For example, if you book a flight from the US to London on American Airlines, redeeming miles, you'll be on the hook for around $10 in taxes. If you book the same flight, using American Airlines miles, but happen to be unfortunate enough to get it on their partner British Airways, you'll get dinged for around five hundred dollars in "fuel surcharge".
Last time I checked, Brazil was the only country where this is illegal.
Let's say you decided to make every airline display how much it costs to fly with one checked bag... well, why did you pick one? What if one airline let's you check two bags free? Or if one gives you free food but the other charges? Has more leg room? Etc...
Pricing transparency laws only help things like "you have to include all taxes and fees for the exact item you are selling"
It doesn't help with requiring a company to include certain extras (like a checked bag or two) with the price. You are allowed to choose how you bundle things together, no matter the pricing transparency laws.
Aggregators are capable of asking what city, date and time, how many bodies, which service class, which seat, etc. and returning your menu of options with prices based on those details.
Yet asking "how many bags" and multiplying that by the airline's rate is impossible?
Of course it requires changes. I suspect those happen now and then.
And transparency is not about informing the customer about charges in the fine-print of a website or a menu card. Transparency is being up-front with the total cost so you make it easy for the customer to make an informed choice.
I wholeheartedly agree that tipping should go away. It's literally a remnant of the post slavery age in America and has a nasty habit of lowering workers wages. Another problem is taking dine and dash bills out of the waiters wages. The waiter shouldn't be paying for deadbeats.
So I agree with your general point, just not on the airline baggage example.
short-name: Tray fee
long-name: You get a foldable tray for seat to use during the flight.
price: 39,99
includes-tax: false
This is basic data modeling, really. Tne real thing would probably have closer to 50 well defined fields instead of 4 because of real-world self-inflicted complexity in the system, but the concept is the same.
That is part of the point. You can also have standard prices to quote: "All fees they charge every customer plus one checked bag should be included in price", for example. Airlines that offer bonuses for free will advertise it clearly. After all, we know when a shampoo bottle includes 20% extra shampoo temporarily - I'm not sure this will be an issue. People know that 2 hotels might be the same price but only one of them offers use of a pool - I'm pretty sure they will look at airlines as well.
I heard this argument many times before but never quite understood the explanation. Could you elaborate on this?
The POS system knows how to calculate the cost of each item, why can't they just out that on the sticker instead,.
However if the sale is online and the company has a presence in multiple states they have to charge based on the user, which they cant do until they know who the user is.
Edit: Just to be clear I wish they would put the final price. Here is a picture I found of Pat's King of Steaks in Philadelphia, they have price tax and total for each item.
https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/03/2c/33/c2/...
