad | Hacker News Reader

We need a global ban on junk fees. I am tired of shit like AT&T's "Administrative & Regulatory Cost Recovery Fee".

This isn't a ban on junk fees. It's an upfront disclosure requirement.

On one side, I fully understand that. On the other side, if this really reflects the cost of compliance, maybe this is the only way to signal the voter that the "there ought to be a law" approach has some downsides to it.

Solution: you may put it on the receipt, but the price you advertise must be final all-in. Gas stations manage it just fine. Advertised price is what you pay, but receipt shows the taxes

This indeed sounds like a good solution.

How would you like it if you rented a VM from AWS, and in the bill they added fees for employee health insurance, social security and medicare? That's a cost of compliance too!

I mean, those costs are in the bill, they just don't itemize them. What difference would it make to you if they did?

It is not just a matter of whether it is itemized or not. It is a matter of deception. They advertise one price then charge you another. So in the AWS example, you think you agreed to pay $20 per month for the VM, but when you get the bill it is $37 because they added fees for employee health insurance, social security and medicare. Would you not be pissed?

I honestly think a us ban would get us quite far, also in a global setting.

You can’t ban business from passing on their costs to their customers.

Australia just tried this by banning businesses from charging a card use surcharge.

You really reckon business aren’t going to then just wrap the cost of card service / merchant fees in to every product, thereby hurting those who pay with cash?

Hint: that’s exactly what businesses are doing. I know because I asked them.

Maybe stop voting for politicians who believe they can tax and regulate an economy to growth and productivity.

A fee for a specific service (ie using a card vs using cash) is pretty different from unavoidable junk fees. As long as a fee like that is advertised up-front it's totally fine; but fees that everybody has to pay are a qualitatively different thing because they are just a way to get a misleadingly low sticker price for the product.

Ofcause you can!

You just ask the business to advertise a single price.

Naturally businesses pass on the cost of doing business, it is literally their job.

Pricing just needs to be transparent - this is a key requirement for an efficient market. And something the US is failing at miserably.

At least try to make a consistent argument.

What wasn’t transparent about having a line item on the receipt for the card usage charge?

How is obfuscating it better for the customer?

The credit card companies have long charged merchants a percentage to use their payment services. In Australia, Visa and Mastercard were typically charging their merchant customers lower rates than American Express -- on chatting with various smaller businesses who are not in a position to negotiate the percentage with AMEX down, AMEX wanted a couple percent more than Visa at approx 4% of the sale price. However in recent years, the customer never sees the full payment cost passed on to them, just a smaller percentage - at a guess 50 - 75 % (Hard to say, bigger companies can negotiate the cost down) of what the merchant pays for processing costs.

Here in Australia when ATM bank cards were introduced and then about the same time with the national Eftpos [1] system, I don't ever recall seeing [myself 1990 onwards] a credit card usage surcharge though Visa or Amex purchases - business were just happy to get those sales from people who might not otherwise have made a purchase.

IIRC it wasn't until the major banks went the way of phasing out plain debit cards (mid 00s) and replacing them with visa debit - where business started to go the route of using visa debit for processing instead of Eftpos, since nearly everyone would have a visa debit card, (I do not, my bank would not provide a Eftpos only,) these business started to pass along a processing fee. When it started to happen I can't say for sure, slow and insidious adoption of passing along the fee means I only recall those external to myself, like family and people I know complaining that various stores were now charging them when they used their card but other stores did not. One would have thought Eftpos fees but on closer inspection the payment was processed via visa ... I do not why some business were not using the Eftpos payment route any more, perhaps the processing system by way of credit services was easier or offered something extra.

Some people have since moved back to cash, even though some stores think they can refuse cash ... but unless the regulations under Credit act in Australia changed in the last 15 years, cash is still legal tender and a system must be in place to accept it - even if that means by way of a temporary account. There are elements in govt here though that would like to track people's spending better ... by banning cash.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFTPOS

In the US we were well on the way to substantial national bans on these types of junk fees under the Biden administration's CFPB, Khan's FTC, etc and then Trump reversed everything a few months into his current term.

Being ripped off by large corporations at every transaction is what "owning the libs" looks like for your life in practice, but hey at least you can say slurs on twitter now!

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