Earlier quoted context omitted.
It might be somewhat complicated when every town has a different tax rate.
You didn't think that through heh. They know the price at checkout.
I did, hence:
> somewhat
Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law
221–230 of 480 posts
Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
You often see the same thing in the UK (a 12.5% "discretionary service charge" listed in small text that you must ask to have removed from your bill).
In this context, 'discretionary' is the opposite of 'mandatory'. This legislation is about mandatory fees.
I'd consider adding a fee that isn't included in the listed menu price to be predatory, even if you can ask to have it removed.
Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law
#223Earlier 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…
I really like how tips are done in most of europe, where the tip is included by default in the restaurant price. So now your choices are - add additional tip if you’re really satisfied with your service, or retract the default tip if you’ve been wronged in some way. Just by default you don’t have to think about it, and it shows up in all the places if should - government included.
I’ve traveled all over Europe and lived in Italy for several years and I’ve never heard of this.
Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, so in the US that doesn't work. Most obviously for display, tv, or radio ads you cannot ensure correct taxes in the advertisement (this was a big eye opener when I first moved to the US). It also doesn't work for online sales, where the final price can depend on the final destination of the goods or service. e.g. the taxes cannot be displayed until you've been given a street level address. For me for example ev…
>Most obviously for display, tv, or radio ads you cannot ensure correct taxes in the advertisement. They really shouldn't be advertising false claims in the first place. >It also doesn't work for online sales, where the final price can depend on the final destination of the goods or service. e.g. the taxes cannot be displayed until you've been given a street level address. That one has an easy solution: Just ask for…
> They really shouldn't be advertising false claims in the first place.
They aren't false advertising, they say "$X + tax and fees", this law is about removing the "and fees" bs where the seller is actually charging more than the advertised price but pretending it's a nebulous fee they didn't set.
I also think you may not be understand the degree of BS. My partner and I were recently buying a new car, and not one car dealership was advertising a true price for their cars. Multiple dealers had something that they literally stated was a "market price adjustment fee", that was not given until you were in the process of purchasing the car. These "fees" were 5-10 thousand dollars on a 30k car.
> That one has an easy solution: just ask for the destination.
So you would be ok if the first step in shopping online is giving the site your street address? you're saying that you could not price compare online without first providing your address to every company you were looking at.
I'm assuming you aren't in the US, so you aren't familiar with how its governance works. Every state, county, and incorporated city can have its own sales and service taxes. It doesn't matter if you think that's a questionable setup - the US constitution guarantees that right at at least the state level, and most states have similar laws guaranteeing some amount of that power to county and city governments, so it is literally impossible to remove this structure. So this issue is how do you make this law work, given the constraints of how the US government is constructed. "Solutions" that require any kind of unification of governance are almost certainly unconstitutional (again this separation of governance is a part of the US bill of rights).
Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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. 1) IMHO this doesn't help. If I don't know what the taxes are, then knowing that they will be similarly high on either transaction doesn't help me with budgeting. Just like it's hard to know if a $75/…
If you're comparing prices currently you see two prices advertised:
Company A: $100
Company B: $140
Company C: $150
Company D: $155
Currently, when you go to buy from any of these companies they all add the hypothetical 10% taxes you would be required to pay, but company A also adds $60 in "service fees", Company B adds $20, Company C adds $10, and company D becomes the cheapest.
If you remove the bullshit fees the advertised prices are falsely excluding then the advertised prices give you the actual real relative position.
Hence there is value in this law, even if it doesn't force the taxes to be included.
Now your example of hotels is a worthwhile extension to this, where you could say "if the location of the purchase or service is fixed, the listed price must include all applicable taxes", but there's a clear benefit to banning the BS "fees".
This is ignoring the whole tax avoidance/evasion I believe these "fees" are also being used for.
Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Like tips? This is a good point. When I go to a coffee shop and order a latte I am buying a latte and the appreciation of the person that makes it. If they think I’m a dick it renders my coffee undrinkable and the comfort in knowing that I’m liked should be free.
See, that's the problem, people are worried that if they don't tip that employee is going to do something to their food. That's absolutely disgusting. Maybe I should piss on the dollar before I give it to them?
The thrill of dining at places with suspect food safety is hard to match! We should ask the government to step in and ban the thing that is in my mind keeping everyone from pissing in my soup so that we can all share in the rush of severe food anxiety.
Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law
#227Earlier 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…
>If it's so easy to "know" the local tax rate for various things, why isn't it easy to label them? Because you pay the tax from the total of your purchase and not from each item separately. E.g. in Santa Monica, CA sales tax is 10.25%, a price on a $4.95 item with tax included would be $5.46 but on 10x of these items it's just $54.58.
.... And this is why we don't just add it to the price? This is the grand reason?
Wouldn't it be far better to establish a rock solid precedent that the price there is the price you pay? Every exception that remains is an opportunity for weasels to justify why they are also the very important exception to the rule.
You sure that's worth a rounding error?
Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
They might. Cities can, in most states, cross county borders. Both counties and cities can have their own taxes. I've seen cases where a neighborhood was split. Two near-identical houses, but one had less than half the property tax of the one next to it.
Believing mailing address cities actually corresponds to a unit of government is one thing I learned is incorrect when I moved to the LA area. I live near a place called Westlake Village that straddles the LA County/Ventura County line. In LA County, Westlake Village is a city. In Ventura County, Westlake Village is a neighborhood within Thousand Oaks, and it has a different tax rate. But both mailing addresses use W…
Mailing addresses often have little to do with local governance; they’re for the USPS. Just tells you where it will be processed.
Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
>If it's so easy to "know" the local tax rate for various things, why isn't it easy to label them? Because you pay the tax from the total of your purchase and not from each item separately. E.g. in Santa Monica, CA sales tax is 10.25%, a price on a $4.95 item with tax included would be $5.46 but on 10x of these items it's just $54.58.
.... And this is why we don't just add it to the price? This is the grand reason? Wouldn't it be far better to establish a rock solid precedent that the price there is the price you pay? Every exception that remains is an opportunity for weasels to justify why they are also the very important exception to the rule. You sure that's worth a rounding error?
>And this is why we don't just add it to the price? This is the grand reason?
I don't think so, there are more apparent reasons listed in this thread already. I am just pointing that rolling a sales tax into price is not as simple as some imagine. I imagine VAT is accounted differently so it could be rolled into the price without this kind of error but I've never dealt with VAT so I can only speculate.
>Wouldn't it be far better to establish a rock solid precedent that the price there is the price you pay?
For whom? I don't see how it would be better for me but as somebody else noticed, the retailers are free to roll the tax into the price, the fact that they don't do this might be a pretty solid indication that it's not better?
Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law
#230Comments 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…
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…
> See the rest of the world, where even young kids can go shopping. If you give them 5 , and the item they want is less than 5, or they want five of something that is 1, they can buy it.
In the US even young kids can go shopping too. If you give them $5 + . They can then buy any item whose price tag says $5 or less or 5 of any $1 item.