Consumer protection laws used to cover this sort of thing. Companies should be forced to honor the lowest advertised price for a good. If they are caught not

Consumer protection laws used to cover this sort of thing. Companies should be forced to honor the lowest advertised price for a good. If they are caught not doing so, they should have to refund the money, in cash, up to a 10-20 year statute of limitations, with interest, and with the highest priority in any bankruptcy proceedings. Executives with a report that signed off on the pricing scheme should be subject to wage/stock clawback. “Lowest advertised price” needs to have a simple definition. I propose the following: The courts take a price list or other piece of marketing material produced by the vendor, removing all information that is rendered at less than 90% the size of the actual price. They then apply any mandatory sales tax that is paid directly to the government. The minimum result of doing this with any publication the vendor produced within the prior six months is the price the vendor must honor. Sale dates and other promotion terms must be under 25 words and the same size as the price. This would ban a few common practices that are problematic: - Cell phone companies advertise low prices per line, then produce contracts at 3-4x that amount. Actual monthly bills have an additional 10% markup. - City politicians mandate an after-you-have-eaten “living wage surcharge” be added to restaurant bills, instead of having the price of labor be included in the menu prices. - The state tax for take out items at restaurants in California is lower / nonexistent, depending on the item. However, the state tax collectors intentionally overestimate the fraction of diners that eat at restaurants (with high variance), then charge restaurants for the difference between reported tax and estimated tax, with a presumption of guilt. Therefore, most restaurants just always overcharge customers tax, then pay the balance to the state, in what is effectively a protection racket.