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FTC bans hidden junk fees in hotel, event ticket prices

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Re: FTC bans hidden junk fees in hotel, event ticket prices

#391

Post by kstrauser »

cyberax wrote: post #375
kstrauser wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite example of this lunacy is the restaurant nearby that sells pies. If they box your pie for you to take home, it's a grocery item and not taxed. If they give you utensils to eat it in the store, it's a restaurant meal and therefore taxed. They literally can't know the price until you tell them whether you'd like a fork with it. Now, this restaurant works around it by having both prices listed, but I can ima…

Then put two freaking price tags: "pies to go" and "eat here". Problem solved. There are zero legitimate reasons not to show true prices.

Stopped reading after the first paragraph, huh.

Re: FTC bans hidden junk fees in hotel, event ticket prices

#392

Post by m463 »

runako wrote: post #382
m463 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

most states have some trick. I think you have to look at it wholistically: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Median_h...

nitpick: "holistically"

Lol, I didn't even think when I wrote it that way. That said, it seems to be in the dictionary as an alternate spelling of holistic.

I guess the english language lets this stuff happen a lot, but not alot. I definitely did it by accident (not "on accident"!)

Re: FTC bans hidden junk fees in hotel, event ticket prices

#393

Post by Dylan16807 »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #370
jimmaswell wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a move afoot to eliminate all regulations unless they've been specifically passed by Congress. Which is basically incapable of passing anything. (At least some of) the agencies brought this on themselves with their abuse of the goodwill/benefit of the doubt previously afforded to them. Most flagrant has been the ATF, for one example constantly redefining machine guns or pistol braces, turning millions of c…

Machine guns? The ATF is simply going on function rather than form. It shoots like a machine gun it is a machine gun no matter what you call it. That being said, bump stocks are a simple enough concept that banning them is stupid. We should quite our obsession over machine guns--there are few situations where it even matters. The problem with it going through congress is that it will always be political rather than s…

> The ATF is simply going on function rather than form. It shoots like a machine gun it is a machine gun no matter what you call it.

The part where it breaks down is pointing at a specific piece that enables automatic fire and calling that piece a "machine gun", even if it's just a tiny piece of metal or a specially-tied shoelace.

Re: FTC bans hidden junk fees in hotel, event ticket prices

#394

Post by 1shooner »

jimmaswell wrote: post #271
jfengel wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a move afoot to eliminate all regulations unless they've been specifically passed by Congress. Which is basically incapable of passing anything. Ironically, that inherent dysfunction is the main reason to suspect that won't happen. But politically, every regulation as automatically partisan, even when it has overwhelming support.

> There is a move afoot to eliminate all regulations unless they've been specifically passed by Congress. Which is basically incapable of passing anything. (At least some of) the agencies brought this on themselves with their abuse of the goodwill/benefit of the doubt previously afforded to them. Most flagrant has been the ATF, for one example constantly redefining machine guns or pistol braces, turning millions of c…

This is coming into my work life with web accessibility: The DoJ published a rulemaking in April that filled the many, many gaps in the existing law that determines if the government is violating the ADA when creating websites, etc.

What came before this was at least 15 years of tort action, a patchwork of civil rulings across a wide variety of jurisdictions, and generally, confusion and ambiguity. Not the stuff of efficient government.

From my perspective, this rulemaking is pretty close to ideal. I did not dream of getting such a clear, detailed direction from a federal agency. I think my jaw may have literally dropped as I read through it. I think the web accessibility is an interesting example, because it's not a bloated bureaucracy harassing some fishermen, it's an agency trying to prevent the government from violating your civil rights.

So, is the idea that Congress would have accomplished this instead? I just can't imagine that happening.

Re: FTC bans hidden junk fees in hotel, event ticket prices

#395

Post by AnthonyMouse »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #377
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

No timers, no human interaction. And if the process takes time (there are times I think confirmations are warranted) once that's been done the cancellation takes place at the time of your original request. (Which you can screenshot.)

> No timers, no human interaction.

Is there something in the proposed rule that actually says this? And if so, what happens to the small business that does cancellations over email/phone and therefore requires human interaction?

> And if the process takes time (there are times I think confirmations are warranted) once that's been done the cancellation takes place at the time of your original request. (Which you can screenshot.)

The issue isn't that you care if the cancellation happens at 9AM or 9PM, it's that if you have to wait twelve hours to speak to a representative you give up before reaching the point you can make the request.

Re: FTC bans hidden junk fees in hotel, event ticket prices

#396

Post by sangnoir »

ensignavenger wrote: post #246
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember shopping in Japan. The price on the tag, is exactly what you pay (same with services, like hotels). Since this is Japan, it's a high price, but no surprises. Also, the service is amazing , and they won't accept tips. If you leave money on the table, they will chase after you, to give it back.

Japan has the exact same sales tax rate(s) across the entire country, and it rarely changes. In the US, we have thousands of different rates and they change multiple times per year. Also, while it is the norm in Japan to include the tax, there are some exceptions. (Japan has 2 rates, 8% for certain items like food, and 10% for everything else).

> In the US, we have thousands of different rates and they change multiple times per year.

Yet at any given moment, every proprietor is miraculously able calculate the taxes due at the point of sale. The variety of tax regimes, and the fact that the amounts change doesn't impact the ability to calculate the final amount due.

Re: FTC bans hidden junk fees in hotel, event ticket prices

#397

Post by AnthonyMouse »

BytesAndGears wrote: post #366
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

As-is, it works very well in California. I had never experienced the resistance you imagined during the 3-4 years I lived in California, and regularly cancelled subscriptions that were notoriously hard in other states

California passed the click to cancel law this year. They passed a different law trying to make it easier to cancel subscriptions in 2018. The need for them to revisit it implies that the original one wasn't working.

Corporations act strategically. They typically don't immediately thwart new laws because the coalition that passed them is still intact and would try to do something about it. So they wait a minute, maybe take the time to buy some more legislators, before testing the fences again.

If people have forgotten about them by then you lose, and if people haven't forgotten about them by then, California passes the 2024 law and you lose the other way. Because they pass the new law in addition to rather than instead of the old one, even though the old one has stopped working, so you have a ratchet of ever-increasing compliance costs that also apply to all the companies that were never doing anything wrong to begin with but still have to hire lawyers to evaluate their activities against an entire bookshelf of rules to see if any of them require something they're not doing.

Re: FTC bans hidden junk fees in hotel, event ticket prices

#398

Post by tokioyoyo »

mulmen wrote: post #368
tokioyoyo wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is approximate (average?) tax. I'm currently outside of Japan, by default Amazon shows me the price in Yen and says it can't deliver to me. When I put down the postal code in Tokyo, shows the same amount. Probably takes the biggest city's tax rate when it can't determine it through geolocation.

What about billboards or banner ads? When an ISP in Japan wants to advertise their service do they include a price on the billboard? What you describe sounds like the same thing that happens in the US. So what's special about Australia, Japan, and Denmark as you stated earlier?

Why wouldn’t they? Major ones are electronic, and you know the areas you are putting up your ads in, so you include the tax in it. You go to the store, sales tax either included in the price, or written in smaller font with the tax included price.

It actually happens in NA for specific industries as well! If you buy a flight from Google flights without making any additional purchases, you will get the sticker price because airfare display is regulated to a certain degree. Except in Japan and other countries, almost all display prices have to include local taxes. It’s a solved problem, but there’s no political appetite for it in US/Canada because it will hurt the sales.

Re: FTC bans hidden junk fees in hotel, event ticket prices

#399

Post by AceyMan »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #393
LorenPechtel wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Machine guns? The ATF is simply going on function rather than form. It shoots like a machine gun it is a machine gun no matter what you call it. That being said, bump stocks are a simple enough concept that banning them is stupid. We should quite our obsession over machine guns--there are few situations where it even matters. The problem with it going through congress is that it will always be political rather than s…

> The ATF is simply going on function rather than form. It shoots like a machine gun it is a machine gun no matter what you call it. The part where it breaks down is pointing at a specific piece that enables automatic fire and calling that piece a "machine gun", even if it's just a tiny piece of metal or a specially-tied shoelace.

If it carries the "machine gun" ability with it, it's like ... The Enchanted Seer of Automatic Firing.

It turns a 'plain gun' into a machine gun, and there are almost no other ways to do that. So it seems like calling it "a machine gun" is reasonable from linguistic perspective. #wittgenstein

Re: FTC bans hidden junk fees in hotel, event ticket prices

#400

Post by kalleboo »

robotfelix wrote: post #201
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember shopping in Japan. The price on the tag, is exactly what you pay (same with services, like hotels). Since this is Japan, it's a high price, but no surprises. Also, the service is amazing , and they won't accept tips. If you leave money on the table, they will chase after you, to give it back.

I'm not sure Japan is the best example here. My experience is that most shops have the price excluding consumption tax printed very prominently in large numbers, and then price including consumption tax is printed in much smaller writing underneath. The price excluding tax is the only one you can read at a distance, that draws you in. As someone from the UK who is used to seeing price tags show the final price you pa…

There was a period of a few years where they raised the sales tax in steps 5%, 8%, 10%, and stores were allowed to show the price without tax during that period, which has left some practices a bit messy since.
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