14 ms·

The choice they have (as is mentioned near the end of the article) is to pay them themselves (cost of running business) and include them in the advertised price

The choice they have (as is mentioned near the end of the article) is to pay them themselves (cost of running business) and include them in the advertised price (like it probably is anywhere in the world outside the US)

tptacek 3y ago
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.
- Gabrys1 3y ago
  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.
  - tptacek 3y ago
    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.
    - Gabrys1 3y ago
      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)
    - jkaplowitz 3y ago
      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.
      - kergonath 3y ago
        > 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.
        jkaplowitz 3y ago
        > 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.
  - jkaplowitz 3y ago
    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.
    - extraduder_ire 3y ago
      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.
      - doubled112 3y ago
        If we did, I didn't know. All of the price tags in Canada (or Ontario at least) are pre-tax.
        jkaplowitz 3y ago
        Yeah I was wrong about that detail.
- woobar 3y ago
  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.
  - bradleybuda 3y ago
    And as a consumer you can choose to use them if you like that model. The market works!
    - lmm 3y ago
      Only if you magically know for free which companies are using that model and which aren't.
      - tekknik 3y ago
        T-Mobile advertises, last I checked you can watch the adverts for free.
        lmm 3y ago
        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.
        tekknik 3y ago
        As a T-Mobile customer, and not paid at all to endorse their services, I can assert that their adverts do not lie.
        lmm 3y ago
        Verifying that you are what you claim is definitely not free.
- gamblor956 3y ago
  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.
  - tptacek 3y ago
    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.
- fivre 3y ago
  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.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- rtpg 3y ago
  > 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....
  - tptacek 3y ago
    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.
    - rtpg 3y ago
      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?
lamontcg 3y ago
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.
- CamelCaseName 3y ago
  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)
  - lamontcg 3y ago
    I literally can't even imagine that utopia, because I still reflexively included a carve out for sales tax.
  - lostlogin 3y ago
    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.
    - jackson1442 3y ago
      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.
      - lostlogin 3y ago
        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.

tptacek 3y ago

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.

Gabrys1 3y ago
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.
- tptacek 3y ago
  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.
  - Gabrys1 3y ago
    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)
  - jkaplowitz 3y ago
    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.
    - kergonath 3y ago
      > 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.
      - jkaplowitz 3y ago
        > 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.
- jkaplowitz 3y ago
  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.
  - extraduder_ire 3y ago
    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.
    - doubled112 3y ago
      If we did, I didn't know. All of the price tags in Canada (or Ontario at least) are pre-tax.
      - jkaplowitz 3y ago
        Yeah I was wrong about that detail.
woobar 3y ago
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.
- bradleybuda 3y ago
  And as a consumer you can choose to use them if you like that model. The market works!
  - lmm 3y ago
    Only if you magically know for free which companies are using that model and which aren't.
    - tekknik 3y ago
      T-Mobile advertises, last I checked you can watch the adverts for free.
      - lmm 3y ago
        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.
        tekknik 3y ago
        As a T-Mobile customer, and not paid at all to endorse their services, I can assert that their adverts do not lie.
        lmm 3y ago
        Verifying that you are what you claim is definitely not free.
gamblor956 3y ago
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.
- tptacek 3y ago
  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.
fivre 3y ago
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.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
rtpg 3y ago
> 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....
- tptacek 3y ago
  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.
  - rtpg 3y ago
    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?

lamontcg 3y ago

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.

CamelCaseName 3y ago
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)
- lamontcg 3y ago
  I literally can't even imagine that utopia, because I still reflexively included a carve out for sales tax.
- lostlogin 3y ago
  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.
  - jackson1442 3y ago
    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.
    - lostlogin 3y ago
      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.