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The problem with allowing stuff like this is that it creates an arms race: If one company can reduce their room rate 5% and shift it to a hidden "charge" then a
by Someone1234 5y ago
The problem with allowing stuff like this is that it creates an arms race: If one company can reduce their room rate 5% and shift it to a hidden "charge" then all their competitors MUST do the same to remain competitive. The net result is that nobody is making more than they were before, but customers feel mislead.
So while there a prevailing "regulation is bad" attitude about stuff like this, it really does benefit both the customer AND business if all pricing is listed equivalently up-front. Which is to say: I hope the UK bans this too, and room-rates are again flat (with or without VAT).
- hamandcheese 5y agoOr they can stay competitive by normalizing (and very clearly advertising) “all in, no additional fees”. I would certainly notice this, at least.
- foobarian 5y agoIt's pretty infuriating that this is a thing. Even if you think you might be able to get your users to notice if you went against this grain, you are still asking the product leaders to give up a significant chunk of revenue for a probably very long time. It would take major commitment from the top to pull this off and would not work as some quarterly site improvement project by a rank and file engineer or product manager.
- hakfoo 5y agoWe had his happen with airline tickets... everything got unbundled so as to show the lowest price on Travelocity or whoever. I never understood why there was no backlash at the aggregators for disguising the true price of the product (or offering "comparison" of noncomparable products. A service that accurately shows comparable, out the door prices is more useful than the one that says "$30 cheaper" only to find out after the fact there's $50 in missing services or hidden costs buried in it. I wonder if there's anyone that accurately does it now: a flight search that lets you say "show me lowest fare inclusive of a checked bag an inflight meal" or "hotel prices including the various undisclosed fees and taxes."
- eloff 5y agoThis has definately made it much less pleasant to search for and compare flights. Now I have to read through all the fine print for various carriers just to know what the final price will be before I buy. I really wish regulators or travels search platforms would step up here and fix it.
- Leherenn 5y agoI think it's the case in the UE. It doesn't really solve the luggage issue, but that's a bit more difficult because that one is truly optional. I don't think I have paid a different price than what was displayed in the aggregator.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bin_bash 5y agowith Google Flights you can add a checked bag to the fare. You can also add a carry-on bag which I often do to filter out (some) Basic Economy fares.
- macksd 5y agoI'm usually in the "regulation is bad" camp but one thing I find myself saying more and more is that you can't have an ideal market if people are allowed to lie about and hide their prices. It's one of the reasons health care isn't a very good market in the US, and it's one of the reasons people don't like this practice. Essentially companies are getting away with lying about their prices until after a purchase has been made. In an ideal free market, people can't lie just lie about their prices and get away with it because "everyone does it". So enforcing honesty on this particular point at least would be good of you like free markets.
- systemvoltage 5y agoRegulations that improve fairness of competition without any side-effects get my vote even though I generally hold the view that less-regulatory environments are more conducive to innovation and efficiency.