How is that better? You're asking for a world where the list price of Comcast Internet service is just quietly lower or higher depending on which suburb you live in. That's strictly worse than the current situation.

You should look at all these fees on your ISP bill and get pissed off. The issue here is that the taxing body's ploy worked: you got pissed at Comcast and AT&T instead of them.

It's better in exactly one way: you understand upfront what your internet is going to cost.

The same argument goes for including the sale tax or many gas taxes in the displayed price, (or displaying the price including VAT in EU).

FTR, I do get that by listing the tax explicitly you get to appreciate your local tax is lower than your neighbor's or get annoyed that it's higher (and then vote to change that).

My internet provider in Poland offered me the internet service for 60PLN/mo. Guess how much I'm paying for it? 60PLN/mo. They obviously pay many taxes and fees to different organizations but I don't need to care about it.

Regarding VAT in Europe and similar systems in Canada and Mexico where it’s included in the listed price: in all such countries which I’ve personally experienced, the receipts still generally include a breakdown of which tax applies to which item, including correctly distinguishing when different taxes or tax rates apply to different items, and often a total of each tax or all taxes per receipt. You do get to care about those if you want to merely by looking at the details on your receipt, or not if you don’t, but the sticker price is the final price either way.

(Tangent: the above is discussing consumer-targeted prices only. Business-targeted prices often don’t include VAT in the advertised price, even in the EU, because most EU business can get a credit for VAT paid on inputs to a product or service in which they themselves charge VAT. Of course, receipts and invoices still break down all the details of which VAT rate is charged for which item, and sometimes why.)

The situation for disclosure of multiple overlapping sales taxes in the US (as is usually the case in NYC for example) is much less detailed, sadly, but even there it’s still usually clear which items are taxed or tax-free.

I didn't know Canada/Mexico mandated showing the total price, I thought Canada at least was in the same boat as the US.

Very much a fan of the EU's Consumer Rights Directive, especially where it pertains to advertised prices. Even if some things have now skirted it, like sugar-tax and pfand in certain countries.

In my country at least, any business with a VAT number buys most things VAT-free and the end consumer is charged the whole amount, for the sake of doing less paperwork. Don't know how exactly it works when something is transformed into a lower-VAT output.

If we did, I didn't know. All of the price tags in Canada (or Ontario at least) are pre-tax.

Yeah I was wrong about that detail.

Good point. Despite having spent years living in Canada myself and acquiring a Canadian passport, I somehow fooled myself. Prices in Canada are usually advertised as before sales tax. Still, the rest of what I said was accurate - in places like Quebec where two overlapping sales taxes are usually applicable, the receipt does usually detail which taxes apply to which items and at what rates, which is what the ISPs seem to be objecting to for the various governmentally imposed taxes and fees they’re passing through to customers.

Mexico, like Europe, does include the VAT in prices advertised to consumers. That part of my comment was accurate.

As for Pfand (bottle deposit), that’s an interesting case. At least in Germany, they usually have to advertise the Pfand amount and list it individually on the receipt. But also, it’s similar to the situation businesses have with VAT: both for cultural reasons and due to the sums of money involved, it’s quite common for Germans to actually bother with returning bottles for the Pfand, so the extra cost effectively gets rebated for most purchases subject to Pfand. The whole system and the underlying psychological incentives would not work as well if the Pfand cost were more hidden than it is.

NCTA proposed informing customers of the maximum amount of pass-through fees/taxes from governments customers might face, to avoid the "sticker shock" problem with bills.

Having the individual fees listed feels important to me for two reasons: one, to allow customers who are so inclined to check for any calculation errors, as a safeguard against accidental or intentional overcharging by the ISP; and two, so that customers who want to lobby their elected officials to reduce or eliminate any of the charges can identify the specific charges applicable and each of their amounts, without which no meaningful political activism is possible.

> Having the individual fees listed feels important to me for two reasons: one, to allow customers who are so inclined to check for any calculation errors, as a safeguard against accidental or intentional overcharging by the ISP

Aren’t there stories in the news regularly about ISPs adding additional “fuck you” fees just because they can? So this does not seem to be working. At the end of the day, when I buy a beer I don’t care that €0.20 is going to their administrative overhead and €1.28 to their installations’ maintenance. That is not supposed to be the customer’s problem.

> and two, so that customers who want to lobby their elected officials to reduce or eliminate any of the charges can identify the specific charges applicable and each of their amounts, without which no meaningful political activism is possible.

This does not seem to be working well either. And at the same time, other countries without this issue seem to be doing fine with their broadband prices. It looks very ridiculous from the outside, in any case.

> Aren’t there stories in the news regularly about ISPs adding additional “fuck you” fees just because they can? So this does not seem to be working. At the end of the day, when I buy a beer I don’t care that €0.20 is going to their administrative overhead and €1.28 to their installations’ maintenance. That is not supposed to be the customer’s problem.

Yes they do sometimes add their own fees like you say. But those are usually clear flat amounts per line per month, so calculation of that is easy enough. It’s still worthwhile for customers to be able to catch accidental or intentional overcharges versus their published fee schedule, since that ability is part of what keeps companies relatively diligent and honest in this area. Widespread mistakes can and do lead to class action lawsuits or easy boilerplate individual arbitrations or government investigations, in the US.

Additionally, some customers qualify for exemptions or reductions for certain governmentally imposed fees. Transparency as to what is being charged is important to make it easy to notice whether this kind of exemption is or isn’t being applied.

Yes, why not, that seems reasonable. Your price is $60 plus up to $20 additional fees.

I think I got an offer like this from Sonic on the Bay Area. They would eat up all fees exceeding the declared maximum. (Or I'm making this up, was in 2018)

Somehow T-Mobile figured that out. And charge me a nice round numbers that include all their fees and taxes. They are also able to advertise their prices nationwide.

And as a consumer you can choose to use them if you like that model. The market works!

Only if you magically know for free which companies are using that model and which aren't.

T-Mobile advertises, last I checked you can watch the adverts for free.

The problem is that companies are deceptive in their adverts (and in the US this is apparently just normal and accepted). A company's ability to put out an advert that says "we're honest, our adverts don't lie to you" doesn't solve this problem for obvious reasons.

As a T-Mobile customer, and not paid at all to endorse their services, I can assert that their adverts do not lie.

Verifying that you are what you claim is definitely not free.

What does this even mean?

That there's still no magical way to know for free which companies are honest about their pricing and which aren't, in the absence of regulation. You can claim that you're just a happy customer and not a paid astroturfer, but it's not easy for me to practically confirm that (again, assuming there's no regulation to stop people falsely claiming those things).

For a cellular company perhaps, but that doesn't solve the cable internet / ADSL / fiber side.

Sure it does. T-mobile is less of a scumbag than Cox or Comcast. Switch en mass and Cox and Comcast will start to figure it out.

They're European (Deutsche Telekom), which might be part of why they prefer to work that way.

My small regional ISP doesn't charge the fees that Comcast charges my neighbors in my building, those are included in its list price because they're a cost of the ISP doing business.

You should look at all these fees on your ISP bill and get pissed off.

You're right, we should be pissed at Comcast and AT&T fraudulently misrepresenting the cost of service. They chose to pass these fees along (conveniently marked up for their "costs" associated with administering this fee to their customers) and are pretending that they don't have a choice.

The thing is, "service fees" aren't government-imposed. They're fees entirely made up by Comcast and AT&T for the privilege of providing the service that the customer is already paying them for. Since they're not optional, they can and should be rolled into the advertised price.

As we both read the NCTA filing, we're both aware that NCTA is objecting to pass-through fees from federal, state, and local authorities, not to service fees they themselves make up.

That's already the case. ISPs have the freedom to charge prices that vary by region and available service tiers.

Most consumers aren't going to care that a portion of the price is Comcast structuring prices so that it can cover mandated costs of doing business. I've never encountered a company listing, say, that it's charging additional pennies so that it can meet its Social Security tax obligations, for example. That level of granularity simply isn't that interesting for consumer-level prices.

If Comcast thinks these fees are unreasonable and wants to lobby voters and politicians to work against them, it is free to do so via other means.

> The FCC order said the requirement to list "all charges that providers impose at their discretion" is meant to help broadband users "understand which charges are part of the provider's rate structure, and which derive from government assessments or programs." These fees must have "simple, accurate, [and] easy-to-understand name[s]," the FCC order said.

The point is that the fees are charged to the ISPs, and then the ISPs want to pass it onto the consumer but not actually say that that's what is going on.

Yes, some localities will charge more things. Hell, listing them out would add pressure to make these fees go away! The FCC isn't the one imposing these fees. But ISPs are choosing to charge the users, but also not advertising these fees ahead of time! Advertising "this service costs X" but actually costing X + Y is something that feels pretty unambiguously bad.

Then again the US is the land of "every locality sets its own sales tax" so....

No, these fees are devised by governments to be passed on to consumers. Not that it especially matters --- it's also the case that taxes levied directly to ISPs are passed to consumers, because money is fungible. But here, it's especially overt that this is money governments are collecting these fees from their constituents; they're just using the ISPs as bill collectors.

I am assuming here that the ISP is who would get in trouble for not sending the money to the locality, not the N individual customers. I'm also assuming that if I sent my ISP money for the internet cost, minus the passthrough costs, the ISP would act as if I owe them money.

I get what you're saying about the fee being for the consumer. It's just like... OK then, well tell the consumer how much they are going to pay. You mentioned that the lobbying is to get rid of these locality's taxes, and I'm not pro-federalism so hey why not.

But all of these places have to collect the money anyways, so there is _a_ logic to how much to charge. Many places in the world, the price of internet is "type your zip code into a box and then we tell you". This seems eminently reasonable. This precludes a nationwide campaign to say exactly how much the service costs (unless ISPs just decided to eat the costs themselves!). But wouldn't it be good for people to know how much something costs?

Fees should just be illegal for any service, across the board. Cost of internet should just be what it is, plus any actual sales tax. Price should just be the advertised price. Anyone that tacks on fees should just get immediately sued for the fees. Fuck 'em. Tired of the bullshit we put up with.

Europe is a wonderful place.

It was very weird going to a restaurant for the first time and paying the price listed on the menu, and not 30% more (sales tax + tip)

I literally can't even imagine that utopia, because I still reflexively included a carve out for sales tax.

We have that system down here in New Zealand. However we have only two supermarket chains and a near monopoly for many consumer good and building supplies.

You can buy New Zealand produce around the world for less than it costs us in New Zealand. So going for a meal costs what it says on the menu and no more, but that cost is steep.

I don’t think inclusive pricing and the cost of goods are necessarily linked, there are many other reasons goods and services could be more expensive in NZ.

Oh there are, rules around employees, consumer guarantees act, acc levies and various other things. But it seems unlikely that have just 2 food suppliers isn’t a root cause of food price issues.

Australian here

Isn't it mostly just economies of scale plus transport costs?

Or are our industrial relations laws really not as good?

It's more about farming subsidies and tax levels. Some governments choose to make food cheap by encouraging overproduction.

Overproduction (by subsidy) is also very useful to cope with poor harvests, supply shortages due to wars etc.

Discussion on the European system for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Agricultural_Policy#Ove...

It looks like New Zealand charges a 15% VAT which is applied when New Zealand residents buy anything in Europe but not when New Zealand goods are exported, maybe that could be where the cost is?

There is VAT when you buy in the UK too though. New Zealanders pay 50-100% what those in the UK do for groceries, though this varies depending on how you measure or what you read.

https://simplenewzealand.com/cost-of-living-in-new-zealand-v....

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/money/2021/09/shopper-s-recei...

https://thespinoff.co.nz/money/12-08-2021/how-do-nz-grocery-...

In Europe, it's still common to give a small tip. In Germany, it's called "trinkgeld" (literally "drink gold"). Usually, it's just rounding up to the nearest Euro or 5 Euros.

Japan is better: there's absolutely no tipping, at all. The price you see advertised is the price you pay, and they won't even take your tip. (There are a few exceptions: some American-style cafes have been putting tipping jars at the register; very annoying.) The only caveat is the tax: that's not always counted in the price, so many restaurants show two prices, the pre-tax price and the post-tax price just below it (usually in a smaller font).

The other thing that's MUCH better about Japan vs. Europe is that water is free. In Europe, if you want any drink with your meal at all, you have to ask for it, and if you ask for water, they'll bring a fancy glass bottle of very expensive bottled water. If you ask for tap water they'll give you dirty looks. In Japan, it's more like America: water (tap water, but it's really good) is free, and usually given without asking. Some places put a giant carafe of iced water on your table, which is great during this ridiculously hot summer.

The other thing that's much better about Japan (this isn't really about restaurants, though it does apply to the food court restaurants in malls) is that public bathrooms are free. In Europe, they usually expect you to leave a tip or some kind of fee for the cleaning people. Japan is again more like America: public bathrooms are just that: open to the public, for free. The big differences are that 1) there's a washlet on most toilets, and 2) they're actually clean.

In France, lots of restaurant give you a carafe, and they are obligated by law to give you free water if you ask (and you ordered something).

In the Netherlands, if a stranger shows up at your door and asks for water you are obligated to give it to them.

This is true everywhere on Earth, just perhaps not codified into law.

Really? Could you point me to that law? I think it's a cool rule but can't find it. Unless you mean in emergencies?

In Germany, there is "case law" to that effect. Letting someone suffer of thirst is "unterlassene Hilfeleistung", roughly translated "neglecting to give aid". Not giving someone suffering of thirst any water is considered as an example in legal literature, however, I know of no real case where someone was convicted solely for that. And it isn't really straightforward to argue that a restaurant not serving tap water would fulfil the criteria of "unterlassene Hilfeleistung", at least because the usual restaurant-goer isn't suffering that badly.

Also, aforementioned aid doesn't have to be free, the person benefiting from your aid owes you the cost of that aid.

> literally "drink gold"

"Geld" is not gold, its money. "Gold" is gold.

Tap water is expected to be included for free in Sweden, and I would be slightly surprised if that didn't also apply to our neighbors (Norway, Denmark and Finland). Getting charged for water is just as big a cultural shock for us as it is for you.

Interesting; I guess Germany is just different that way. I haven't been to Scandinavia yet.

Tap water is unfortunately not included in Denmark; getting charged 25kr per person is not uncommon. Its a bit of a disgrace, honestly.

But at least public toilets tend to be free whereas I believe in Sweden these tend to cost money.

yeah, public bathrooms have to be free. But as always it tends to come with an asterisk: for various reasons they may lock the doors and require a customer to ask for a key. IDK how legal it is but it's not uncommon to require purchasing food before using some public restrooms (not necessarily for fast food/grocery chains, but not unusual in either higher class dining or smaller mom and pop shops).

I think that one of the reasons you have been downvoted is because you are generalizing too much about Europe. Neither the tip culture nor ordering water works the same across the continent, not even across all Western European countries. There are European countries where one does not even round up the bill unless one really wants to, and countries where it is totally commonplace to order a big pitcher of tap water.

Fair enough. But I was replying to a comment that also generalized all of Europe as having no tipping culture. It just isn't true. I've been presented with credit card slips asking for a tip in multiple EU countries, exactly like when I go to a restaurant in the US. This is something you will never find in Japan.

Sure, you can say that you aren't "required" to tip in these cases, or that they're taking advantage of tourists who don't know better, but still, they're asking for a tip. To me, "no tipping culture" means that tipping simply does not exist. Europe has a tipping culture; it's just different than the US's.

> I've been presented with credit card slips asking for a tip in multiple EU countries, exactly like when I go to a restaurant in the US.

I haven't seen it in this form in France (yet?). But I do see more and more payment terminals that are asking for a tip when they're presented to you. The amounts usually seem fixed, and you have the option of picking 0. I've mostly seen this in bars and similar situations.

Some stores may also ask you to "round up" to give to some charity. Fun fact: these didn't use to work with Apple Pay, so if you said yes, the assistant would have to cancel and restart the payment process.

> In Europe, it's still common to give a small tip.

No, it’s not. Europe is more than one country, and there are local differences. And even in several places where it is common, nobody is going to be upset if you don’t tip, because they have their salary regardless.

> The other thing that's MUCH better about Japan vs. Europe is that water is free. In Europe, if you want any drink with your meal at all, you have to ask for it, and if you ask for water, they'll bring a fancy glass bottle of very expensive bottled water.

Depends on the country, I assume, but in most of those I know they are happy to bring you some tap water. In France, they are required by law to offer tap water for free but IIRC that’s not the case in the Netherlands or Germany, for example. So generalisations are not helpful.

I was specifically thinking of France, and how you just have to ask for "une carafe d'eau", to get free water at restaurant. In most parts of Italy, especially in the south, you usually get free water at the bar, if you are ordering something else, and even if you don't order anything (just ask it kindly).

> I assume, but in most of those I know they are happy to bring you some tap water

I find it very annoying that even have to ask. Especially when in many places they'd just bring you a €3-4 tiny glass bottle (which IMHO might be the most idiotic consumer product to ever exist) if you just asked for water.

You have to explicitly ask for tap, which is just awkward so way to often I just end up ordering a beer.. which is not ideal either.

> because they have their salary regardless.

To be fair that's also the case in New York, California and some other states (and minimum wage in these states is higher than in pretty much any European country).

> Usually, it's just rounding up to the nearest Euro or 5 Euros.

It's not exactly common. In Belgium, the behavior is like when they thought it's really good or if people worked on a restaurant before.

But nobody expects that anyone would tip.

Last time I went to Hungary it was added to the bill though

Ps. A bottle of water is free in France and some other places.

Giving 50 cent for a restaurant when only using the bathroom is just a sign of good behavior in my view. Depends if I'm hurried, but I'll usually buy a glass of water. Then I'm a customer ;)

>Giving 50 cent for a restaurant when only using the bathroom is just a sign of good behavior in my view.

Why? If you're already eating there, why should you pay to use the toilet? And if you're not eating there, then why are you there to use the toilet? Just use a public one. If there aren't sufficient public toilets, that sounds like a failure of the municipal government. Any good city should have lots of public toilets outside, in train stations, or in large shared buildings.

Restaurants don't charge you when you're already there as a customer ( as mentioned in my last example)? They charge you when you need to go and use them as a public toilet sometimes ( eg. when it's urgent).

Again, why would you do this? Just go to one of the countless public toilets outside. How often are people trying to use the toilets in a restaurant without eating there? It seems insane they would even worry about this.

Also, my experience in Germany at a mall food court is that they DO charge you to use the toilet there, even though I was eating there.

> Just go to one of the countless public toilets outside.

If there even are public toilets, if they are open, if they are in a state to be used (and not just an uncleaned mess), if they are free... plenty of reasons to go to a restaurant to use their toilet.

> countless public toilets outside

Which might be also paid (assuming they even exist)

Civilized countries don't expect people to pay to use a toilet.

Tell that to Germany and a bunch of other countries in Europe (then again having to pay to use a toilet still sounds a bit better than having no toilet to use at all..)

Europe is a broad brush. Tap water is free (by law) in the UK, and there are only two places I've ever paid for a public toilet: a handful of stations cost 20-50p and a handful of nightclubs might have a bouncer who you appear to be expected to tip £1 in exchange for a spritz of cologne.

I'm not sure I'd say either of those chargeable toilet scenarios is well correlated to clean toilets, but I assume mostly they do that to try to avoid various kinds of mischief.

incidentally the price of broadband is also much cheaper, you can get 1Gig in Dublin for 50 euros per month (about $54). For that price in LA I can get 50Mbps.

https://switcher.ie/broadband/ireland/dublin/?eircode=&tv_in...

That's not really consistent across Ireland though, let alone Europe. I was paying €50 a month for two megabit DSL in Kilkenny five years ago as that was all my ISP's backhaul was good for.

Sure and it's not true of comparison across the USA either, lots of places you just straight up cannot get a phone line let alone broadband. It is comparable across two metro areas though, I think that comparison is fair.

When I lived in Cincinnati, people had to choose DSL or cable internet, from two (which cable provider depended on part of town). Cable was the only fast option, unless you lived very-very close to a telco "switching office". Cost per month was more than double same-speed cost in Columbus. Columbus had multiple providers in each area. $35/month.

In Cincinnati, the Cr^H^HTime-Warner Cable rate rose every month of every year for as long as you remained a customer. Complaining would get you a story about it being a "billing mistake" and "a credit on your next bill". The credit usually didn't arrive unless you complained again. And even then they might randomly switch tactics to "We're so sorry. We'll give you [1 | 3] months of [HBO | Showtime | Starz | all premium channels.".

I'm still wary of comparing charges across metros. /-:

I’m not sure I get your point. I was trying to make the point they telcos in the USA are super shit and expensive and they don’t even provide value for money after all that.

It’s one thing to have a monopoly and gouge your customers if the product you are providing is unimpeachable but they are far from that.

S'pose I was trying to reject the claim that prices should be comparable in different metros. I certainly wasn't saying that the dirth of competition in one place means the existing options were unimpeachable.

Sure. But have you tried paying for electricity here?

In France, if you look at your EDF (national electricity company) invoice, you'll see that you pay VAT (a tax) on top of other taxes.

They also levy VAT on the "Greffier"'s fees. That's a clerk at the "commerce tribunal", which is basically a part of the state administration with which you interact whenever you need any administrative changes for a company. Say, you need to declare a change of address.

Both of these things are rates set by the government. If they weren't charging VAT on the fees, they would just recalculate the base fees accordingly

Sure, but in the case of electricity, it's no different from the other poster's “just because we can fee” and “fee for processing your fee”. All these are added on top of the advertised "contract fee" and actual electricity price.

They don't advertise prices such that you can take the advertised fixed fee, add your consumption times the advertised kWh price, and have your final amount due. No, they add a "tax on energy consumption", a "contribution to the public electricity service", and a "contribution to electricity delivery". And, on all of these, they levy the VAT.

> they would just recalculate the base fees accordingly

And I think this willingly done, to give the impression that taxes are lower than they really are. Which makes the whole thing seem dishonest.

I agree, and somehow I am lucky enough to have 1G AT&T Fiber Internet for exactly $100/month with no other fees. At my previous home I had 500mb microwave/millimeter wave Internet and that was not taxed either. Seems like local/state/federal government hasn’t caught onto these mediums yet.

> Fees should just be illegal for any service, across the board.

Very much this. The law should be that you must advertise the price you will charge, full stop. Same goes with tipping mess. Just compute the total price internally and tell me what it is. Nothing additional allowed.