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Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law

oag.ca.gov

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Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law

#121

Post by thfuran »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #110
guitarbill wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. Bait and switch is one symptom of the issue that the price is not what you'll pay. Which to be clear is awful. And that matters if you have to be careful about spending. Also, "everyone knows about them", really? If it's so easy to "know" the local tax rate for various things, why isn't it easy to label them? See the rest of the world, where even young kids can go shopping. If you give them 5 , and the item…

Like I said, you can have a debate about how taxes are displayed on a price list. I respectfully disagree on solely including them in the price and making them "hidden". Calling them out is a good reminder of exactly how much you are paying for government services. For example, the one common tax in the US that is hidden in the price is tax on gasoline. I think it would be better to specifically call this out, especi…

>Like I said, you can have a debate about how taxes are displayed on a price list

You can, but one side is going to be spouting garbage. Listing the actual total cost to the purchaser is so obviously better than not doing so.

Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law

#122

Post by JumpCrisscross »

guappa wrote: post #83
bcrosby95 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really a problem in brick and mortar stores. It's a problem in online stores because you can't necessarily give someone the right price with taxes until you have their address. And this problem is harder than some might think. I knew someone who lived on a street that was a "dividing line" for this stuff: same zip code, same city, but one side had a 9% sales tax, the other side had around 7%. We tested a lot…

How do they know how much tax to charge you when you buy? In that same way they know what price to show you.

> How do they know how much tax to charge you when you buy?

Did you miss the part about it being calculated in the cart? That’s after you’ve made the decision to purchase, a decision which presumably included the price. I would refuse to give every vendor my address just to see a price.

Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law

#123

Post by fragmede »

sowbug wrote: post #61
Wistar wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My cable/fiber bill is chock full of fees — many apparently imposed by the city, county, and state.

Some, such as Verizon's Telco Recovery Charge, are completely made up by the provider! How that isn't just fraud is beyond me.

There's a class action suit forming against Verizon for that practice. https://www.hattislaw.com/cases/verizon-wireless-bogus-fees/

Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law

#124

Post by shortcake27 »

smt88 wrote: post #48
sfmike wrote: post #15

We could learn from for example Japan where there is no cents and all fees included so 5000 Yen is 5000 yen no tip no tax no fees no cents it's really cortisol reducing.

Including taxes in the sticker price is bad. It allows the government to quietly increase taxes without people noticing. Sales taxes are in general regressive and harm lower-income people the most, so they should be visible and attributable to government.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but people in countries where sales tax is included in the price (which is virtually every other country in the world), are well aware of sales tax.

Many countries also exempt sales tax from essential groceries, which is not true for all US states. So the idea that the US model is somehow good for lower-income consumers is laughable.

Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law

#125

Post by kelnos »

sfmike wrote: post #15

We could learn from for example Japan where there is no cents and all fees included so 5000 Yen is 5000 yen no tip no tax no fees no cents it's really cortisol reducing.

1 US cent = ~1.5 JPY. Putting the decimal point a couple digits over doesn't really change anything. If you really want to, you can tell people that you spent "100 cents" instead of "1 dollar". They'll probably look at you funny, though.

Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law

#126

Post by internet101010 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #50

Comments that are bringing up taxes (which are totally exempted by this bill anyway) and tips (with one small caveat) are completely missing the point. You can have a debate about how to display those items on a price list, but everyone knows about them and they are expected. The whole point of this bill is to prevent bait-and-switch, where loads of unknown or variable fees are tacked on after the price is initially…

This happens a lot with apartment search engines. It used to just be a $10 trash fee or something but now they have gone so far as to add amenity fees. Good luck finding these fees on any website. So you go to view two different apartments listed at the same price online but one ends up having $50 in mandatory monthly fees and the other has $300.

Basically it should be illegal to not include any required monthly fee in an advertised price.

Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law

#127

Post by tester756 »

tjbiddle wrote: post #75
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understand this argument at all. Your shops have computers with label printers, right? At the Co-op supermarket in our little UK town (population 3000) they’ve even just replaced the shelf price tickets with tiny colour displays.

1. Taxes can change quickly, and it's a pain in the ass to keep up with. If you're now needing to deal with changing the printed price on tens, hundreds, thousands of items - I can't even imagine. 2. Online sales you won't even be able to calculate it until the customer puts in their shipping information. And no, they can't figure that out beforehand as there are a myriad of reasons why where their IP is does not mea…

"Taxes can change quickly"

Like, how quickly?

<1 day? otherwise it shouldnt be a problem

Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law

#128

Post by autoexec »

shortcake27 wrote: post #105
xmprt wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxes are set at a multiple levels (federal, state, district, and city) so it's pretty much impossible to show the post tax price on the label. Hidden fees are a completely different issue.

Almost every other country in the world has solved this problem. It’s always fascinating when Americans have problems other countries don’t have, and just throw their hands in air saying “welp nothing we can do about it”

One group always pushes the "nothing can be done" narrative because they've been making money hand over fist because of the way things are now and they don't want the status quo to change. Another group who jumps straight to "nothing can be done" have been conned by the first group into thinking that any deviation from the status quo is a trick by the devil to somehow take their freedom/property. Add in an unhealthy dose of American Exceptionalism and irrational fears of other countries and it means that there will always be somebody unwilling to consider adopting a good example set by people with a different flag or a funny accent. The rest of us are more frustrated than fascinated by the whole thing.

Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law

#129

Post by kelnos »

lpolovets wrote: post #96
olliej wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A classic example in the US is sales tax. Those are taxes determined by the final sale price which can vary depending on state, county, or city. More importantly because those fees aren't controlled by the company doing the bait and switch it's the same for every company. This bill is very clear that the target is "prices" that reject parts of the price that are entirely set by the person selling the goods or service…

I hear you, but the press release explicitly said that the goal of the bill is to prevent companies from attracting customers with a misleadingly low price and then charging a higher price. How are government fees and taxes -- especially industry-specific government fees that consumers may not be aware of -- not the exact thing that this bill stands against? If anything, this just encourages lobbying and corruption.…

Because government taxes and fees are a constant rate (given a particular good and location, anyway).

If I'm price-comparing hotels, and I see one that's $100/night, and another that's $75/night, I know that the cost may be higher due to taxes, but it will be higher by the exact same percentage for both of the hotels.

But if I go and book a room at the $75/night hotel, show up, and find that they're hitting me with a surprise $50/day "resort fee", then I'm going to feel cheated, and wish that'd I'd booked at the $100/night hotel (assuming that one doesn't have a resort fee, anyway).

The deceptive hotel tried (and succeeded!) in attracting me with a misleadingly low price, when I would have been able to get a better price from a different, non-deceptive hotel. Taxes really have nothing to do with that; people aware of how things are usually done in the US will know that no business would list taxes included unless they were required to, as doing so (when others do not) is essentially a competitive disadvantage.

I do agree with you that a better new law would require businesses to include taxes in their prices. But that's frankly so far outside the norm in the US that I wouldn't be surprised if the bill's author(s) expected it would fail to pass with that kind of language in it, so they limited it to something they actually thought would pass. Baby steps! Incremental improvements are better than nothing.

Also consider that there are many weird people in the US who like having sales taxes added later and itemized out, due to some misguided belief that including taxes up front would let the government raise taxes without anyone knowing. This is related to the unfortunate phenomenon of the IRS not being allowed to essentially do our income taxes for us.

Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law

#130

Post by guitarbill »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #110
guitarbill wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. Bait and switch is one symptom of the issue that the price is not what you'll pay. Which to be clear is awful. And that matters if you have to be careful about spending. Also, "everyone knows about them", really? If it's so easy to "know" the local tax rate for various things, why isn't it easy to label them? See the rest of the world, where even young kids can go shopping. If you give them 5 , and the item…

Like I said, you can have a debate about how taxes are displayed on a price list. I respectfully disagree on solely including them in the price and making them "hidden". Calling them out is a good reminder of exactly how much you are paying for government services. For example, the one common tax in the US that is hidden in the price is tax on gasoline. I think it would be better to specifically call this out, especi…

Even if by law the post-tax price is shown, is there any law preventing showing the pre-tax price also? Surely not.

Seems to me giving people a shock at the checkout is a particularly evil way of making taxes explicit. It isn't like the taxes aren't broken down on EU receipts for those who care; in fact it's quite explicit.

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