4 ms·

The Gap Between the Price You See and What You Pay Is Getting Worse

34 points by fortran77 3y ago

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
https://archive.ph/mEarH https://archive.ph/mEarH
- kseistrup 3y ago
  Thanks!
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
robertlagrant 3y ago
> His administration estimates that Americans pay more than a collective $90 billion in what the president has dubbed “junk fees” each year, including those for credit cards, food delivery, bank overdrafts and event tickets. He's right about the junk fees. When you buy something the state and federal taxes are not advertised in the price.
- chrisjj 3y ago
  Food delivery fees are "junk fees"??
  - alkonaut 3y ago
    Presumably it was referring to some fee that was added on top of what was advertised as the cost of delivery? The delivery is a service which obviously isn't free. But if you order food for $100 and there is a $20 delivery cost, and then a $5 delivery "fee" on top of the actual delivery cost, then it does smell like hiding a cost in a "junk fee".
    - chrisjj 3y ago
      None are IDed on the original source https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/10/11/biden-harris-administration-announces-broad-new-actions-to-protect-consumers-from-billions-in-junk-fees/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases... "Junk fees are hidden, surprise fees that companies sneak onto customer bills" > But if you order food for $100 and there is a $20 delivery cost, and then a $5 delivery "fee" on top of the actual delivery cost, then it does smell like hiding a cost in a "junk fee". Its not hidden unless its hidden, note.
      - alkonaut 2y ago
        At the time of payment everything adding up to the total is surely specified as something. I was referring to things specified at payment time, not at purchase time.
    - vrighter 3y ago
      Delivering one pizza, or delivering two pizzas to the same address doesn't cost any more. But what you usually get where I live, besides the "delivery fee" and the tip, is an additional surcharge on each individual item. This is not visible because it's included with the price of the item. To figure it out you have to compare the app's menu with the real restaurant's menu.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    I agree they're not junk, and neither are CC processing fees. They just should be built into the price.
  - lm28469 3y ago
    Last time I ordered, and I rarely do, I had to pay a delivery fee and a service fee. The delivery is the service
  - xboxnolifes 3y ago
    When I have a delivery fee, a service free, and a "tip", at least 2 of those are junk fees. The entire thing is the "service". Doubly so when the food itself is priced higher in the app, you're getting double delivery fee'd.
afavour 3y ago
I feel like the US left itself exposed to this kind of crap by not including taxes on advertised prices. I know the logic behind it (so you know how much tax you’re paying) but the reality is that it’s just irritating and established in people’s heads that you’re never going to pay the price you see on the label. Having grown up in Europe where tax is included on the label I still knew I was paying VAT and I knew the percentage amount of it, everyone did. If I picked up a €5 item and was charged anything other than €5 at the checkout I’d know something fishy was going on. But in the US it’s always been easy to tack on a little 20c fee here, a 50c one there… this is just the inevitable escalation where apps like Uber Eats bundle together $12 of “taxes and fees” to mask their obscene cut.
- piva00 3y ago
  From my experience around the US it's not only taxes, it is taxes, "service fees", tipping, some other junk fee with another name that is not "service fee", so on and so forth. You check out from a hotel not knowing what kind of fee they will be adding, you go into a restaurant not knowing how much the food will actually cost. Figures for prices don't mean anything until you are on the process of paying and figure out all the extras that will be added after the fact. Worse as a non-local since you aren't accustomed to all the ways a service can charge you extras to be prepared for it. It's absolutely irritating, almost everything feels like a bait and switch.
  - nojvek 3y ago
    Biden could make it a law to show final price. But it's hard to get through senate and congress. The other part is even if they make it a law, the courts are backlogged for years. US corporations are pretty good at breaking laws and making it a cost of doing business.
- floor2 3y ago
  > I know the logic behind it (so you know how much tax you’re paying) I always understood it to be the opposite- so that the varying price for the same thing by location was hidden from consumers. A nationwide chain can advertise that a product is $X, even though their customers will pay anywhere from zero additional tax (Alaska, Delaware) to over 11% additional tax (California, Arizona, Illinois). See https://www.avalara.com/taxrates/en/state-rates.html https://www.avalara.com/taxrates/en/state-rates.html for how widely it can range by location.
andrew_eu 3y ago
While the article does a good job of listing examples where such fees are added on, it does a fairly poor job in contextualizing this. Reflecting on personal experience, of course additional fees are getting worse, more pervasive, and more expensive. But the headline implies a trend while the article only provides recent examples without historical comparisons. For me the most annoying examples are with flights aggregators who more often than not do a shameless bait and switch. Advertise the price as X, but once the checkout process begins it's actually much more.
13of40 3y ago
When I think about it, there's literally not a single thing I know the true cost/value of. Everything comes with a trailing asterisk or an 'ish'. A Sandwich: Sales tax and tip or service fee (the latter being taxed) Car: KBB is a thing, but how much work does it take to get that, how much of a discount is the craigslist rando going to ask, are those tires good or fair? House: Put the Zillow estimate in one hand and the inch-thick stack of paper that describes all the gotchas in buying or selling one in the other... 401k: There's an official number on that one, but it changes every 15 minutes, has 30% taxes if you take it early, and how do you figure the odds of living long enough to use it? Mortgage: Another official number, but try sending them a check for that number and you'll find you owe them a little more for the interest that happened while the check was in flight, plus fees if it's in the fine print. Salary: After taxes, deductions, bonuses, unicorn dust, what it says on your W-2 isn't even close to your alleged salary, nor is the amount that makes it to your checking account. "Ah, but that's actual cash in my checking account," you smile, "as is this crisp fiver I clutch in my very hand." Except it's not, because you're a dinosaur and your idea of a fiver was forged in an ancient time when it could buy a whole chicken or a sack of potatoes, depending on the day of the week, and what sales were on, so what you've got there is really a three-er.
- jareklupinski 3y ago
  the only way to stay ahead is to live slightly below your means; that way every bill will feel like a bargain the fees are still there, but 1% of $10 stings a lot less than 1% of $100
  - TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
    Or like in Europe, mandate showing prices with taxes, so if I will buy goods for sum of x EUR, I will pay x EUR at the register.
underseacables 3y ago
What is stopping America from adopting a VAT for retail products, or displaying the final price for items on their tags?

34 points by fortran77 3y ago

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago

https://archive.ph/mEarH https://archive.ph/mEarH

kseistrup 3y ago
Thanks!

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

robertlagrant 3y ago

> His administration estimates that Americans pay more than a collective $90 billion in what the president has dubbed “junk fees” each year, including those for credit cards, food delivery, bank overdrafts and event tickets. He's right about the junk fees. When you buy something the state and federal taxes are not advertised in the price.

chrisjj 3y ago
Food delivery fees are "junk fees"??
- alkonaut 3y ago
  Presumably it was referring to some fee that was added on top of what was advertised as the cost of delivery? The delivery is a service which obviously isn't free. But if you order food for $100 and there is a $20 delivery cost, and then a $5 delivery "fee" on top of the actual delivery cost, then it does smell like hiding a cost in a "junk fee".
  - chrisjj 3y ago
    None are IDed on the original source https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/10/11/biden-harris-administration-announces-broad-new-actions-to-protect-consumers-from-billions-in-junk-fees/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases... "Junk fees are hidden, surprise fees that companies sneak onto customer bills" > But if you order food for $100 and there is a $20 delivery cost, and then a $5 delivery "fee" on top of the actual delivery cost, then it does smell like hiding a cost in a "junk fee". Its not hidden unless its hidden, note.
    - alkonaut 2y ago
      At the time of payment everything adding up to the total is surely specified as something. I was referring to things specified at payment time, not at purchase time.
  - vrighter 3y ago
    Delivering one pizza, or delivering two pizzas to the same address doesn't cost any more. But what you usually get where I live, besides the "delivery fee" and the tip, is an additional surcharge on each individual item. This is not visible because it's included with the price of the item. To figure it out you have to compare the app's menu with the real restaurant's menu.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  I agree they're not junk, and neither are CC processing fees. They just should be built into the price.
- lm28469 3y ago
  Last time I ordered, and I rarely do, I had to pay a delivery fee and a service fee. The delivery is the service
- xboxnolifes 3y ago
  When I have a delivery fee, a service free, and a "tip", at least 2 of those are junk fees. The entire thing is the "service". Doubly so when the food itself is priced higher in the app, you're getting double delivery fee'd.

afavour 3y ago

I feel like the US left itself exposed to this kind of crap by not including taxes on advertised prices. I know the logic behind it (so you know how much tax you’re paying) but the reality is that it’s just irritating and established in people’s heads that you’re never going to pay the price you see on the label. Having grown up in Europe where tax is included on the label I still knew I was paying VAT and I knew the percentage amount of it, everyone did. If I picked up a €5 item and was charged anything other than €5 at the checkout I’d know something fishy was going on. But in the US it’s always been easy to tack on a little 20c fee here, a 50c one there… this is just the inevitable escalation where apps like Uber Eats bundle together $12 of “taxes and fees” to mask their obscene cut.

piva00 3y ago
From my experience around the US it's not only taxes, it is taxes, "service fees", tipping, some other junk fee with another name that is not "service fee", so on and so forth. You check out from a hotel not knowing what kind of fee they will be adding, you go into a restaurant not knowing how much the food will actually cost. Figures for prices don't mean anything until you are on the process of paying and figure out all the extras that will be added after the fact. Worse as a non-local since you aren't accustomed to all the ways a service can charge you extras to be prepared for it. It's absolutely irritating, almost everything feels like a bait and switch.
- nojvek 3y ago
  Biden could make it a law to show final price. But it's hard to get through senate and congress. The other part is even if they make it a law, the courts are backlogged for years. US corporations are pretty good at breaking laws and making it a cost of doing business.
floor2 3y ago
> I know the logic behind it (so you know how much tax you’re paying) I always understood it to be the opposite- so that the varying price for the same thing by location was hidden from consumers. A nationwide chain can advertise that a product is $X, even though their customers will pay anywhere from zero additional tax (Alaska, Delaware) to over 11% additional tax (California, Arizona, Illinois). See https://www.avalara.com/taxrates/en/state-rates.html https://www.avalara.com/taxrates/en/state-rates.html for how widely it can range by location.

andrew_eu 3y ago

While the article does a good job of listing examples where such fees are added on, it does a fairly poor job in contextualizing this. Reflecting on personal experience, of course additional fees are getting worse, more pervasive, and more expensive. But the headline implies a trend while the article only provides recent examples without historical comparisons. For me the most annoying examples are with flights aggregators who more often than not do a shameless bait and switch. Advertise the price as X, but once the checkout process begins it's actually much more.

13of40 3y ago

When I think about it, there's literally not a single thing I know the true cost/value of. Everything comes with a trailing asterisk or an 'ish'. A Sandwich: Sales tax and tip or service fee (the latter being taxed) Car: KBB is a thing, but how much work does it take to get that, how much of a discount is the craigslist rando going to ask, are those tires good or fair? House: Put the Zillow estimate in one hand and the inch-thick stack of paper that describes all the gotchas in buying or selling one in the other... 401k: There's an official number on that one, but it changes every 15 minutes, has 30% taxes if you take it early, and how do you figure the odds of living long enough to use it? Mortgage: Another official number, but try sending them a check for that number and you'll find you owe them a little more for the interest that happened while the check was in flight, plus fees if it's in the fine print. Salary: After taxes, deductions, bonuses, unicorn dust, what it says on your W-2 isn't even close to your alleged salary, nor is the amount that makes it to your checking account. "Ah, but that's actual cash in my checking account," you smile, "as is this crisp fiver I clutch in my very hand." Except it's not, because you're a dinosaur and your idea of a fiver was forged in an ancient time when it could buy a whole chicken or a sack of potatoes, depending on the day of the week, and what sales were on, so what you've got there is really a three-er.

jareklupinski 3y ago
the only way to stay ahead is to live slightly below your means; that way every bill will feel like a bargain the fees are still there, but 1% of $10 stings a lot less than 1% of $100
- TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
  Or like in Europe, mandate showing prices with taxes, so if I will buy goods for sum of x EUR, I will pay x EUR at the register.

underseacables 3y ago

What is stopping America from adopting a VAT for retail products, or displaying the final price for items on their tags?