Income tax also feels like a hidden fee since it's automatically deducted from your paycheck and is out of sight/out of mind for most people, despite it taking anywhere from a quarter to a third of your income. If people had to pay a monthly tax bill every month, I think they'd think very differently about their level of taxes. Note: I'm not actually advocating that, I think it sounds awful. But the hidden-fee experience feels very similar
California AG and state senators introduce bill to ban hidden fees
171–180 of 396 posts
Re: California AG and state senators introduce bill to ban hidden fees
#172Tons of industries affected by this, though hospitality comes to mind as being particularly egregious. "resort fees" you can't get out of where they tell you what you're "getting" for those fees, Airbnb service fees, cleaning fees, things that should all be spread across the nightly rate. The feds doing this for airfare was the best thing to happen for consumers shopping for flights. Ideally we would take it further…
> cleaning fees, things that should all be spread across the nightly rate. The thing is, cleaning genuinely costs a bunch when a guest departs. It’s a per-stay cost. This doesn’t mean it’s reasonable to hide it. Having a rate structure that has a nightly rate plus a per-visit rate or, equivalently, a first-night rate and an additional-night rate is just fine as long as it’s advertised. And a search for a stay of a gi…
I'm OK with the concept of cleaning fees as long as
a) when I search for a place to stay for x nights, the cleaning fee should be amortized into the nightly rate (protip- Airbnb's website will do so if it thinks you're in Australia)
b) I don't have to do chores. It's super irritating to pay a $300 cleaning fee, then check in and see that the host expects me to to wash the sheets, do the dishes, take out the trash, sweep the patio, and water the plants.
Re: California AG and state senators introduce bill to ban hidden fees
#173I wish they would treat sales tax as a hidden fee. Just show the actual damn price up front plzkthx.
If we had a standard sales tax, sure. But when sales taxes vary by city and county, like they do in California, it's very painful to do that -- and that's only 1 of the 50 states!
> like they do in California, it's very painful to do that -- and that's only 1 of the 50 states
Not all 50 states have a tax system as absurd as California's, where it matters down to the exact part of the street you're standing on when buying something.
Other states are the example CA should follow, not the other way around.
Re: California AG and state senators introduce bill to ban hidden fees
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
> tipping This has gotten ridiculous past 2-3 year. Buy a $3.00 coffee , $1 tip is expected. I hate those ipad type payment consoles.
Not only that, but now everyone wants tips for things which never expected it before. Food cart? Tip. Fast food drive-thru? Tip. Heck, my barber now charges $25 for a haircut (which takes all of 15 minutes) and we're expected to tip for that too. Then there are tips that I apparently don't really know about but if I don't, I'm the jerk. I never knew I was supposed to tip the natural gas guy when he comes by to do som…
> Heck, my barber now charges $25 for a haircut (which takes all of 15 minutes) and we're expected to tip for that too.
It's been customary to tip barbers since forever, hasn't it? When I was just 8, my father gave me money to tip the barber. I think the principle is, you tip so that the server remembers you. With haircuts, that can make a difference.
My hair is now so thin and wispy that no barber can make it look OK. I cut it very short myself, with electric clippers. I haven't been to a barbers in 8 years.
Re: California AG and state senators introduce bill to ban hidden fees
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? The business is built on infrastructure that is paid for with taxes. Tax is included in all end user prices in every European country I’m aware of.
No, the business is built on infrastructure that is paid for with a tiny fraction of taxes. They are not congruent. Taxes in Europe are also much higher in general. Perhaps this is a result of obscuring the amounts in the advertised prices—it never raises to the level of conscious consideration of the tax burden at point of purchase.
If the government runs a deficit- which it does- then the taxes are literally too low to cover the infrastructure so it can’t be “a fraction”.
Sure you can argue some of that goes to military (a safe nation is kinda infrastructure) and healthcare/Welfare (healthy and fed employees and customers are good for business too) but regardless your view on taxes, they all somehow end up back to helping the nation regardless of how efficiently or directly that happens.
Re: California AG and state senators introduce bill to ban hidden fees
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is also a case where consumers say they want one thing, but their behavior is a different matter. For example, pretty much everyone says they prefer the full price to be shown up front in search result pages. But, as someone who is privy to a ton of A/B testing in this area, the opposite nearly always results in higher conversion, where there is a lower up-front price and fees are only tacked on during checkou…
I interpreted that as suggesting people would wind up buying nothing if all the options are perceived to be too expensive. But sone people will continue down the rabbit hole if you get them in the funnel to start with
How did you interpret the text to mean that? Higher conversion doesn't mean nothing was purchased.
the opposite nearly always results in higher
conversion, where there is a lower up-front price and
fees are only tacked on during checkout.Re: California AG and state senators introduce bill to ban hidden fees
#177I think a lot of comments here are missing the reason as to why these hidden fees have become so much more prevalent in the past 20 or so years. The short of it is that comparison pricing is now much easier to do because of the Internet, and many, if not a majority, of shoppers will just sort by price ascending and pick the first result (or, only pick from the first couple results). Thus, there is a huge incentive fo…
> This is also a case where consumers say they want one thing, but their behavior is a different matter. For example, pretty much everyone says they prefer the full price to be shown up front in search result pages. But, as someone who is privy to a ton of A/B testing in this area, the opposite nearly always results in higher conversion, where there is a lower up-front price and fees are only tacked on during checkou…
I wouldn’t read the claim as “consumers secretly do like hidden fees” but rather “people say they don’t like them but don’t actually care enough to stop giving money to companies which use them”. It’s like how people might say they want to eat better food if you ask them directly but when you record what they actually eat it ends up looking quite different.
On HN you’ll see a similar dynamic with privacy, business ethics, etc.: people say they don’t like being tracked but won’t even try using a browser other than Chrome or worry about local businesses but won’t consist paying +-10% more not to buy through Amazon.
Re: California AG and state senators introduce bill to ban hidden fees
#178Re: California AG and state senators introduce bill to ban hidden fees
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
That and the way our income taxes work are two of the most annoying things that the anti-tax right have "won" in the US. Everyone's life is made a little worse all the time , in the name of some I-suspect-imaginary "awareness campaign" to increase resistance to taxes. In fact I doubt there'd be any less awareness if they'd just mandate that tax be itemized and given sufficient weight on receipts, and that the IRS mai…
It has way less to do with any "awareness campaign" and more to do with how tax rates are different in many municipalities that are very close to each other and how hard that makes advertising. For instance, the famous "$5 footlong" from Subway couldn't be advertised that way nationally, or even within a single state or metro area due to different taxes on prepared food.
You can, you just do the math backward so it’s $5 everywhere (or $6 or whatever).
Re: California AG and state senators introduce bill to ban hidden fees
#180I think a lot of comments here are missing the reason as to why these hidden fees have become so much more prevalent in the past 20 or so years. The short of it is that comparison pricing is now much easier to do because of the Internet, and many, if not a majority, of shoppers will just sort by price ascending and pick the first result (or, only pick from the first couple results). Thus, there is a huge incentive fo…
It's not just comparison pricing. The online booking portals take a percent of the revenue. The Expedia tax is not very different than App Store taxes.
By requiring part of the fee to be paid directly to the hotel at check-in, it means the hotel gets to keep more of their revenue.