For example, AT&T charges a fee to "recover certain aggregate expenses AT&T incurs, including, but not limited to, charges AT&T or its agents pay to interconnect with other carriers to deliver calls from AT&T customers to their customers and charges associated with cell site rents and maintenance" [1]
[1] https://www.att.com/legal/terms.otherWirelessFeeSchedule.htm...
"All mandatory fees, such as admin fees or ticket booking fees, must now be included in the headline price"
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/fake-reviews-and-sneaky-h...
So they can't just write a single thing that rights all wrongs. And their staffing is extremely limited.
Found the attorney! Nobody asked for "a single thing that writes all wrongs."
Simple, broad laws can absolutely be written, they are especially easy to write, and they are usually the best laws for decent average citizens, but decent average citizens are not who laws are written for in the United States. Most people already know this.
This isn’t a law. It’s a regulatory policy.
Simple, broad laws have another term that you can often use to describe them: “sweeping”.
Those kinds of changes are better left to legislators, who are responsive to political pressure and subject to elections.
I’m all for regulatory rulemaking by executives, but it should generally be careful narrow rulemaking. Simple, broad, sweeping changes should generally be left to the legislature.
I would agree, if not for the empirical evidence showing us that legislators rarely make the changes that the people want. If they're not going to do it, somebody else has to.
Narrower changes would be nice, but they require a correspondingly short feedback loop of decide-act-adjust, which does not currently exist for legislators or most government administrators. If one desires narrower changes, I encourage them to first ensure the government moves and responds to customer (citizen) needs, faster than it currently does.
Either way, government structure and action should be what meets the needs of the people.
Anyways, it’s very easy to complain there isn’t a law which eliminates whatever fees you think are ridiculous across a large swathe of industries. What specific implementation would you suggest, though? I’ve not heard of these apparently simple approaches.
Without it it's much more work to comparison shop because you have to actually try and purchase from everyone to see the real price.
Good question! Thank you for asking, I will do my best to help provide the answer:
One common implementation is to require that all marketing show the final price most prominently, which seems reasonable to me.
"But wait," some may interject, "That final price may vary depending on jurisdiction!"
Yes, that is true, and entirely possible to deal with, and requiring advertisers to account for that is a better solution than requiring all customers to deal with the alternative. Besides, nobody is forcing the company to vary the price. They can just charge a flat price that accounts for the average of all local fees, and/or eat the fees, which was the intent of the legislation in the first place.
Ie. If you charge £100 for a hotel room, but have a £5 fee for using the lights, you have to advertise it as £105 because nearly every customer will be needing the lights.
Super simple rule. Works really well.
EDIT: if I'd been in Burnet, it'd be almost completely different forms & calculations.
Its "Write something that helps consumers know what they'll be paying"
It wouldn't even be changing the billing at all, but changing how they advertise pricing. Fees such as the example would need to be included in advertised total price of your bill. You wouldn't even need to change the bills. The companies have enough staff to do this in advertising. Government agencies' staffing would be stretched with or without such a rule.
Very convenient how it works out
For my behaviour the law is very short and clear - taking product or service without paying for it is theft.
If I pay for 1 car but take an additional wheel, I am a criminal.
But management of a company can wake up one day, take more money from my account and call it an additional fee for the same service.
Then an asterisk and tiny, tiny print somewhere below stating "plus taxes and fees"
So it depends on how you define "fees not included in the advertised price" but the last time I had a postpaid plan, I couldn't even know how much those added taxes and fees were until my first bill arrived.
As an aside, I don't know why AirBnB can't get their shit together and push all the fees to the map. My guess is that most of those fees are not per night? Well make the front matter say "$120/night + fees" and when you select your dates you know what the total cost is.
The problem is that everyone says we want this then votes with our wallet that we don’t.
Stubhub once tried to be upfront honest about fees. Bookings dropped like a stone. People just didn’t want concerts at those prices. But an extra $20 when you’re already paying $80, ehhh sure okay I’ve already come this far and feel pretty committed to going.
> As the study found, “Overall, the StubHub users who weren't shown fees until checkout spent about 21 percent more on tickets and were 14 percent more likely to complete a purchase compared with those who saw all-inclusive prices from the start.“
https://boondoggle.substack.com/p/stubhub-and-the-case-of-th...
Let’s do airlines next
This is easy for us hackernews types with disposable income to say and very hard for the average person to implement. 57% of Americans can’t afford an unexpected $500 expense [1]
Always keep in mind the boots theory of economic unfairness:
> A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. ... But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/most-americans-cant-afford-a-50...
They probably should, but people just don't work this way. We aren't machines that strictly go by the best economical output. Unless you find a way to make people do that (and I don't think this exists, since we'll always be partially driven by emotions) we have two options:
a) let people be exploited by companies
b) legislate against exploitation by companies
I for sure think the latter is the better option, especially since it forces companies to compete on value instead of just extraction.
I don’t see that as a problem whatsoever.
i see this idea of “i need to manipulate people for them to give me money” as the problem.
“if i don’t manipulate and obfuscate, no one wants my product” should make one reconsider their business model to one where they can be upfront and people still want the product.
You see the full price of your stay on the map, when you click through you see the breakdown per night plus any fees
Everyone has an incentive to list as low a price as possible.
For fucks sakes even car dealers are pulling this shit, listing EVs with tax rebates - that people may or may not qualify for - already deducted.
Following Teslas lead, who for a long time showed monthly prices that included “estimated gas purchase savings” by default (you could see the actual number but you had to flip a switch to do so. At least now they have to have the sensible default).
Cui bono
What could be the reason pre-recorded audio/visual performances are excluded? Shouldn't this just be for everything? Why would some types of tickets be required to be truthful about fees and not allowed to lie about the total price in ads, while others are allowed?
If movie theater A is going to charge you a $20 fee when you get to the theater, you can just go to theater B later and see the same show.
If you're trying to see the single Chicago date of Tropical Fu Dogs' Coconut Cream tour, well, you either pay the fee or you don't ever see that show.
Granted, such exclusivity deals are rare (because generally publishers want to maximize their revenue rather than artificially constrain it), but not unheard of (for example: films made specifically for IMAX's fancy setups).
Well, also there was US v. Paramount Pictures [1], which prohibited film production companies from showing their films exclusively at their owned theaters. And follow-on rulings like Bigelow vs RKO Radio Pictures [2], that more or less established that distributing films preferentially is also unacceptable.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigelow_v._RKO_Radio_Pictures,....
An example of a thing that movie theaters can do that live event shows can no longer do is say "a ticket costs $14", while in reality there's a booking fee to cover card payments if you pay online, but you can walk into a movie theater and pay just $14.
I think the FTC is saying that while there might be good faith reasons to have booking fees, the industry clearly is using this stuff in bad faith so the industry no longer has this sort of good faith "out" to simplify messaging on pricing.
Isn't that an argument for stronger disclosure laws for pre-recorded performances? If there's a monopoly, deceptive pricing wouldn't do much because the monopolist is still your only choice. but if it's a competitive marketplace, deceptive pricing might actually lead to consumers choosing worse providers.
The Regal near me charges about $15 for a normal evening seat, less for a matinee. I'm sure I've paid more in Ticketmaster fees for a single performance.
Where as these are not typical concerns for movie producers and movie theaters which are already operated as a legal cartel.
A movie however? There's competition both in time (a showing is booked out? fine, I'll just go a week later), in venues (at least in most cities there's at least two) and there's an effective ceiling on price, particularly as consumers are already struggling financially.
In free countries, and especially the US when it comes to trade, the idea is that people can do whatever they want unless it causes a problem, and if it causes a problem, they will pass the minimum amount of regulation needed to address the problem.
My opinion as a consumer would be to ban all hidden fees in all industries, including taxes and tipping when it is expected. But lawmakers in the US consider it not enough of a problem to restrict the freedoms of businesses doing this, so they take a more targeted approach.
In a civil law country if something causes a problem, the legislative branch would be expected to come up with a general solution. (eg https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/unfair-treat...)
In a common law country, if something causes a problem an executive agency or a judge would be expected to figure out a solution that doesn’t set a precedent that is too wide and general.
That said, back when I actually had prime it was only ever for the shipping so I never saw how amazon advertised their streaming service to people. Maybe the ads actually said "Sign up to Prime Video today for $187 and get access to 20% of the shows on the platform as well as an opportunity to pay even more for the other 80% of the titles!"
I've also seen random mentions of spotify having hidden fees, but I've never used the service and have no idea if they have them or ever have had them.
The issue is LiveNation adds $80 in some cases.
It sounds like it, from the report.
I remember staying in hotels in Japan, and they would say 1,600 Yen per night, and ... I get the bill for two nights, and it's 3,200 Yen.
Not so, US hotels.
Examples of covered short-term lodging include: Temporary sleeping accommodations at a hotel, motel, inn, short-term rental, vacation rental, or other place of lodging; Home shares and vacation rentals offered through platforms (like Airbnb or VRBO); Discounted extended stays at a hotel.
Examples of lodging that are not covered include: Long-term or other rental housing that involves an ongoing landlord-tenant relationship; Short-term extensions to leases offered by rental housing providers; Temporary corporate housing offered by an apartment community under the same conditions as long-term leases.
Bet most people never even see that though
They really let lodging providers get away with murder.
I haven't stayed at a 1600 yen capsule hotel before, but my favorite one-step-above (small private rooms, shared bathrooms on each floor) hostel-lite, which is usually two to three times that amount (when they have availability, I think too many other people discovered it), started charging like a 100 yen towel exchange fee if you wanted a fresh towel during your stay. Then at bigger hotels you start getting into extra taxes (a few hundred yen per night) when your rate exceeds 10,000 yen. Especially when your rate fluctuates over a stay, it's just a weird small amount of extra hassle you have to pay when you check in separately from the online system, though the systems do usually mention somewhere that there might be additional tax related fees when you arrive. Still, it all feels pretty smooth vs. US hotels where if they include for example any snacks in the room or drinks in the fridge you don't even want to touch them for fear of a surprise $20+ charge later. (A work friend did successfully win against a hotel that tried to charge him drink fees; their "smart" fridge detected he removed some drinks from the fridge to make room for his stuff, it did not detect that he put them back, and these weren't the kind of drinks that would spoil if left out.)
Most of those, especially taxes, should be included as well.
It's interesting how they put effort into the regulation, but then decided to put a little more, just to needlessly water it down and make it worsw.
Now in those days there were a couple of fees tacked on to ticket prices, but of course they were typically opaque already because even the base would depend on where we wanted to sit in the venue. So we didn't squirm too much when there were "facility fees" and "convenience fees" added and so forth. If possible, I would directly approach the venue's box office for the best deal, though.
It was interesting, because as the years wore on, I became interested in more obscure music, and that translated to ever-smaller venues, and more informal ticket purchases.
By 1999 I had acquired my "dream job" of clerk at Tower Records, and I was able to get up-close and personal with a real TicketMaster terminal (which was accessed in exactly the same way, with arcane text commands) and by that time my concert-being activities were being strictly curtailed. But I understood how terrible the market had become, the layers of fees that got tacked on, and the financial pain of wanting to see our favorite bands was increasing. I mean, in the "good old days" each seat was $40, maximum. These $250 packages with parking fees extra, that's abominable.
As for short-term rentals, while I've embraced the new food delivery services and ride-sharing over taxis, I never felt like adopting short-term rentals over hotels. For reasons of insurance, safety, and billing, among other things. So I'm thankful that the FTC is doing stuff about both of these industries. I hope that this regulation will bring about some lasting change and consumer confidence.
“The Rule prohibits bait-and-switch pricing and other tactics used to hide total prices and mislead people about fees in the live-event ticketing and short-term lodging industries.”
The fees themselves are still ridiculous though
More appropriately this is a Lina Khan era policy. She had a rocky start but her focus and conviction was unparalleled by any previous iteration of the agency. So much so that she enjoyed more bipartisan congressional support and approval than most staffers in recent memory.
Coincidental timing, I'm sure!
100% of the votes against confirmation were Republican. Fewer than half the R Senators voted to confirm her. Her predecessor, Obama nominee Edith Ramirez, was confirmed unanimously.
I suggest we let the different parties take responsibility and/or credit for their decisions.
And so no Democrat voted against her? Does a party line split ever look good regardless of how it breaks?
> Fewer than half the R Senators voted to confirm her.
Anti-trust issues have become more popular lately. Senators come and go. Like I said she had a rocky start.
> Obama nominee Edith Ramirez, was confirmed unanimously
And she did nothing. Do you see the connection between those two facts? I mean it's not like there was a bunch of consumer problems during Obama's term or anything. :|
> let the different parties take responsibility and/or credit for their decisions.
Party politics are just exceptionally dumb. They don't even reasonably reflect how decisions are actually made on the hill. It devolves into a weird left vs. right fight between citizens while the actual meaningful policies and civil servants are entirely ignored. I don't sense a way to improve anything by doing this.
It just so happens that all the people who pushed against this particular FTC chair are on one side of the aisle. That wasn't up to me!
> I don't sense a way to improve anything by doing this.
In my experience, step 1 of solving a problem is a sober assessment of the facts. We elect people and they make decisions. I'm pointing out what decisions they made.
That is how they became the party fully in support of Trumps policies.
Sometimes the threat or suggestion of something, like DOGE firing an employee who doesn't grant them immediate root access, is enough to subvert the entire system.
Time will tell if independent agencies are as independent as some choose to believe.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/ensu...
Lina Khan was appointed to the FTC by Joe Biden as part of a broader decision to allow Elizabeth Warren expanded oversight of economic regulation as a way to coalition build with the somewhat more progressive (but still pretty establishment) parts of the Democratic party.
Lina Khan was Biden's pick because she was Warren's pick.
To be clear about my own biases, I think Lina Khan was a fantastic pick and did an amazing job and would have done even greater things if left in place, but to act like she was a bipartisan choice (beyond, say, JD Vance throwing out some rhetoric on the campaign trail) is revisionist history.
JD Vance. Matt Gaetz. Josh Hawley. Ken Buck. They literally started calling them Khanservatives. There is strong anti-trust sentiment in parts of the Republican party. Just like there are "somewhat more progressive parts of the Democratic party."
> is revisionist history.
Or the story is more subtle and nuanced than people care to admit.
I'm still waiting for those supposed "anti-trust republicans" to demonstrate any actual awareness of the anti-competitive situation going on or any nuance beyond "These are blue state institutions therefore woke therefore we should attack them".
Where have any of these names made statements negative of other company's market positions for example? Where is their insistence that Amazon is a trust that should probably be busted?
[1] https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/live-nation-entertainment/s...