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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

#141

Post by autoexec »

koito17 wrote: post #8
amatecha wrote: post #3

Is that like "convenience fee" or that sort of crap such as on Ticketmaster? If so, this is amazing! Make it NA-wide please :) haha

It has to do more with e.g. ISPs charging fees that are not revealed to prospective customers (either in their website or other marketing materials) yet appear in a monthly statement and significantly increase the real cost of their service. cf. https://gizmodo.com/comcast-fcc-doesnt-want-to-list-all-its-... You can also find other recent articles about this kind of thing

It both (minus taxes unfortunately)

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

#142

Post by kelnos »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #90
shiroiuma wrote: post #9

They should ban tipping too.

Everyone always says this, and it's basically never going to happen, at least in the US. Tons of places have tried to ban tipping and just include the service in the cost of the item. They nearly always revert because the best workers leave to make more money at a tipping joint.

Not just that, some businesses that try no-tipping end up having to raise their prices significantly more than the average tip amount, since paying their workers a higher non-tipped wage means they have to pay more in payroll taxes too.

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

#143

Post by ffgjgf1 »

boxed wrote: post #114
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Stockholm syndrome talking. Displaying THE PRICE on products is so amazingly basic that it's always mind blowing seeing Americans think this is a complicated question. It's not. If I have to pay 5 dollars at checkout THEN THE PRICE IS FIVE DOLLARS.

It might be somewhat complicated when every town has a different tax rate.

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

#144

Post by kelnos »

gordon_freeman wrote: post #80

will this apply to foreign transaction fees that Banks charge when someone books a flight for example originating from a foreign country to USA? These fees (~3% of whole transaction $)sneak up into the CC statements and always surprises me.

I don't see how that would work. The merchant does not know what (if any) fees your bank is going to charge; that's between you and your bank.

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

#145

Post by pbhjpbhj »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #122
guappa wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>I would absolutely refuse to give every vendor my address just to see a price.

How does it work now? If you don't give your address, but the price depends on your address, how does the store know how much to charge you? If you don't have to give your ID then surely you just say you're from the lowest tax location?

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

#146

Post by kelnos »

bryans wrote: post #71
latentcall wrote: post #6

Just need other states to follow suit. However, I personally haven’t dealt with hidden fees and don’t know how prevalent they are in the US. Is it a widespread issue? I suppose none of the companies I do business with have them.

I just moved into an apartment advertised at $1,420/mo that is costing over $1,700/mo because of extra fees only mentioned in fine print inside a 100+ page lease. The "no hidden fees" ISP that I'm now forced to use has over $30/mo in hidden fees. It's not just prevalent, it's business as usual for every company everywhere -- because they can and they know nobody will do anything about it.

Oh weird, how common is this? I rented from 2002 until 2020, and never experienced anything like this. The advertised rent was always the same as the check I'd mail the landlord every month. Sure, I had to pay for electricity, internet, etc. on my own, but that's expected and spelled out in the lease agreement.

One thing I did learn was to check on things like ISPs beforehand. You know the address of the place, so you can visit your preferred ISPs' websites and see if they offer service before you sign the lease. Ditto for cell service; when initially looking at a new place, I'd always check my cell phone to make sure I'd get decent service inside.

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

#147

Post by JumpCrisscross »

PeterStuer wrote: post #82
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…

Traveling to the US is for most Europeans a mightmare on this point. We are used to have a price that includes the taxes, services, delivery, wathever, you pay this much for this good ot service, and not an anachronistic 'tip' incantation for which you have to be tuned in to the latest local vibes so as not to unintentionaly run afoul of some obfuscated social rules, or you have to wip out your phone to google tax ra…

> have to be tuned in to the latest local vibes so as not to unintentionaly run afoul of some obfuscated social rules

You do realise you are travelling to a foreign country, right? This rings to me like Americans who travel to Spain and complain about the siesta, or Argentina and how late they dine.

Lots of local government means taxes change over smaller distances in America than most of the world. Also, most retailers here use paper labels—a result of historically-low inflation expectations. It’s easier to implement that complexity at check out than on the shelves. (I’d also guess that America’s credit card use means more check-out stations are digital than in much of the world.)

Add to that a cultural distrust of taxation and government, a decreasing tendency to use cash and a higher income per capita and you have a genuine difference in preferences.

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

#148

Post by autoexec »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #57
lpolovets wrote: post #53

From the article linked in the first paragraph: "The legislation — the first bill of its type across the state — would prohibit advertising a price for a good or service that does not include all required charges other than taxes and fees imposed by a government. Why are taxes and govt fees exempt? This reeks of "rules for thee but not for me." Either to goal is to avoid misleading customers with low advertised price…

Taxes and government fees are exempt because it promotes transparency! I wish gas stations showed taxes separately, but I'm guessing retail gas stations aren't the ones collecting and remitting those taxes. It's probably taken earlier in the supply chain.

It doesn't promote transparency. It means you still don't know how much something is going to cost by looking at the listed price of that thing. That's the opposite of transparency.

Including taxes and fees in the advertised price won't prevent stores (or anyone else) from making it clear what percentage of that price comes from taxes and government fees. I'd love to see more stores provide an itemized breakdown of those fees so that we can see how much of the price to blame on greedy vendors vs sneaky governments.

What I want most of all though is to only ever pay what the listed price of an item is. I want to be able to walk in with a single $5 bill and pay for something that says it costs $5 and have that be the end of it. It should really just be that simple. Other countries do it. We can too.

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

#149

Post by gingerrr »

sacnoradhq wrote: post #113
darknavi wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then how would Arizona Ice Tea be able to print "$1" on their can??? /s

It was 49c in 2017, then it was 89c in 2020, and now it's 99c in 2023.

Where? I remember buying Arizona with 99c on it well over a decade ago.

edit: it's been 99c for 3 decades, since they started business https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-04-12/az-iced-te...

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

#150

Post by [deleted] »

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.

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