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FTC rule on unfair or deceptive fees to take effect on May 12
FAQ: https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/rule-unfair-or-deceptive-fees-frequently-asked-questions https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/rule-unfair-...
- WalterGR 1y agoIt’s a pretty limited rule in that (emphasis mine) “The Rule prohibits bait-and-switch pricing and other tactics used to hide total prices and mislead people about fees in the live-event ticketing and short-term lodging industries.”
- gnabgib 1y agoDiscussion (658 points, 5 months ago, 663 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42445037 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42445037
- navi0 1y agoOk, now do restaurants!
- simpaticoder 1y ago[flagged]
- projektfu 1y agoWhile I can't guess your exact implication, this Biden-era regulatory move (just now being finalized) was reiterated in an executive order by Trump, and the process wasn't stopped, so it seems pretty safe to assume that the regulation will stay. Whether the FTC enforces it is, I guess, up to whoever is running it at whatever time.
- ImPostingOnHN 1y agoIn-place regulations present an opportunity to trade nonenforcement for financial compensation. A nonexistent regulation does not.
- amendegree 1y ago> Whether the FTC enforces it is, I guess, up to whoever is running it at whatever time. Which is something that was always true for all executive branch departments but was essentially weaponized by the Obama administration and then really taken to an extreme by the Biden admin
- diggan 1y ago> Live-event tickets include those for concerts, sporting events, music, theater, and other live performances that audiences watch as they occur, but not pre-recorded audio or visual performances. What could be the reason pre-recorded audio/visual performances are excluded? Shouldn't this just be for everything? Why would some types of tickets be required to be truthful about fees and not allowed to lie about the total price in ads, while others are allowed?
- gruez 1y agoMovie theaters/studios lobbied harder
- explodes 1y ago"The Commission notes that the harms of bait-and-switch pricing and the misrepresentation of fees and charges are particularly pronounced in industries such as these, in which most transactions occur online. Consumers trying to comparison shop across multiple websites, or even on the same website, when deciding what tickets to purchase or where to travel are unable to do so effectively because some businesses hide the true total price and instead force consumers to go to different sites and click through multiple webpages for each offer to learn the true total price"
- gruez 1y agoSince when do consumers "comparison shop across multiple websites" for concert tickets? For the official release there's usually only one vendor.
- cscurmudgeon 1y ago[dead]
- Jolter 1y agoSimply put, cinemas didn’t engage in this bad behavior (yet) so they escaped regulation.
- 1y ago
- footlose_3815 1y agoThere's no teeth to any of these direct orders and any clever lawyer can probably argue-away all the provisions listed in the article.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- 9283409232 1y agoOkay so I'm not crazy because I swore this was a Biden era policy.
- timewizard 1y agoThe FTC is an independent regulatory agency. The president has almost no powers and little oversight when it comes to these agencies. More appropriately this is a Lina Khan era policy. She had a rocky start but her focus and conviction was unparalleled by any previous iteration of the agency. So much so that she enjoyed more bipartisan congressional support and approval than most staffers in recent memory.
- mschuster91 1y ago[flagged]
- hokumguru 1y agoDo you know what gooner even means lol.
- kbos87 1y ago[flagged]
- aio2 1y agothey d1 gooners
- mschuster91 1y agoExactly. And they've been reported to be backed by burly, heavily armed sort-of officers when they showed up uninvited at government agencies, demanding to be let in, hence the wordplay.
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoFrom Wikipedia: Nominated in March 2021; Served in office June 15, 2021 – January 20, 2025 Coincidental timing, I'm sure! 100% of the votes against confirmation were Republican. Fewer than half the R Senators voted to confirm her. Her predecessor, Obama nominee Edith Ramirez, was confirmed unanimously. I suggest we let the different parties take responsibility and/or credit for their decisions.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoI'm assuming that "short-term rental" means your standard "night or two" hotel rooms (not just extended say). It sounds like it, from the report. I remember staying in hotels in Japan, and they would say 1,600 Yen per night, and ... I get the bill for two nights, and it's 3,200 Yen. Not so, US hotels.
- mathgeek 1y agoShort term rentals have different legal definitions depending on the locality, but generally they are defined.
- kelnos 1y ago"Short-term rental" is usually something you'd find on Airbnb or VRBO, not a hotel like a Marriott or Hyatt property, which are classified as "hotels".
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoThey mention "hotels," in the report, but don't get specific as to services offered.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Retric 1y agoYea, hotels are covered. Examples of covered short-term lodging include: Temporary sleeping accommodations at a hotel, motel, inn, short-term rental, vacation rental, or other place of lodging; Home shares and vacation rentals offered through platforms (like Airbnb or VRBO); Discounted extended stays at a hotel. Examples of lodging that are not covered include: Long-term or other rental housing that involves an ongoing landlord-tenant relationship; Short-term extensions to leases offered by rental housing providers; Temporary corporate housing offered by an apartment community under the same conditions as long-term leases.
- ronbenton 1y ago
- idontwantthis 1y agoI hope this includes “resort fees” at Vegas hotels.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- yieldcrv 1y agoA lot of ticket sites have already implemented this, I think its a welcome change especially in choosing if something is within my budget The fees themselves are still ridiculous though
- vjvjvjvjghv 1y ago[flagged]
- deadbabe 1y agoI don’t understand why. Lately it feels like everything is “People like this? HA, take it away…” Wouldn’t this open them up to someone campaigning with all these little things and becoming really popular?
- jahsome 1y agoI have a personal conspiracy theory it's specifically because these things anger people. Once everyone is riled up, the less scrupulous among those seeking power can claim without any challenge whatsoever from the media they are the only people capable of making things better. And a good chunk of the electorate seems to buy it, wholesale.
- SkinTaco 1y agoThat is unlikely considering this executive order https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/combating-unfair-practices-in-the-live-entertainment-market/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/comb...
- dataflow 1y agoWas the TikTok 180 unlikely too?
- dredmorbius 1y agoGiven the admin's frequent use of carrot-stick incentives to achieve goals, I'd give fair odds to revised policy should affected parties bend knees sufficiently. The fact that this consideration applies to any policy / enforcement / regulatory position the US government takes for the next four years, domestic or foreign, is of course its own immense problem.
- EGreg 1y agoAwesome, now they should include the costs from the tariffs!
- thfuran 1y agoWhy not ban hidden fees altogether?
- projektfu 1y agoI wish they would ban the random surcharges that get added to prices of many business-to-business goods, like fuel, energy, environmental, hazmat, etc. They're unpredictable and generally unrelated to anything, just a way of hiding the final price, and they make it hard to do the unit accounting.
- chenster 1y ago[flagged]
- pease344 1y ago[dead]
- breadwinner 1y agoWhy limit this to live-event and lodging industries? Why not all the fees tacked on by cell carriers? For example, AT&T charges a fee to "recover certain aggregate expenses AT&T incurs, including, but not limited to, charges AT&T or its agents pay to interconnect with other carriers to deliver calls from AT&T customers to their customers and charges associated with cell site rents and maintenance" [1] [1] https://www.att.com/legal/terms.otherWirelessFeeSchedule.html https://www.att.com/legal/terms.otherWirelessFeeSchedule.htm...
- mcmcmc 1y agoLobbying and regulatory capture
- jfengel 1y agoRegulations like this are written in consultation with the industries being regulated. There is a ton of wrangling and nailing down details. It's usually hundreds of pages long and specific to the industry. So they can't just write a single thing that rights all wrongs. And their staffing is extremely limited.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- autobodie 1y ago>they can't just write a single thing that writes all wrongs. Found the attorney! Nobody asked for "a single thing that writes all wrongs." Simple, broad laws can absolutely be written, they are especially easy to write, and they are usually the best laws for decent average citizens, but decent average citizens are not who laws are written for in the United States. Most people already know this.
- kulahan 1y agoIsn’t it kind of helpful to have an attorney’s opinion on law? Anyways, it’s very easy to complain there isn’t a law which eliminates whatever fees you think are ridiculous across a large swathe of industries. What specific implementation would you suggest, though? I’ve not heard of these apparently simple approaches.
- autoexec 1y agoI'm glad to see this will be taking effect soon, but I'll hold my excitement until I see some examples of companies violating the rule also being hit with consequences significant enough for it to actually matter.
- Animats 1y agoLive Nation donated to Harris, not Trump.[1] This is their punishment. [1] https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/live-nation-entertainment/summary?id=D000053134 https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/live-nation-entertainment/s...
- michaelteter 1y agoHow long until this is undone?
- machomaster 1y ago> Also included in the FTC’s new FAQ are the types of fees that can be excluded, such as taxes or government fees, shipping charges, and charges for optional goods or services people may select to buy as part of the same transaction. Most of those, especially taxes, should be included as well. It's interesting how they put effort into the regulation, but then decided to put a little more, just to needlessly water it down and make it worsw.
- AStonesThrow 1y agoBeginning when I was only 14 in 1986, I used to attend a lot of concerts. A lot of them. And they were not particularly popular concerts, though most were in larger venues such as sports arenas and amphitheaters. So I was usually able to score decent tickets without too much cutthroat camping-in-line or anything. Even in those days, most all of the tickets were sold through TicketMaster. Our main outlet was on the second floor of a Montgomery Ward store in the mall, right there among all the clothing in the department store, for no obvious reason. Now in those days there were a couple of fees tacked on to ticket prices, but of course they were typically opaque already because even the base would depend on where we wanted to sit in the venue. So we didn't squirm too much when there were "facility fees" and "convenience fees" added and so forth. If possible, I would directly approach the venue's box office for the best deal, though. It was interesting, because as the years wore on, I became interested in more obscure music, and that translated to ever-smaller venues, and more informal ticket purchases. By 1999 I had acquired my "dream job" of clerk at Tower Records, and I was able to get up-close and personal with a real TicketMaster terminal (which was accessed in exactly the same way, with arcane text commands) and by that time my concert-being activities were being strictly curtailed. But I understood how terrible the market had become, the layers of fees that got tacked on, and the financial pain of wanting to see our favorite bands was increasing. I mean, in the "good old days" each seat was $40, maximum. These $250 packages with parking fees extra, that's abominable. As for short-term rentals, while I've embraced the new food delivery services and ride-sharing over taxis, I never felt like adopting short-term rentals over hotels. For reasons of insurance, safety, and billing, among other things. So I'm thankful that the FTC is doing stuff about both of these industries. I hope that this regulation will bring about some lasting change and consumer confidence.
- mattw2121 1y agoCan we get this applied to Turo? Find a car for 100/day. Try and book for 5 days. Ends up being $1000 once Turo adds its fees.