8 ms·

Why doesn't the US have universal laws that cover price transparency in general? There are so many industries that get into shady territory: rental cars ("faci

Why doesn't the US have universal laws that cover price transparency in general? There are so many industries that get into shady territory: rental cars ("facility use fees"), hotels ("resort fees"), internet access ("mandatory equipment rental fees"), even SF restaurants ("SF mandate"). I'm saying Apple is wrong, and so are many other companies, and shouldn't we have fixed this with a law by this point?

aylmao 6y ago
Adding to the industries that get into shady territory: universities. Campus fees, "activity" fees, etc. Now apparently COVID-related fees too [1]. [1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/20/college-students-get-hit-with-new-pandemic-related-extra-fees.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/20/college-students-get-hit-wit...
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > COVID-related fees That's a dark phrase.
  - farisjarrah 6y ago
    The Honda dealership in my town charged me $19 for a Covid Cleaning Fee.
- zachberger 6y ago
  I occasionally use the Rinse laundry service and they have a bizarre $5 COVID safety fee which is refunded 3 months later. https://www.rinse.com/blog/rinse/health-and-safety-fee/ https://www.rinse.com/blog/rinse/health-and-safety-fee/
- unishark 6y ago
  This doesn't sound like a consumer protection issue to me. The fees are transparently listed in advance of attendance aren't they? You can choose to pay them or decline to attend. Different from a hotel where you get hit with unexpected fees when checking out and it's too late to negotiate or decline to stay.
  - culopatin 6y ago
    You’re still cornered by the need. If every other place also adds random inexplicable fees then you end up paying them anyway. I guess you could argue that it’s just the same as a price increase, but like tax in the US, those weird fees are only disclosed at the checkout, not upfront.
Spooky23 6y ago
"We" don't like regulation these days. Airlines, for example, were treated like public utilities with tariff schedules approved by some board. Flights were more expensive, but the business was sustainable. Now you have airlines like Norwegian Airlines where you could fly from an out of the way airport in NY to London for less than long-term parking.
- jermaustin1 6y ago
  You jest, but my 2 week parking at Stewart was double the price of the round-trip flight to Edinburgh. We only lived 1 exit down on the interstate, I should have just had a taxi drop me off. But they closed that down a couple of years ago (Thanks Boeing). Now the only route from NY to UK is JFK to LGW, but the flights were still so cheap (and hopefully they don't go under) that my wife and I always upgraded to their "premium economy" which was still only $1200 round trip NYC to London, and you get leg room, 2 checked bags, and guaranteed overhead space.
ctvo 6y ago
There are a lot of things the US should do. Our government is down at the moment, and on-call has no idea how to resolve the issue.
- joejohnson 6y ago
  The corporations have been running the country since it was a nation.
  - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
    I wonder if DOW Chemical and P&G were backing the Federalists in the 1700s or not...
    - bobthepanda 6y ago
      Maybe not corporations, but the wealthy were definitely kicking up a storm over British taxes and import restrictions, and then later driving a lot of the pro-slavery arguments.
    - codezero 6y ago
      I think private banks were...
    - jandrese 6y ago
      No, but powerful slaveholding interests were a major factor in the design of our government. It's the reasons our voting system favors low-population states--because slaves only counted as 3/5 of a person and the slaveholders were worried this would mean less representation in government and the danger that owning slaves would be outlawed.
      - coredog64 6y ago
        The 3/5ths compromise was about giving less representation to slaveholder states, and was not a moral judgment on the value of slaves. Slaveholder states would have been perfectly happy for representation to be 1:1 for slaves vs. non-slaves.
pokstad 6y ago
You don’t need a law for something a consumer can vote with their money. If annoying price structures are that bad, a competitor will create a superior pricing system that takes away marketshare. If that doesn’t happen, then it’s probably not a big deal. Adding laws increases the complexity to comply.
- jtbayly 6y ago
  The whole point is that the competitor can't compete because the consumer is being lied to about the price in the first place—which they don't know until it's too late.
  - pokstad 6y ago
    The article says they put asterisks on the prices along with clarifications in the small text. That’s not being lied to, just annoying.
    - p49k 6y ago
      It’s death by a thousand cuts. There is no way a consumer can win and be able to make effective choices in this environment.
    - jtbayly 6y ago
      I literally thought I knew what the prices were until I read this article. I saw the "from $699" and "knew" it meant the cheapest model (the mini) was $699. Turns out I was wrong. I was wrong because they mislead me. Knowing the truth matters for me both in purchasing decisions and in recommendations to others, which I do a lot of.
      - briandear 6y ago
        The problem is a lazy media. The headline becomes “$699.”
        6y ago
jb775 6y ago
Not to mention dentists, doctors, hospitals, etc. I have an eye doctor appt this week and I literally have no idea if it's gonna cost me $50 or $500.
- freedomben 6y ago
  I asked straight up before seeing the doc about the cost and nobody knew. They finally estimated "about $1,500" and my total bill was around $5,000. And if I refuse to pay it, they send me to collections. It's insane what they are allowed to do.
  - rasz 6y ago
    Ask for itemized bill, dispute every single item https://www.aarp.org/money/credit-loans-debt/info-2019/dispute-medical-bills.html https://www.aarp.org/money/credit-loans-debt/info-2019/dispu...
    - freedomben 6y ago
      That's both a very useful post, and also enraging that we would have to do something like that to protect ourselves from getting raped by the system.
    - dylan604 6y ago
      watch what happens to that bill when you tell them you are going to pay out of pocket instead of using insurance. suddenly, everything has a different price.
      - freedomben 6y ago
        I've heard this before and so I tried it, but unfortunately it was not true in my case. They didn't seem to give a crap about that. In one case they actually told me "you should run it through insurance so you get their negotiated price. otherwise it will a lot more expensive"
  - ryandrake 6y ago
floatingatoll 6y ago
Over the past couple of decades, our elected representatives have prioritized the welfare of corporations over the welfare of human beings. Price transparency laws harm corporations and benefit consumers; therefore, they are unlikely to be approved for law by the elected representatives.
- dathinab 6y ago
  At the same time price transparency & monopoly restrictions is fundamental for a working capitalism. Without that there will be no proper self regulating marked and all the points why capitalism is supposed to work will not uphold anymore.
  - dstick 6y ago
    Yep, it’s a definite ying and yang. Sapiens (the book) spends a few very interesting chapters on the inner workings of this dynamic and how it shaped the world as we know it.
- dstick 6y ago
  It’s an incomplete statement if you leave out the “why”. Lobbying. If that were regulated and corporation money didn’t indirectly buy votes through ad-spent but votes were won through actual policies and independent voter thinking, representatives would represent what voters (or a slice of them) wanted. As it stands, they win elections by catering to a very, very small slice that can bring them into power: Corporations. Their donations are a more sure-fire bet to winning elections than trying to win over regular people.
kube-system 6y ago
"Starting at $x" ads like this are by far the least egregious any of those examples. I don't really see much of a problem with advertising configurable products like this, especially when it is called out specifically as a starting price. The F150 can be priced from $28,745 all the way to $81,000+ and anything in-between. People know trucks have options, and they know that when Ford says it's "starts at $28,745" they're not talking about the top of the line trim. Nobody is being hurt by these practices.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Fun fact; the F150 is so customizable that there are times and places where it's impossible for some car websites to parse their VINs back into a make, model, and style (trim). This is an issue that we didn't have with any other OEM, but it required that all systems assume that Style was optional.
- rhplus 6y ago
  > Nobody is being hurt by these practices. Price obfuscation makes it nearly impossible to do a like-for-like price comparison between two manufacturers. If the consumer isn't being hurt by these practices, then why do car dealership groups need to continue lobbying the government to uphold laws preventing direct-to-consumer sales? They know that open-pricing would drive competition and erode their middleman profits.
  - kube-system 6y ago
    > nearly impossible to do a like-for-like price comparison between two manufacturers Not really. https://shop.ford.com/build/f150 https://shop.ford.com/build/f150 https://www.chevrolet.com/trucks/silverado/1500/build-and-price/ https://www.chevrolet.com/trucks/silverado/1500/build-and-pr... The price isn't obfuscated. Manufacturers even publish nice tools that transparently explain their pricing model. The pricing is necessarily varied because the product configuration is varied. Dealers are a whole different story; I agree dealer protection laws shouldn't exist, and manufacturers aren't really a fan of those laws either.
- jonathanberger 6y ago
vkou 6y ago
Because the free market only works well with easy price discovery, and having to operate in a free market limits your margins.
dboreham 6y ago
Because some people would make less money.
kindatrue 6y ago
Studies have shown that people spend less money when prices are higher/all inclusive. Check out the story of Stubhub and their attempt to be all inclusive. (tldr: people stopped buying tickets until they unbundled the mandatory fees) What's good for GDP is good for America!
crazygringo 6y ago
Truly it's bizarre. Because the thing is, we can. Remember how in the early days of Expedia, flights were listed as crazy cheap, and then when you clicked through to buy, you discovered they'd tack on another 30-50% in fees and taxes? But that changed in 2012 when advertised airfares were forced to include all mandatory charges. Why they don't do that with all industries -- the ones you've listed, plus making it so cell phone and internet providers can't start randomly tacking on new "network maintenance fees" and other BS -- is beyond me. It shouldn't just be airfare, it should be everything. I mean, you'd think one of the political parties -- presumably Democrats -- would say, hey that'd be a popular move with voters, and make it part of their platform? But no.
- clairity 6y ago
  the stranglehold of the two party system buoyed by corporate cash means that they only have to seem a tiny bit less bad than the other party. for better representation and a better society, we need election and campaign finance reform asap. unfortunately that doesn't serve the desires of the politicians or the entrenched parties, so we need to get creative about how to realign those incentives.
  - quickthrowman 6y ago
    > We need election and campaign finance reform asap It’s never going to happen, see Citizens United v FEC and the upcoming 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court. This is most unfortunate, and will only get worse.
flowerlad 6y ago
> Why doesn't the US have universal laws that cover price transparency in general? And that's just the beginning. In any modern country citizens would have access to things called "courts". Not in the US, not if you want to sue a business. In the US, courts have been replaced with "arbitration" where businesses have a heavy advantage. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/02/business/dealbook/in-arbitration-a-privatization-of-the-justice-system.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/02/business/dealbook/in-arbi... In what other modern country is citizens denied access to courts, when they have been wronged by a business?
spaetzleesser 6y ago
Don’t forget healthcare “totally random cost between a lot and infinity. Find out months or years after treatment. ”.

aylmao 6y ago

Adding to the industries that get into shady territory: universities. Campus fees, "activity" fees, etc. Now apparently COVID-related fees too [1]. [1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/20/college-students-get-hit-with-new-pandemic-related-extra-fees.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/20/college-students-get-hit-wit...

chrisseaton 6y ago
> COVID-related fees That's a dark phrase.
- farisjarrah 6y ago
  The Honda dealership in my town charged me $19 for a Covid Cleaning Fee.
zachberger 6y ago
I occasionally use the Rinse laundry service and they have a bizarre $5 COVID safety fee which is refunded 3 months later. https://www.rinse.com/blog/rinse/health-and-safety-fee/ https://www.rinse.com/blog/rinse/health-and-safety-fee/
unishark 6y ago
This doesn't sound like a consumer protection issue to me. The fees are transparently listed in advance of attendance aren't they? You can choose to pay them or decline to attend. Different from a hotel where you get hit with unexpected fees when checking out and it's too late to negotiate or decline to stay.
- culopatin 6y ago
  You’re still cornered by the need. If every other place also adds random inexplicable fees then you end up paying them anyway. I guess you could argue that it’s just the same as a price increase, but like tax in the US, those weird fees are only disclosed at the checkout, not upfront.

Spooky23 6y ago

"We" don't like regulation these days. Airlines, for example, were treated like public utilities with tariff schedules approved by some board. Flights were more expensive, but the business was sustainable. Now you have airlines like Norwegian Airlines where you could fly from an out of the way airport in NY to London for less than long-term parking.

jermaustin1 6y ago
You jest, but my 2 week parking at Stewart was double the price of the round-trip flight to Edinburgh. We only lived 1 exit down on the interstate, I should have just had a taxi drop me off. But they closed that down a couple of years ago (Thanks Boeing). Now the only route from NY to UK is JFK to LGW, but the flights were still so cheap (and hopefully they don't go under) that my wife and I always upgraded to their "premium economy" which was still only $1200 round trip NYC to London, and you get leg room, 2 checked bags, and guaranteed overhead space.

ctvo 6y ago

There are a lot of things the US should do. Our government is down at the moment, and on-call has no idea how to resolve the issue.

joejohnson 6y ago
The corporations have been running the country since it was a nation.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  I wonder if DOW Chemical and P&G were backing the Federalists in the 1700s or not...
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    Maybe not corporations, but the wealthy were definitely kicking up a storm over British taxes and import restrictions, and then later driving a lot of the pro-slavery arguments.
  - codezero 6y ago
    I think private banks were...
  - jandrese 6y ago
    No, but powerful slaveholding interests were a major factor in the design of our government. It's the reasons our voting system favors low-population states--because slaves only counted as 3/5 of a person and the slaveholders were worried this would mean less representation in government and the danger that owning slaves would be outlawed.
    - coredog64 6y ago
      The 3/5ths compromise was about giving less representation to slaveholder states, and was not a moral judgment on the value of slaves. Slaveholder states would have been perfectly happy for representation to be 1:1 for slaves vs. non-slaves.

pokstad 6y ago

You don’t need a law for something a consumer can vote with their money. If annoying price structures are that bad, a competitor will create a superior pricing system that takes away marketshare. If that doesn’t happen, then it’s probably not a big deal. Adding laws increases the complexity to comply.

jtbayly 6y ago
The whole point is that the competitor can't compete because the consumer is being lied to about the price in the first place—which they don't know until it's too late.
- pokstad 6y ago
  The article says they put asterisks on the prices along with clarifications in the small text. That’s not being lied to, just annoying.
  - p49k 6y ago
    It’s death by a thousand cuts. There is no way a consumer can win and be able to make effective choices in this environment.
  - jtbayly 6y ago
    I literally thought I knew what the prices were until I read this article. I saw the "from $699" and "knew" it meant the cheapest model (the mini) was $699. Turns out I was wrong. I was wrong because they mislead me. Knowing the truth matters for me both in purchasing decisions and in recommendations to others, which I do a lot of.
    - briandear 6y ago
      The problem is a lazy media. The headline becomes “$699.”
      - 6y ago

jb775 6y ago

Not to mention dentists, doctors, hospitals, etc. I have an eye doctor appt this week and I literally have no idea if it's gonna cost me $50 or $500.

freedomben 6y ago
I asked straight up before seeing the doc about the cost and nobody knew. They finally estimated "about $1,500" and my total bill was around $5,000. And if I refuse to pay it, they send me to collections. It's insane what they are allowed to do.
- rasz 6y ago
  Ask for itemized bill, dispute every single item https://www.aarp.org/money/credit-loans-debt/info-2019/dispute-medical-bills.html https://www.aarp.org/money/credit-loans-debt/info-2019/dispu...
  - freedomben 6y ago
    That's both a very useful post, and also enraging that we would have to do something like that to protect ourselves from getting raped by the system.
  - dylan604 6y ago
    watch what happens to that bill when you tell them you are going to pay out of pocket instead of using insurance. suddenly, everything has a different price.
    - freedomben 6y ago
      I've heard this before and so I tried it, but unfortunately it was not true in my case. They didn't seem to give a crap about that. In one case they actually told me "you should run it through insurance so you get their negotiated price. otherwise it will a lot more expensive"
- ryandrake 6y ago

floatingatoll 6y ago

Over the past couple of decades, our elected representatives have prioritized the welfare of corporations over the welfare of human beings. Price transparency laws harm corporations and benefit consumers; therefore, they are unlikely to be approved for law by the elected representatives.

dathinab 6y ago
At the same time price transparency & monopoly restrictions is fundamental for a working capitalism. Without that there will be no proper self regulating marked and all the points why capitalism is supposed to work will not uphold anymore.
- dstick 6y ago
  Yep, it’s a definite ying and yang. Sapiens (the book) spends a few very interesting chapters on the inner workings of this dynamic and how it shaped the world as we know it.
dstick 6y ago
It’s an incomplete statement if you leave out the “why”. Lobbying. If that were regulated and corporation money didn’t indirectly buy votes through ad-spent but votes were won through actual policies and independent voter thinking, representatives would represent what voters (or a slice of them) wanted. As it stands, they win elections by catering to a very, very small slice that can bring them into power: Corporations. Their donations are a more sure-fire bet to winning elections than trying to win over regular people.

kube-system 6y ago

"Starting at $x" ads like this are by far the least egregious any of those examples. I don't really see much of a problem with advertising configurable products like this, especially when it is called out specifically as a starting price. The F150 can be priced from $28,745 all the way to $81,000+ and anything in-between. People know trucks have options, and they know that when Ford says it's "starts at $28,745" they're not talking about the top of the line trim. Nobody is being hurt by these practices.

ashtonkem 6y ago
Fun fact; the F150 is so customizable that there are times and places where it's impossible for some car websites to parse their VINs back into a make, model, and style (trim). This is an issue that we didn't have with any other OEM, but it required that all systems assume that Style was optional.
rhplus 6y ago
> Nobody is being hurt by these practices. Price obfuscation makes it nearly impossible to do a like-for-like price comparison between two manufacturers. If the consumer isn't being hurt by these practices, then why do car dealership groups need to continue lobbying the government to uphold laws preventing direct-to-consumer sales? They know that open-pricing would drive competition and erode their middleman profits.
- kube-system 6y ago
  > nearly impossible to do a like-for-like price comparison between two manufacturers Not really. https://shop.ford.com/build/f150 https://shop.ford.com/build/f150 https://www.chevrolet.com/trucks/silverado/1500/build-and-price/ https://www.chevrolet.com/trucks/silverado/1500/build-and-pr... The price isn't obfuscated. Manufacturers even publish nice tools that transparently explain their pricing model. The pricing is necessarily varied because the product configuration is varied. Dealers are a whole different story; I agree dealer protection laws shouldn't exist, and manufacturers aren't really a fan of those laws either.
jonathanberger 6y ago

vkou 6y ago

Because the free market only works well with easy price discovery, and having to operate in a free market limits your margins.

dboreham 6y ago

Because some people would make less money.

kindatrue 6y ago

Studies have shown that people spend less money when prices are higher/all inclusive. Check out the story of Stubhub and their attempt to be all inclusive. (tldr: people stopped buying tickets until they unbundled the mandatory fees) What's good for GDP is good for America!

crazygringo 6y ago

Truly it's bizarre. Because the thing is, we can. Remember how in the early days of Expedia, flights were listed as crazy cheap, and then when you clicked through to buy, you discovered they'd tack on another 30-50% in fees and taxes? But that changed in 2012 when advertised airfares were forced to include all mandatory charges. Why they don't do that with all industries -- the ones you've listed, plus making it so cell phone and internet providers can't start randomly tacking on new "network maintenance fees" and other BS -- is beyond me. It shouldn't just be airfare, it should be everything. I mean, you'd think one of the political parties -- presumably Democrats -- would say, hey that'd be a popular move with voters, and make it part of their platform? But no.

clairity 6y ago
the stranglehold of the two party system buoyed by corporate cash means that they only have to seem a tiny bit less bad than the other party. for better representation and a better society, we need election and campaign finance reform asap. unfortunately that doesn't serve the desires of the politicians or the entrenched parties, so we need to get creative about how to realign those incentives.
- quickthrowman 6y ago
  > We need election and campaign finance reform asap It’s never going to happen, see Citizens United v FEC and the upcoming 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court. This is most unfortunate, and will only get worse.

flowerlad 6y ago

> Why doesn't the US have universal laws that cover price transparency in general? And that's just the beginning. In any modern country citizens would have access to things called "courts". Not in the US, not if you want to sue a business. In the US, courts have been replaced with "arbitration" where businesses have a heavy advantage. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/02/business/dealbook/in-arbitration-a-privatization-of-the-justice-system.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/02/business/dealbook/in-arbi... In what other modern country is citizens denied access to courts, when they have been wronged by a business?

spaetzleesser 6y ago

Don’t forget healthcare “totally random cost between a lot and infinity. Find out months or years after treatment. ”.