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Which is exactly why they should be banned to keep the market overall healthy. Preventing deceptive practices in a market economy this is a prime example of use

Which is exactly why they should be banned to keep the market overall healthy. Preventing deceptive practices in a market economy this is a prime example of useful government "intervention", just like supporting contract enforcement or preventing theft

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
They can always justify it as not knowing the price. The sales tax rate is different in different places. It costs a different amount to ship to Florida than Alaska and picking it up at the factory is free (even if nobody does). The advertised price is if you have your own modem, renting one from the cable company is more. None of these are inherently wrong. You should be paying more if you're having it shipped to a remote location with high shipping costs, and the cost of that shouldn't be dumped on every other customer. But it's kind of a loophole if you want the advertised price to be lower than what people are actually going to be paying in practice.
- wongarsu 3y ago
  There are some cases where not knowing the price is reasonable. As you say, shipping can often only be calculated if you know all items and their destination. If you advertise on national TV you can't name a price that includes sales price (unless the company eats the difference). But these could be treated as tightly regulated necessary evils, not as a justification that showing final prices is always impossible. There is no reason you can't show final price including tax on the label in a physical shop. There is no reason why a restaurant should be able to charge a 20% service charge instead of increasing regular prices by 20%. If you are buying a concert ticket or airline ticket the displayed price should include all mandatory fees. They can upsell you on additional services, but they can't suddenly notice in the last checkout step that your price is higher because the website you are using is charging a fee; that fee was known to them at the beginning of the transaction and should have to be disclosed at that point in time at the latest. If you want to go even further you can also dictate that shipping and handling fees are only allowed to include reasonable costs of actual shipping and handling. All of these are normal common-sense regulations in most first-world countries.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > There is no reason you can't show final price including tax on the label in a physical shop. Sure there is. When the price label is affixed by the factory/warehouse then you would have to track where everything is going and be unable to share inventory. Also, if the sales tax rate changes then all the labels become wrong. These would ultimately increase costs for consumers. Adding sales tax is also not at all misleading because the customer is not going to be surprised by it and there isn't going to be a competing merchant across the street who can avoid charging it. There are also business customers with their own sales tax ID and they can buy things without paying sales tax when they're being incorporated into a product where they collect the sales tax themselves. > There is no reason why a restaurant should be able to charge a 20% service charge instead of increasing regular prices by 20%. This is actually true. A mandatory undisclosed fee is BS. But it doesn't help much, because if they want to do it then they just make it "optional" where the way to avoid it is more of an inconvenience than paying the fee. > They can upsell you on additional services, but they can't suddenly notice in the last checkout step that your price is higher because the website you are using is charging a fee; that fee was known to them at the beginning of the transaction and should have to be disclosed at that point in time at the latest. The last step is where you disclose your address. Before that they may not even know which country you're in, much less the city/state, and there are a thousand legitimate reasons to have different prices or fees in different jurisdictions. > If you want to go even further you can also dictate that shipping and handling fees are only allowed to include reasonable costs of actual shipping and handling. That doesn't really help, they're typically charging the actual cost. They just don't include it in the advertised price because it makes you inclined to make the purchase online instead of saving $10 by picking it up for the same price but no shipping charge the next time you go to the competing local store. There's a reason Amazon's major competitive advantage is free two day shipping, derived from having the scale to achieve low shipping costs themselves.
    - cogman10 3y ago
      > When the price label is affixed by the factory/warehouse then you would have to track where everything is going and be unable to share inventory. Price tags are pretty much universally handled at the stores. There are some goods where the price tag is attached, but that's more the exception and not the rule. This is a solvable problem. So much so that if you've traveled in most nations you'll see that all prices include tax. Not including tax is a particularly weird aspect of US culture that simply doesn't exist in other nations, even those with a large amount of imported goods.
- thfuran 3y ago
  >They can always justify it as not knowing the price. You could as easily say that the marketing department not knowing the features of the product justifies them making whatever claim they want in an advertisement. Why should a company be permitted to advertise something they don't know to be true, let alone something they know to be false?
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    It's not that they don't know what the price is, it's that the price is differs based on factors that aren't the same for every person viewing the advertisement. Meanwhile most of these factors (like the local sales tax rate) are known by the customer, so they already know what the final price will be given the base price on the ad.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

They can always justify it as not knowing the price. The sales tax rate is different in different places. It costs a different amount to ship to Florida than Alaska and picking it up at the factory is free (even if nobody does). The advertised price is if you have your own modem, renting one from the cable company is more. None of these are inherently wrong. You should be paying more if you're having it shipped to a remote location with high shipping costs, and the cost of that shouldn't be dumped on every other customer. But it's kind of a loophole if you want the advertised price to be lower than what people are actually going to be paying in practice.

wongarsu 3y ago
There are some cases where not knowing the price is reasonable. As you say, shipping can often only be calculated if you know all items and their destination. If you advertise on national TV you can't name a price that includes sales price (unless the company eats the difference). But these could be treated as tightly regulated necessary evils, not as a justification that showing final prices is always impossible. There is no reason you can't show final price including tax on the label in a physical shop. There is no reason why a restaurant should be able to charge a 20% service charge instead of increasing regular prices by 20%. If you are buying a concert ticket or airline ticket the displayed price should include all mandatory fees. They can upsell you on additional services, but they can't suddenly notice in the last checkout step that your price is higher because the website you are using is charging a fee; that fee was known to them at the beginning of the transaction and should have to be disclosed at that point in time at the latest. If you want to go even further you can also dictate that shipping and handling fees are only allowed to include reasonable costs of actual shipping and handling. All of these are normal common-sense regulations in most first-world countries.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > There is no reason you can't show final price including tax on the label in a physical shop. Sure there is. When the price label is affixed by the factory/warehouse then you would have to track where everything is going and be unable to share inventory. Also, if the sales tax rate changes then all the labels become wrong. These would ultimately increase costs for consumers. Adding sales tax is also not at all misleading because the customer is not going to be surprised by it and there isn't going to be a competing merchant across the street who can avoid charging it. There are also business customers with their own sales tax ID and they can buy things without paying sales tax when they're being incorporated into a product where they collect the sales tax themselves. > There is no reason why a restaurant should be able to charge a 20% service charge instead of increasing regular prices by 20%. This is actually true. A mandatory undisclosed fee is BS. But it doesn't help much, because if they want to do it then they just make it "optional" where the way to avoid it is more of an inconvenience than paying the fee. > They can upsell you on additional services, but they can't suddenly notice in the last checkout step that your price is higher because the website you are using is charging a fee; that fee was known to them at the beginning of the transaction and should have to be disclosed at that point in time at the latest. The last step is where you disclose your address. Before that they may not even know which country you're in, much less the city/state, and there are a thousand legitimate reasons to have different prices or fees in different jurisdictions. > If you want to go even further you can also dictate that shipping and handling fees are only allowed to include reasonable costs of actual shipping and handling. That doesn't really help, they're typically charging the actual cost. They just don't include it in the advertised price because it makes you inclined to make the purchase online instead of saving $10 by picking it up for the same price but no shipping charge the next time you go to the competing local store. There's a reason Amazon's major competitive advantage is free two day shipping, derived from having the scale to achieve low shipping costs themselves.
  - cogman10 3y ago
    > When the price label is affixed by the factory/warehouse then you would have to track where everything is going and be unable to share inventory. Price tags are pretty much universally handled at the stores. There are some goods where the price tag is attached, but that's more the exception and not the rule. This is a solvable problem. So much so that if you've traveled in most nations you'll see that all prices include tax. Not including tax is a particularly weird aspect of US culture that simply doesn't exist in other nations, even those with a large amount of imported goods.
thfuran 3y ago
>They can always justify it as not knowing the price. You could as easily say that the marketing department not knowing the features of the product justifies them making whatever claim they want in an advertisement. Why should a company be permitted to advertise something they don't know to be true, let alone something they know to be false?
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  It's not that they don't know what the price is, it's that the price is differs based on factors that aren't the same for every person viewing the advertisement. Meanwhile most of these factors (like the local sales tax rate) are known by the customer, so they already know what the final price will be given the base price on the ad.