Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Companies use drip pricing to overcharge consumers

passingtime.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 425 posts

Re: Companies use drip pricing to overcharge consumers

#131

Post by lxgr »

myself248 wrote: post #48
pjsg wrote: post #43

I always object to US retail adding Tax to the price of the items. In the UK (and I expect Europe) the price on the shelf is the price that you pay. VAT is included. In the US, you walk into a store and have to become an expert at understanding local taxes in order to figure out how much anything costs. Hotels often have four of five extra fees tacked on. I'd like "The price you see is the price you pay" to be the ru…

Most places in the US, the local tax is the same statewide. Not in Ohio, where it can vary by township, sometimes across invisible boundaries. I once attended a large flea-market where such a boundary cut through the fairgrounds. Taxes were different on one side of the line than the other. It's so bad that Ohio actually has a mobile app that uses your phone's GPS to figure out which jurisdiction you're in and show th…

It often even varies by item, or there are weird incentives/carve-outs for some products.

For example, shoes are sales tax free in NYC (if they're less than $110). This can mean that the difference between a pair for $109 and one for $111 is close to $10.

When grocery shopping, I'm always surprised which items are taxed and which are tax free. Other than most (but not all) produce and basics like pasta, bread etc. I'd consider staples usually being tax free, I haven't been able to detect any underlying at all so far.

Re: Companies use drip pricing to overcharge consumers

#132

Post by idopmstuff »

monksy wrote: post #120
idopmstuff wrote: post #80

What really gets me at restaurants is that they often don't disclose this on the menu up front. I've started taking pictures of menus when I eat out, so when the bill comes and there's a 4% surcharge, I can be sure that it was not disclosed. I think if you disclose it, it's annoying but hey, free markets and all that. If you don't disclose it and charge people extra, I think that's just downright dishonest. The upsid…

You should be sending the pictures of the reciept and the menu to your attorney general. Typically hidden non-tax fees are not legal if you never mention it early on.

Honestly, the cost/benefit ratio isn't just there. Leaving a one star review on Yelp is both faster and probably more likely to have an impact on the restaurant.

Re: Companies use drip pricing to overcharge consumers

#133

Post by lxgr »

Dowwie wrote: post #88

Contractors have been doing this for decades. Here are two examples of the scam. The roof of your property needs replacing. You call a few roofers to come by and give an estimate for work. You choose the cheapest roofer, who uses the same materials as the others and has been allegedly in the family-run business for the last 125 years. After the first half of day's work, the shingles of the old roof were removed. The…

This definitely sounds bad, but at least in custom services, I can imagine scenarios where it's not possible to give an accurate estimate before starting the actual work (and already incurring cost in the process).

There is just no justification at all for goods and services with a uniform sticker price, such as a meal in a restaurant. If you can program it into a POS, you can print it on the price tag.

Re: Companies use drip pricing to overcharge consumers

#134

Post by chamwislothe2nd »

jzb wrote: post #57
chamwislothe2nd wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, the waiter is complicit in the fraud and no longer deserves a tip.

Yes, because as we all know, service staff have enormous power and dictate restaurant policy. This is why they're so highly paid and aren't abused at all by customers, for example. /s

As I said, for everyone involved it is unfortunate, but the majority of people without power still choose not to be complicit in fraud.

Re: Companies use drip pricing to overcharge consumers

#135

Post by lxgr »

duxup wrote: post #47
pjsg wrote: post #43

I always object to US retail adding Tax to the price of the items. In the UK (and I expect Europe) the price on the shelf is the price that you pay. VAT is included. In the US, you walk into a store and have to become an expert at understanding local taxes in order to figure out how much anything costs. Hotels often have four of five extra fees tacked on. I'd like "The price you see is the price you pay" to be the ru…

Hotels and some things are a huge mess. But generally your random consumer buying a random widget has some idea about what taxes are involved and roughly what to expect when they buy specific consumer goods / the machine tells them what to pay. It's complex if you want to do the math and get the exact number each time, but for most transactions it's a fairly small amount / not something you need to think about / need…

But the vendor needs to figure out the exact number anyway at checkout! It's not like they get to avoid the calculation effort this way.

Re: Companies use drip pricing to overcharge consumers

#136

Post by drdec »

jzb wrote: post #57
chamwislothe2nd wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, the waiter is complicit in the fraud and no longer deserves a tip.

Yes, because as we all know, service staff have enormous power and dictate restaurant policy. This is why they're so highly paid and aren't abused at all by customers, for example. /s

The server could have made sure they were aware of the policy before they ordered. Seems like the best way to make sure you get a tip to me.

Re: Companies use drip pricing to overcharge consumers

#137

Post by MDWolinski »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #25
MDWolinski wrote: post #22

The concept of tipping is for "tipped" positions in restaurants. Someone in a Tipped position earns far less then minimum wage, which is made up by customer Tips. So this leads into my frustration with the proliferation of tipping, which seems to have started at Starbucks (edit: at least that's where I first saw it occurring for counter services), is someone working at Starbucks making tipped wages or at/above minimu…

> which seems to have started at Starbucks (edit: at least that's where I first saw it occurring for counter services) In my experience, it existed before in the form of tip jars (in NYC area), but really blew up when tablet point of sale systems like Clover came into the picture. They earn a percent of the transaction, so adding a simple option to increase the amount of the transaction is a no brainer for increasing…

Pre-Covid, wife and I went and tried a Grilled Cheese place in town that had been open for at least a year. As we were checking out on the tablet they had, my wife asked something about the Tip prompt on it. The cashier said, "Don't worry about it, the tips just go to management."

So, makes me wonder at every other place, how well the tips are distributed.

The other area I have an issue with (although I still tip here) is with my barber. She owns the business and she's the only one I go to. Technically speaking, she's keeping all the profit, so is a tip still warranted?

My water delivery company added the ability to add a tip for the delivery driver. I'm waiting for the county trash collection to offer the same option.

Re: Companies use drip pricing to overcharge consumers

#139

Post by hansvm »

phpisthebest wrote: post #61
dqv wrote: post #23

It would be nice to have bundle reform that requires all prices to be listed as taxes-and-fees-inclusive here in the US. Ok, it’s not going to happen federally, but I’d at least like it where I live. Changing prices is already regular maintenance, so the idea that this would place a burden on businesses is BS. If they have metadata at the cash register to know how to tax different items, they can have it at the label…

>>It would be nice to have bundle reform that requires all prices to be listed as taxes-and-fees-inclusive here in the US No no no no Taxes should be listed for atleast 3 reasons 1. The company is not paying the tax, you are. You owe the tax not the company, the company is merely collecting the tax for the government. In many states the company is paid to collect this tax on the governments behalf. If the tax was not…

Hypothetically, what do you think about requiring a big, up-front total and a high-level cost breakdown (section numbers for tax codes, overall material cost, amortized facilities cost)?

To some of your points:

1. Isn't super important because on the 2. Break it out as a line item. Bold it. Maybe a bit more transparency would help with the pattern of stores raking in record profits when any upstream supplier has a minor price hiccup.

3. Having to memorize the tax rates in every city for every class of goods and apply those accurately on the fly doesn't benefit anyone unless it finally pisses off enough people to turn our mess of a system into something simpler. Displaying the actual tax rate on the receipt should more than suffice.

The thing that worries me about the pattern of tacking on crap after a total had already been agreed to is that it conditions is to accept that as just something that happens once in awhile. Like how SF restaurants started tacking on a fixed percentage to cover employee health benefits when that law passed. You'd sit down to a meal, choose what you're going to eat at least partially based on the price and expected tip, and find out after the meal that they expect you to pay some amount greater than what was listed and societally accepted at the time -- and critically, on average it's a much greater fee than is actually required to pay the offending tax. That particular instance has gotten a little better since at least they usually have small-print signs informing you of that fact now, but it repeats itself in car dealerships making up line items passing on ordinary costs of doing business to consumers as if they were collecting ordinary sales tax, in toll companies separating out an additional fee for the envelope they're using to send you your bill, ....

Re: Companies use drip pricing to overcharge consumers

#140

Post by newaccount74 »

lxgr wrote: post #133
Dowwie wrote: post #88

Contractors have been doing this for decades. Here are two examples of the scam. The roof of your property needs replacing. You call a few roofers to come by and give an estimate for work. You choose the cheapest roofer, who uses the same materials as the others and has been allegedly in the family-run business for the last 125 years. After the first half of day's work, the shingles of the old roof were removed. The…

This definitely sounds bad, but at least in custom services, I can imagine scenarios where it's not possible to give an accurate estimate before starting the actual work (and already incurring cost in the process). There is just no justification at all for goods and services with a uniform sticker price, such as a meal in a restaurant. If you can program it into a POS, you can print it on the price tag.

An honest contractor tells you ahead of time.

They'll say, this is how much it costs to replace the roof tiles, here's how much it would cost to replace the framing if necessary. It's not like rotten wood under the roof is a complete surprise to anyone.

Post reply on HN