In reality they settled the suit and then told the Pennsylvania AG to eat shit, they still hide the fees but now there is at least a checkbox to show the fees included.
One of the funnier things about scammy pricing schemes and American misunderstanding of laws. Ask anyone in the country if they are aware of “false advertising” and they’ll probably tell you it’s a pretty serious crime when in reality companies are pretty much only encumbered by civil law and even then they can avoid responsibility by playing a shell game, a la Johnson & Johnson’s sham bankruptcy, while criminal statutes are pretty much just for poor people.
There is no excuse but sleezy marketing to not show what something costs.
I'd go far even to make sure every price sticker is regulated and should include final sales price. That means, all taxes, all tips, everything. There is only one problem I see – sales taxes are state dependent so it puts a lot of burden on ecommerce/online stores to 1) Determine where the customer is from 2) Have a database of sales taxes for all states. But it can be done, I am sure.
Tips should be made illegal and employers should fairly compensate their workers.
Of course it can be done, because they are already doing it in the final checkout. They just need to reveal the number earlier in the process. If they have to ask for a location to do that, just say so --- e.g. "We need your zip code to show you the final price including tax"
That's about as dystopian as possible. Telling people that they cannot just hand money to other people might be the end of the entire concept of charity.
In America, we have a situation where I’ve seen waiters put on a facade of niceness which is so fake, and if you don’t tip, you’re an asshole. This implicit guilt needs to be made uncool.
I tried tipping room maker in a Hotel in Japan and they promptly refused and handed me the cash.
It's a bit of a dark pattern. First it makes you actively say "No I don't want to tip for this" and then I gurantee plenty of people have that nagging thought in the back of their head that the food they get may be different depending on if they tip. After all, the tip is before you get anything.
I always tip, generously, for delivered food or table service. But I don't tip for an employee to simply hand me a carry-out order.
Let alone - tips are very often not "optional"
Tips are literally a variable price co-pay for a service.
Not only can it be done, it is done. Companies don't have to brew up their own sales tax calculators, there are providers of that. Just enter the address, get the tax rate.
https://www.adlawaccess.com/2022/02/articles/dark-patterns-a...
Marriott has settled a lawsuit over similar pricing "dark patterns": https://www.travelweekly.com/Travel-News/Hotel-News/Marriott...
> Among other provisions, the agreement requires Marriott to prominently disclose the total price of a hotel stay, including room rate and all other mandatory fees, on the first page of its booking website as part of the total room rate.
Seems to mainly be a matter of enforcement, it's probably worth contacting your state AG with something deceptive like this. Hard to expect them to take action on something they don't know about!
If you ever get a Marriott that tries to add fees that you didn't expect, call up corporate Marriott and complain about a violation of their legal settlement regarding hidden fees. They will absolutely lay the hammer down on the hotel and you'll end up with credits far in excess of the attempted hidden fee ;)
It doesn't take a world-leading regulator to say "it is an unfair and deceptive business practice not to list the total price in a search result."
I think a regulator may be able to handle this one.
[1] https://www.transportation.gov/individuals/aviation-consumer...
[edit to include text:]
The Department considers any advertising or solicitation by a direct air carrier [...] that states a price for such air transportation [...] to be an unfair and deceptive practice in violation of 49 U.S.C. 41712, unless the price stated is the entire price to be paid by the customer to the carrier...
[...] Although charges included within the single total price listed (e.g., government taxes) may be stated separately or through links or “pop ups” on websites that display the total price, such charges may not be false or misleading, may not be displayed prominently, may not be presented in the same or larger size as the total price, and must provide cost information on a per passenger basis that accurately reflects the cost of the item covered by the charge.
There are some legitimate uses for formula pricing, e.g., rent a U-Haul with a per-mile cost, or a cell phone bill with a per GB data cost, or a per-user SAAS model.
I imagine a dark pattern for the "resort fee" might be a complicated formula described in words in size 6 font at the bottom of the page if you took the time to read the footnote.
Specially because in EU all the prices shown in stores/everywhere is the final price, with VAT, service, tip, etc, etc...
Some companies (eg. Alternate) have different websites for consumers and business customers, other companies (eg. Conrad) allow you to toggle between pricing modes (with tax or without).
The price is usually shown without shipping, but there's usually a little button "calculate shipping prices" where you can type your zip code and then they show the shipping prices.
Or, in this case, his/her campaign contributions.
But fees are many times also used to avoid or evade taxes and royalties. For example, resort fees can be used by hotels to avoid paying royalties to the franchisor.
There is never any good excuse to hide or gatekeep the total price from a customer though.
But there's no "bedsheets" analog for a car rental. Yes, it needs to be washed, but I imagine most renters of Priuses don't actually care if the car hasn't been washed in a few days/weeks.
That's certainly one reason. But it can also make sense to have a one-time fee that's independent of the duration of the rental. Cleaning a room is the most obvious example. But there are other more or less fixed overheads that are largely independent of the length of time something is rented.
If you're renting out just about anything, would you prefer seven 1-day rentals or a one week rental?
Consider the amount of work involved for the owner in renting one car to 30 people each for one day and one car to one person for 30 days and you'll see the difference.
Nope. The rest of this sentence doesn't even matter: if someone needs to do something, that's a reason to charge for it, but not a reason to hide the price.
I was looking at renting a car in LA for a day and the service fee was the same price as renting the car, across most of the cars. If I changed the query to be a two day rental, then the service fee dropped to 1/10th the 1day price.
In a Different city, though, even the 1 day rental doesn't have such a large fee.
I agree with your sentiment - if the app shared the service fee prior to the final step of the booking flow, I may have still reserved the car. Even at a total of $100.80, the price was still less than other nearby options.