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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

#341

Post by hot_gril »

cgriswald wrote: post #328
hot_gril wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a loan until the customer pays it back, and loans cost money to cover. Except the overdraft fee is usually some insane % interest, to the point where nobody would take that loan unless it were by accident... So in short, it's a scam.

If customers are afraid of the fees, they're more likely to keep some minimum balance in their account. Checking accounts don't generally provide interest (or at best, token interest). Multiplied by millions of customers, that $200 sitting in checking rather than savings, CDs, or other instruments is a nice chunk of change for the bank to loan out. I'd want to see some numbers here. But the fees might be directly pre…

Exactly. The checking vs savings thing is bogus too. I asked the banker when I opened my first account as a kid, what's the point of using the checking account at all, she had no answer.

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

#342

Post by shiroiuma »

heimidal wrote: post #195
shiroiuma wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If tipping is banned in a place (by the local government I mean), where exactly are the "best workers" going to go? Are they going to pack up and move somewhere else? Also, how are the tipped staff the "best workers"? They're just servers. All they have to do is take an order. It's incredible how much money they expect for this, when it's something that would be more efficiently done with an iPad. In US restaurants,…

> If tipping is banned in a place (by the local government I mean), where exactly are the "best workers" going to go? Are they going to pack up and move somewhere else? Tipping was banned in seven US states about a hundred years ago. For the most part, People simply ignored the laws. They were all repealed or found unconstitutional after a couple decades. I am not aware of anywhere in the world where tipping a server…

>A good server adds to the experience beyond the food and ambiance and help turn new customers into regulars.

What, by acting like their best friend? This is definitely something weird about America. Here outside America, it isn't like that at all. There's no tipping, and servers just give you what you ask, though of course they'll answer questions and such. But they don't socialize with you; I don't need to pay someone to act like my friend and chat with me. It's only in American restaurants that I've had this annoying experience.

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

#343

Post by hot_gril »

tadfisher wrote: post #335
hot_gril wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's annoying, but that still doesn't make it a hidden fee. They tell you upfront, and your "opt out" is to not overdraft your account.

Banks in the US must provide a way to opt out of the overdraft "service", after which they will simply decline transactions instead of overdrafting the account and charging for the privilege.

I agree fully. It's just not a junk fee similar to the hotel ones.

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

#344

Post by cgriswald »

Twirrim wrote: post #298
tzs wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on your location. If you are somewhere with a 5% sales tax for example, it would be $0.25. If you don't want to have to know the sales tax for your location, I believe the highest sales tax in the US is under 11% so just give the kid $5.55.

What's the tax on the individual items in question, also, because it's all variable based on what you're buying, what city you're in etc. Pretty much everywhere else I've travelled in the world, the price on the shelf is the price you pay, even when tax changes based on what something is classified as (to whit that fun legal case of "is a jaffa cake a cake or a biscuit"). For some absolutely bizarre self-hating reaso…

You're trading ease of mentally calculating the total for the obfuscation of why items increased in price and really overselling the difficulty of calculating the tax. I can see why if you're traveling to the US that could be difficult (but if you estimate 10% your estimate will be over in most places and close enough everywhere else), because you'll probably be in many places you haven't been before (or often enough to retain the information). But if you live here, you learn the tax rate for the state and what goods it applies to and you're good to go.

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

#345

Post by brewdad »

krab wrote: post #132
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not like tips. Expected tips are known up front, they are variable, and I certainly think it's totally fine to not tip in places where it's not usually expected, "flipping around the iPad" be damned.

It's not true that tips are known up front. E.g. when you're travelling, you don't know. And taxes are (can be) also known up front. But that's the point - avoid the guesswork and let me know what you expect me to pay.

Tips are completely discretionary. You are always free to tip zero. That may make you an asshole depending on local customs but I’m not aware of any place on earth where not leaving a tip will get you in legal trouble. Not paying a last minute hidden fee might.

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

#346

Post by kelipso »

tzs wrote: post #338
Twirrim wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the tax on the individual items in question, also, because it's all variable based on what you're buying, what city you're in etc. Pretty much everywhere else I've travelled in the world, the price on the shelf is the price you pay, even when tax changes based on what something is classified as (to whit that fun legal case of "is a jaffa cake a cake or a biscuit"). For some absolutely bizarre self-hating reaso…

> What's the tax on the individual items in question, also, because it's all variable based on what you're buying, what city you're in etc. You're overlooking the context. Someone said it was easy to let young children go shopping in places where taxes are included in the sticker price because you can give the kid $5 and the kid knows they can buy any item with a sticker price that does not exceed that or a combinati…

The whole point is that you want the shopping experience to be such that a child can predict how much they will pay at the counter, not so much that this particular scenario has to be considered and fulfilled.

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

#347

Post by turquoisevar »

devilbunny wrote: post #206
Jensson wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The store is just in a single town, it is trivial for them to fix their labels. For the user on the other hand it isn't trivial to figure out the tax rate for every store they visit as they travel since as you admit it changes everywhere.

For a big corp, they want to advertise nationally. "$1 hamburgers!" or "$799 refrigerator!". You can't make a national ad if you have to have precise pricing. Not the strongest argument, but there it is. A college friend worked at a pizza place that straddled a county line. One county had its own sales tax; the other did not. The register was in the back of the store to take advantage of this (the location of the reg…

> For a big corp, they want to advertise nationally. "$1 hamburgers!" or "$799 refrigerator!". You can't make a national ad if you have to have precise pricing.

If we zoom out of the “uniquely American issue” mindset for a second and look at how this is solved elsewhere, then it becomes clear that it doesn’t have to be an issue.

In this day and age plenty of multinational corporations advertise a euro price that applies for all the countries in Europe that carry the euro. This is a situation where companies have to account for varying VAT rates.

The solution? Companies take this into account w/r/t their margins when advertising a euro price that applies to all euro countries.

In the US however it’s even less of an issue. I’ve noticed as a European that when you watch TV here in the US many ads are hyper localized, mentioning the closest local store. If they can do that then they can list the price the item has at that store.

The real reason the full price including taxes isn’t used is because companies can make it look cheaper without hurting their margins, thus draw in more customers.

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

#348

Post by kelipso »

pandaman wrote: post #326
lmm wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Nope. VAT has complicated rounding rules too. Turns out it actually is still easy to roll…

>It's a lemon market. You mean it's a market with information asymmetry? How so? Customers know both that the sales taxes exist and their magnitude. If you think it's a great idea you can put big sign saying on your shop/in your ad "inc. tax" instead of "plus tax", which is on most advertisements already. Surely customers could read it.

Why are sticker prices $24.99 instead of $25.00? Tricks the brain into thinking the price is lower. Same thing with additional tax at counter instead of sicker price.

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

#349

Post by kayfox »

WalterBright wrote: post #302
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…

In Washington State, Gov Inslee imposed the equivalent of a $.50 per gallon tax on the oil companies. The oil companies raised the WA gas prices by $.50 per gallon. Inslee blamed the price rise on the greedy oil companies. The taxes should be a separate line item on all purchases, so people can see what the taxes are.

I've seen tax breakdown signs for gas at some California gas stations (it might be all of them for all I know). I think it would help people figure out how much of the price is taxes and how much of it is something else.

I do also like how Costco breaks down the taxes on liquor, as far as I know those taxes existed before privatization of liquor sales in Washington, its just they were hidden in the "tax in" prices Washington State Liquor stores would post.

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

#350

Post by Daishiman »

astrange wrote: post #296
MagerValp wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they can calculate it at the cash register, they can most certainly calculate it when putting up price tags.

Some people shopping at the store don't have to pay sales tax.

They can get a discount and leave the rest of us be.
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