California says restaurants must bake all of their add-on fees into menu prices
wshu.org
Need this nationwide. I hate having fees added on to the price of what I'm ordering.
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Need this nationwide. I hate having fees added on to the price of what I'm ordering.
Fees are predatory on people who are swayed by lower advertised cost. Basically, they are extorting the way many people's brains work. It's just another way to keep the not rich from ever catching up. Not just in dollars, but time. If you try to price compare, you have to sink a ton of time into uncovering all the fees. The rich just don't have to worry about that. So it ends up as a time tax.
It's called a Bait and Switch and is a form of Fraud.
It's just that in the US, the grey area between Fraud and "Sharp business practice" is legally way broader than the rest of the Developed World.
Kudos to California to have forces some clarification on at least this one form of misrepresentation/false-advertising/fraud.
I agree that these fees are bad and I hate them, but couldn't you make the opposite argument that they serve as a (money) tax on the rich? Poor people will take the time to shop around for the best deal, whereas rich people will simply pay whatever for the product they want. Therefore hidden fees disproportionately are paid by the rich.
Genuinely poor people rarelly have the time to shop around.
It is bad if you think a person's value of their own time isn't reduced to market dynamics. Yes the rich pay a cost/tax for the convenience, but that is because their time is valued more by the market. Poor people are compensated less for their time and that seems to make it "okay" to ask poor people to spend more time to deal with less honest business practices. If you think their free time is as "valuable" as anyone else's then this is offensive.
No, it’s always taking advantage of the ignorant or the hurried, regardless whether they can afford it. I shouldn’t require extra steps to avoid being ripped off