The FTC wants to ban hidden 'junk fees' that jack up the price of your purchases : technology

[–] [email protected] 154 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Price advertised == Price actually charged.

It’s not really that hard. Do it!

[–] [email protected] 130 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Can we please include sales tax in that price too? It is also a bullshit hidden fee the way the US does it.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 2 years ago (3 children)

The argument the idiots use is "We want to see government theft!" instead of just having a line item at the end of your receipt showing tax collected and the breakdown. It's not like we don't have toiletpaper roll length receipts already.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The kicker is we already do the “price at point of sale including taxes” thing at gas stations. If it’s $3.09 or whatever per gallon, that’s including state and federal sales tax.

We already see the line item thing on most receipts anyway. We basically do everything except roll the sales tax into the sticker price.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Only 3.09 per gallon? We pay 2 per litre!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

CVS be changing their tape rolls every other customer…

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

CVS near me gives you a store credit if you let them email your receipt to you. It's silly.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

It's very profitable for them to sell your email + buying habits I'm sure.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

CVS has entered the chat

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

Government: no not like that

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

My weed dispensary includes taxes in the display price. It's awesome

[+] [email protected] -9 points 2 years ago (4 children)

How would a company advertise pricing across multiple states? E.g. on the web...

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Use your ip address or GPS location or address to get your location and use a sales tax api product like: https://www.avalara.com/us/en/products/integrations/avalara-api.html

Not an endorsement, just an example that companies already consider this.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

It's an imperfect solution. VPNs are an issue - and even if you don't use a VPN, the API only knows the location of the ISP's servers - which can be in a different state.

My point was that, the law should leave tax inclusion in pricing as optional. There is no way to implement automatic detection cleanly, other than prompting the user to confirm their location, which is a huge annoyance - so the 'tax inclusion' rule would not make things better or more convenient.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 2 years ago (3 children)

that would very much wreak havoc with caching since you basically can't cache pricing including sales tax as it depends on your very specific location.

of course, for things like event tickets, it's the venue's location that matters for tax, so it works out to be a non-issue.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Companies have no problem doing it to comply with EU regulations which require tax to be included, so I see no technical reason why they couldnt figure it out for the US.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Fair, I admittedly don't know how one would implement it, but the sales tax data is being used by their clients for something.

Looking into it further, some states, according to Shopify's FAQ on the topic, have different rules with regards to destination-sourced vs origin-sourced sales. 🤷‍♂️

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Maybe you could do more localized caching. Localities with different sales tax are finite and few. Cache pages based on those localities and then serve pages based on the IP of the client. It's not ideal or as optimal, but it's not that unreasonable in my mind. If it became the norm we'd build the infrastructure to sustain it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The same way most sites show it today, "Enter zip code:"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I'd rather see prices without tax, than have to enter my zip code before I can see any pricing for anything online.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

They could also just charge one price to everyone and then pay taxes after. I don't think they have to pass the tax onto the customer like that.

Just charge everyone $10, note where they live, and when taxes are due figure out how much of everyone's $10 needs to be paid to government

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

And cities. Even some surprisingly small cities charge additional sales tax

[–] [email protected] 82 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Alright let's target Ticketmaster first.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (2 children)

How to say you didnt read the article without saying it...

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

What kind of loser reads the articles? I just make snap judgement on catchy titles.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The website isn't loading for me, can you tell me what the article says?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

That’s their entire business model

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Seriously! They charge more in fees than some ticket prices.

[–] [email protected] 74 points 2 years ago (1 children)

While we're at it, can you roll taxes into it as well? Fuck having to guess what the local sales tax is...

[+] [email protected] -36 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

The difference being, of course, tax rates are publicly available and easily found online ahead of time

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Which do you prefer to shop for, gas or hotel rooms?

Gas is always advertised with the tax built into the price. Every sign you see is the full price. When you look at online gas apps including Gas Buddy or even Google Maps, you're seeing the full, final price.

Hotels advise one price on shopping sites and then you pay a much higher price once all the taxes are included. Can you look up the taxes in advance? Sure. Assuming you know to look for local sales tax, and county lodging tax, and the city entertainment tax. But why is that necessary? Why is it helpful to you as the consumer? Do you think the retailer doesn't know the total price in advance?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Can you look up the taxes in advance? Sure. Assuming you know to look for local sales tax, and county lodging tax, and the city entertainment tax. But why is that necessary? Why is it helpful to you as the consumer? Do you think the retailer doesn’t know the total price in advance?

Exactly. There's no reason any of that shouldn't be included in the advertised price. I'll never understand people who want to go to bat for practices that are at best asinine, and at worst, deliberately misleading because they place the burden of determining the final price on the consumer before reaching the "checkout" section.

[–] [email protected] 62 points 2 years ago

Car dealerships shaking and crying

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Hmmm Ticketmaster seems like a good place to start

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago

Admittedly their fees are blatant because Uncle Sam basically handed them the whole market in the 2010s, when they were allowed to merge with Live Nation.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago

KKHHHAAAAAAANNN!

Seriously though, Lina Khan is awesome. Best FTC chair in a very long time.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago

Absolutely necessary and I hope it is implemented sooner than later

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago

My partner's best friend helped pen the legislation for this and specifically took it on because she knows how much this shit pisses my partner off lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Wrong picture, that's definitely Chad doing this.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Chadmare

[+] [email protected] -8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago

You're thinking of the FCC.

[+] [email protected] -43 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Yet again, I can't understand the rationale behind the FTC's choice of their targets

[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

To target something so ubiquitous that everyone has dealt with it and doesn't like it?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Sure, but I'd rather see them tackle something bigger and more substantial

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago

Idk, it makes sense to me. ISPs, utilities, cell phone providers are all guilty of this. I don't want to read fine print for these sorts of transactions.

What would you rather the FTC tackle?

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