4 ms·
Yes. You often also have to pay for parking in many places. The price you see online is rarely what you pay for. But that's part of the culture, it's the same f
by louison11 3y ago
Yes. You often also have to pay for parking in many places. The price you see online is rarely what you pay for. But that's part of the culture, it's the same for restaurants, online purchases etc.
- lukas099 3y agoThe sticker price is almost never what you pay, since tax is almost never included. Not sure how or when that norm diverged from the Euro one.
- xp84 3y agoI suspect the "how" is that we just never got the regulation that would prevent it because the 'small-government and low taxes' are aligned perfectly with the large business interests which tend to fund all campaigns. The "low taxes" types want to maximize the sting of all forms of tax and this is a great way to do that. And the businesses appreciate the psychological benefits of being able to show the minimum possible number. Even if a "display only the final price" rule applied to all a consumer's options, we probably just buy things more when they're labeled as "$99.99" instead of "$109.99." For extra fun, consider how phone bills attempt to "pass through" their own tax obligations, which have little to do with your own incremental usage, in the form of 'recovery fees' tacked onto bills. I suspect we'll eventually see those creep into all kinds of transactions, especially among other monopolistic/oligopoly businesses where you have little if any choice.
- sokoloff 3y ago> we probably just buy things more when they're labeled as "$99.99" instead of "$109.99." That's basic price elasticity of demand and entirely unsurprising. When something costs 10% more, people buy less of it in general. We also buy more things priced at $99.99 than at $100.00, which is more of the psychological trick than it is rational price elasticity.
- ericjmorey 3y agoThe 2 largest retailers on earth have discovered that the x.99 prices make you less money than pricing at x.99 plus some arbitrary number between .99 and .01.
- refurb 3y agoI’m imaging it’s because states and even cities can have differing sales tax rates. Hard to advertise to a wide audience when the final price after tax is one of 12 different prices depending on where they live.
- extraduder_ire 3y agoThat's a weak justification to apply to prices listed right where the product is sold. Like, if one uses a sticker gun to put a price tag on a product itself. I don't know of any US businesses other than waffle house that always include all taxes in the listed price, however.
- refurb 3y agoThere are laws against adding in taxes on listed prices in places like NJ, likely others as well. Regardless, I'm not sure why people consider it such a big deal. It's consistent across the board and it's relatively basic math to estimate what the total would be. I've lived in places that do it both ways and it's a non-issue.
- extraduder_ire 3y agoI think the EU law on that is the "Price indication directive", and AFAIK, it's been around since 1998. (may have replaced an earlier directive, my google-fu is lacking) I think the norm is to show whatever price you want, with some countries banning that for fairly obvious reasons.