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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

#511

Post by themaninthedark »

jtbayly wrote: post #494
mikestew wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just don't pay, and point them to (small claims?) court if they want to get paid for the service they don't provide. Have you actually tried this? Because having not tried it myself, I'd bet a paycheck that you get sent to collections, get a ding on your credit report, and you're still on the hook for taking it to court if you want it resolve to your favor. (Assuming U. S.) And as a cherry on top of that shit sun…

The first thing that would happen is they would cut off all your service. If you are relying on them for something other than the thing you don’t want to pay for, this becomes a problem. For example, I disputed a charge with my CC from the Apple App Store when I was charged for an app that I shouldn’t have been years ago. They immediately cut off my access to the Store. Other apps couldn’t update, OS couldn’t update,…

And this is one of the reasons why I can't buy into the Apple ecosystem. With Android, I would be cut off from all Google stuff but there are more/less work-arounds for those.

But the fact that I have a billing dispute with a company and they are able to hold everything else that bit of technology touches hostage is just wrong. Imagine if you had a billing dispute with the city water company and they cut your city power because of it.

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

#512

Post by rietta »

michaelmrose wrote: post #460
rietta wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because that is the constraints that the U.S. Constitution places on our form of Federal government. The Congress passes laws (and controls the money), the Executive implements the law, and the Courts interpret the law. My lay understanding is that Chevron shifted too much power from the Congress and the Courts to the administrative agencies in the Executive branch. It seemed like a "good idea" at the time but o…

What abuses

I am not a legal scholar, but from my understanding enough that serious cases were filed and fought and made in all the way to the Supreme Court.

In a https://www.scotusblog.com article, Amy Howe quotes the Chief Justice as saying "Chevron deference, Roberts explained in his opinion for the court on Friday, is inconsistent with the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal law that sets out the procedures that federal agencies must follow as well as instructions for courts to review actions by those agencies. The APA, Roberts noted, directs courts to “decide legal questions by applying their own judgment” and therefore “makes clear that agency interpretations of statutes — like agency interpretations of the Constitution — are not entitled to deference. Under the APA,” Roberts concluded, “it thus remains the responsibility of the court to decide whether the law means what the agency says."

I ought to go read the decision for myself, which I have to this point not yet done. I am not an attorney, but do have a general interest in these matters.

But back to the earlier poster's notes, ATF has been a prime example. They have a history of capricious reinterpretation at the whims of whichever administration is in power. They issue letters to people and businesses that say one thing is okay and then outlaw in without any law changes a decade later. I have never owned a pistol brace, but they stated it was an acceptable innovation for certain applications, thousands and thousands of people relied on that, they issue a rule making comment period and get feedback and then threw all of that out and came out with a final rule that bore no resemblance to the one in the comment period. Then they stand behind Chevron that the courts had to listen to their interpretation. It is legal "heads, I win" and "tails, you lose!"

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

#513

Post by marcosdumay »

drdec wrote: post #13
guidedlight wrote: post #10

They should ban hidden taxes too. The sticker price should be the final price.

Do you want to put in your shipping address to every website before you can shop?

It's funny, because when I buy from China, their stores have little trouble estimating my country's import tax, and my state's selling tax. But US physical stores can't manage to put the final price on their tags.

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

#514

Post by jtbayly »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #474
tbrownaw wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not an accurate description of that decision. Agencies no longer get special privileges in interpreting the scope of what Congress delegated to them. Within the scope of what Congress delegated to them, they still have an much power and discretion as ever.

if Congress wanted to delegate decision making to the judicial branch they can pass laws that do so. they pass a law saying that the agency can make decisions, those decisions should be respected. this decision is right the equivalent of if the courts decided they had the power to block laws that the court thought were bad policy

You should read about the non-delegation principle and why it exists. As Wikipedia says, “It is explicit or implicit in all written constitutions that impose a strict structural separation of powers. It is usually applied in questions of constitutionally improper delegations of powers of any of the three branches of government to either of the other, to the administrative state, or to private entities.”

What you are proposing is that Congress be allowed to abolish its own power, completely destroying the constitution.

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

#515

Post by skeletal88 »

guidedlight wrote: post #10

They should ban hidden taxes too. The sticker price should be the final price.

In this thread: people claiming how exceptional the US is, to justify not having the final amount on price tags.

You guys can think of lots of reasons to justify why you can't do things like the rest of the civilized world does, be it prices and taxes, medical insurance or something else. The US is not some sprcial snowflake country.

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

#516

Post by lxgr »

mulmen wrote: post #148
websap wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will take the blurb which says taxes are an approximate calculation based on web browsing data available, vs, no taxes shown. We're gate keeping good features for large % of users over some edge cases.

So currently they correctly advertise the pre-tax price but since that’s not the correct total price your proposal is to display an approximate price which is also not the correct total price. I don’t see how this reduces ambiguity.

It's gonna be a much better ballpark number than the before-tax number is in almost all practical scenarios. So yes, I do think that would be a massive win compared to the status quo.

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

#517

Post by Zak »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #372
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree to both. And both are incredibly easy problems to solve. For the first just have a law that says: > Any advertised price must include all mandatory taxes and fees. No exceptions. For the second just have a law that says: > An end user must be allowed to use the same method to cancel as they used to sign up for the service. No exceptions. Additionally, an end user cannot be required to perform more manual action…

But what's a mandatory fee? Free airfare to Hawaii! Fee for paying by cash: $1000 Fee for paying by check: $1100 Fee for paying by credit card: $1050 Fee for middle seat: $200 Fee for window seat: $300 Fee for aisle seat: $250 Note that no fee on this list is mandatory because you always have other options.

It looks like the price is $1200, as that's the price for the cheapest practical combination of options. An airline could advertise this as $1200.

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

#518

Post by lxgr »

crazygringo wrote: post #128
websap wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will take the blurb which says taxes are an approximate calculation based on web browsing data available, vs, no taxes shown. We're gate keeping good features for large % of users over some edge cases.

Gate keeping what? You know where you live, you know what your local sales tax is. The current system works fine.

It works ok-ish. It works significantly better in almost every other country in the world. Yay for status quo bias!

> You know where you live, you know what your local sales tax is.

No, I in fact don't know, because I have better things to do than to keep up with what my city and state have extended sales tax to this month, what carveouts exist ("no sales tax on unhealthy snacks except ice cream" and stuff like that) etc.

And there is absolutely no excuse for in-person stores that do, in fact, have perfect a priori knowledge of all of this.

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

#519

Post by mmooss »

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…

> agencies can make rules but they must give their reasoning and supporting evidence--and anyone can challenge such in court.

I think that's already true, except that you probably need standing - you need to show you're affected by the rule - to sue. There are many rules around rule-making including against arbitrary rules, guaranteed public comment periods, etc.

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

#520

Post by stainablesteel »

alberth wrote: post #432

The hidden fees is what turned me off from AirBnb... Because it would display the nightly rate as $X. But then at checkout, it would add in "house cleaning fees" etc (which I don't dispute is a fair fee to include) but it at times can grossly misrepresent what your true nightly cost is when searching. Maybe this will be a step in the direction like Telco's have had to do with creating simplified & standardized "nutri…

ironically a lot of people take issue with the cleaning fees as the hosts tend you require you to clean up before you leave
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