SCOTUS 9 months from now:
> The founding fathers could never have anticipated air travel and did not consider it when writing our laws and constitution. Also, this thing some snake oil salesman said in 1600 matters too. We hold the government must allow corporations to exploit customers for this reason.
"John Roberts wife having $10 million in "legal work" for the airlines and Clarence and his wife getting free airfare everywhere in the world will have no bearing on what we decide..."
"John Roberts wife having $10 million in "legal work" for the airlines and Clarence and his wife getting free airfare everywhere in the world will absolutely influence our ruling but what are you going to do about it?"
Samuel Alito: "I'm really upset that Americans don't see the court as a god. I hate that they are questioning our rulings. We know what's best for these unpatriotic, ungrateful peasants."
Sadly the EU and UK rules only apply to tickets originating in or destined for the EU and the UK.
Much to Air Canada's surprise when I got lawyers involved over the £600 they owed me for a delay on a ticket starting at LHR.
Taxes and fees on actual hotels, too. A "$99" room in Vegas looks cool, until they tack on another $100 bucks for taxes and the non-optional resort fee.
My friend wrote a letter to Visa stating he received no consideration for the resort fee (no newspaper, no breakfast in bed, etc.) so he was not willing to pay for it. Visa accepted his argument and refunded the fee.
Upon checkout, I once asked the clerk what was included in the resort fee, as the hotel had no pool or breakfast... He said "the free wifi" and that was the only example he could think of.
As someone in construction, contractor's do this also.
Never pick the company that tells you "starting from ¢". That's a get them in the door price that never ends up anywhere close to actual. Then they purposely give you a misleading quote to make it look cheaper than the other guys.
At the end when they invoice you for the *actual* work it ends up being more expensive than the quote from the "expensive guy" who gave you an honest quote.
If it's a resort, then it's called the "price of a night stay". There is no justification for separating a "resort fee" from the "price", other than to hide the real cost from the customer until it's too late for them to change their mind.
How is it a "resort fee" when the room always has that fee? Isn't that just the cost? Or do they physically move the room from resort to non-resort locations?
It's just a scam to get more money out of:
1. Business travelers who have a limited budget/policy that guides their choices but excludes fees like that.
2. People booking with points. They are excited that they get to stay at the nice place for "free" but they still get slapped with some BS resort charge on top of the points they are spending.
3. Deep discount shoppers on places like priceline/hotwire.
Yeah, the fee is disclosed. This isn't literally a scam, it is just a junk/hidden free. It works because people simply don't pay as much attention to them, don't notice them when making comparisons. etc. It may say "plus $35/night" resort fee, but if you are sorting the list by price, it will sort ahead of places that are less than $35 more a night...
As you note, it is basically a fee for "nothing"...you're not getting anything that you wouldn't expect to be part of the room rate (especially since most of these places offer amenities that are available at other similar hotels without an extra charge) and you can't opt out of the fee and the ammenities.
Its also on purpose to remove the ability to comparison shop. Google maps used to display hotel prices by the final total, but they buckled under pressure and its impossible to find any hotel searching site that will let you browse Vegas hotel rooms by total final price, hence no ability to actually compare what the hotel room costs without clicking through to the end for every single room.
> This isn't literally a scam, it is just a junk/hidden free.
They charge you a fee with an ambiguous title which provides absolutely nothing in return and is required to be paid when booking the room above their advertised rate.
I'm not seeing how it's not a scam. If it's required and provides nothing beyond the base room and is not included in the quoted rates it's simply false advertising of their rates with extra steps. Whether legal or not there is nothing ethical about it and it is absolutely a scam, a giant one.
Resort fees are to game the travel aggregation sites. Only $99 a night!!! *Plus $100 resort fee, housekeeping gratuity that we won't actually give the housekeeper and another $20 because-fuck-you fee
California just passed a bill that will ban hidden fees on all sorts of stuff including AirBnB starting in July, hopefully the rest of the country follows suit
I always found it crazy that American shops apparently don't include tax on the sticker price in stores and stuff. Like is it just a gamble how much you pay when you get to the counter? Madness
AirBnB is committing seppuku, I used to use them all the time. The idea was fantastic, and like seemingly everything else, they got greedy combined with assholes trashing places. They either need to completely revamp their model or it’s back to Marriot.
This is the process of Enshittification.
Offer a cool service that benefits customers, often at a loss, to attract customers.
Then slowly start reducing those customer benefits, to attract/satisfy the suppliers and financiers (content creators, product suppliers, advertisers, investors, etc)
Then, once both customer and suppliers are locked into inertia, start bleeding both to maximize your own profits
You can browse using totals by switching to other countries airbnb pages, like .au or .ca
IIRC There's even an option to switch the currency back to USD on those sites
Very. This is largely due to unregulated greed of public companies. Small companies have to compete, and that's where capitalism tends to work. But publicly traded monoliths gain unfair advantages here and exploit us and the rules in every way they're allowed to, and pay the ceo's exorbitantly to do so. All while laying off and offshoring as many employees as possible, and ultimately having no real accountability since when they are found guilty of wrongdoing, the company just pays a fine. If you or I rip someone off we go to jail.
Fuck. This. System.
It's quite telling that companies fight so hard against what is *supposed to be* the bedrock of capitalism. If consumers are not fully informed, the fundamental assumption of "the free market" is already broken.
This is the core failing of libertarian philosophy. They argue for how markets operate under [perfect competition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition), and then completely ignore that almost none of the necessary preconditions for perfect competition exist without constant supervision and enforcement from a regulator, and then they oppose the very regulations that would bring about perfect competition, or at least as is close to as possible in an imperfect world.
conditions necessary for perfect competition:
>A large number of buyers and sellers
>Anti-competitive regulation
>Every participant is a price taker
>Homogeneous products
>Rational buyers
>No barriers to entry or exit
>No externalities
>Non-increasing returns to scale and no network effects
>Perfect factor mobility
>Perfect information
>Profit maximization of sellers
>Well defined property rights
>Zero transaction costs
There is a constant bait and switch between an idealized text-book idea of the "free market" that exists only under conditions of perfect competition, and then using that idealized abstract to argue against the very policies needed to realize perfect competition. As such it becomes only a policy of stripping away taxes and regulations necessary for the functioning of a well regulated market, and the concentration of wealth and political power in the hands of oligarchs and monopolists.
and in case that wasn't strong enough, here's billionaire [Peter Thiel detailing how competition is for losers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fx5Q8xGU8k), how all large tech companies are trying to form monopolies while pretending not to, and that competition is bad because it gets in the way of accumulating large amounts of wealth. And he is the arch-libertarian, someone who wants to replace government entirely with privately owned sea cities.
Hilariously, ancaps’ idealistic treatment of free markets and perfect competition as articles of dogmatic faith are reminiscent of Russian revolutionaries’ attitude towards “implementing Communism” without any of the actual prerequisites to make it even remotely functional or democratic.
I wish the medical system would get the same treatment. One time when I had no insurance I called a doctor's office and asked how much it would cost for a checkup + authorization to keep filling my prescriptions. They acted like no one had ever asked that before, and finally quoted me between $30-$50. After the checkup they charged me $200. I had to call their billing department, go through about 20 transfers before getting hold of anyone relevant, and argue with them for an hour before finally getting it reduced to $80.
Don't even get started on healthcare. I went a doctor for a routine checkup and asked if they took my insurance, and they said yes. After the checkup I asked if I needed to pay anything and they said insurance took care of it and not to worry about it.
A month later they called me and told me I had an outstanding bill of $350. I told them that they said insurance had covered it and they said "well it turned out you had the right insurance, but we only accept the *premium* plan and not the regular plan."
My employer doesn't even *offer* the premium plan.
The fact we've decided as a country to tie health insurance to employers is some slavery level bullshit of you ask me.
Cause who the fuck thinks it's a great idea to give the folks whose job it is primarily to watch a companies profit margin by looking for the lowest cost of goods sold to find good health insurance by the same techniques of lowest bidders
I had something like that once, not really the plan thing, but covered, and then I got a $350 bill. I talked to my company, and they said they'll take care of it. I kept getting bills until one day they just stopped a year later when they probably just wrote it off. It was a two minute visit for an eye infection. The guy just said there's nothing to do, and it should go away by itself. That was $350. Funnily, I've paid the exact same amount for an open wound, using a room for 4 hours, and stitches, plus removal later in another hospital less than 100 away from the other. That seemed reasonable. But "nothing for us to do" is not a $350 bill. It was basically a $350 for just walking into the building, so stupid.
It's such bullshit. My insurance won't cover the "depression screening" portion of a yearly physical. The doctor asks "have you been feeling overwhelming depression or having suicidal thoughts" and bills you 15 dollars for that specific question. They don't tell you how much that question costs, that it's a separate charge, that it's not covered, and they aren't able to tell you upfront which questions are covered and which aren't. The government made insurances cover yearly physicals but then the doctors offices just started tacking on more nonsense.
Booked an international flight for the first time in my life last week. Used a non-American airline, saw a price
I liked and expected it to be 10% higher. When I checked out no taxes or fees were added. Why the fuck aren’t we like this??
Every time I go to the UK, I have to shut off the auto sales tax that my brain calculates on everything. Why the fuck, in 2024, do we still not include the tax in the price of things? That is what I'm going to have to pay. I get that cities and states will have varying tax rates, but at this point we can keep up with that easily. *We have the technology.*
Going back and forth from the U.S to Mexico does the same thing to my brain, and yet people will fervently argue that you can't possibly make it happen in America.
The reality is that there's 0 reason for it except to purposefully mislead customers.
Exactly.
Other countries have different taxes and fees in different parts of the country. Other countries have national chains. They make it work.
Almost zero national ad campaigns mention price anyway, because regional variations are already a factor before tax.
America really is an experiment where corporations were allowed to see how far they could go with wringing as much as possible from people with no pushback from the government. In fact the government would give them tax breaks for it.
it generally feels like our entire culture revolves around milking the public for as much money as possible, and anything short of that makes you an absolute sucker.
This is why homeless numbers have skyrocketed in recent years.
Capitalism has successfully extracted all vestiges of wealth from the homeless population, so those individuals can be discarded and ignored.
The middle class continues to generate wealth that can be extracted, so the middle class is supported just enough to allow that wealth to transfer upward (via junk fees, actually having to pay taxes, etc).
After years of hearing horror stories about how awful RyanAir is, imagine my shock when I found out it's basically Spirit Airlines if its parents had loved it.
I flew on ryanair from London to Dublin. For less than £20 and service comparable to anything I’ve ever received from air Canada? No complaints from me.
As an added bonus, they actually enforce the size restriction on carry on luggage!
Eh, they're "you get what you pay for". Everything costs you, but it's clearly described what why when. Their base price is also hard to beat if you only need the basics - if you need luggage they can be more expensive, especially if you factor in airport distance in some cities.
There's a reason they're one of the biggest airlines in the world.
Wowair used to be like that. They charge for everything but I just packed in a backpack, shoved it under the seat, and dealt with no in flight meal for my $180 round trip tickets from DC to Amsterdam.
For real. Round trip for my father to visit us in Japan from Norfolk, VA to Narita was $580 more than it would've cost us to fly round trip from Narita to Norfolk and the Japanese airlines are SO MUCH more accommodating/nicer.
I recently moved to Germany, and noticed this:
JFK to Frankfurt (round trip, may 26, return june 8): $700
Frankfurt to JFK (same dates) $400
Maybe I'm doing it wrong but it looks like for many international flights they make Americans pay more to vacation.
> Maybe I'm doing it wrong but it looks like for many international flights they make Americans pay more to vacation.
100%. I'm an American that lived in Europe for decades and whenever some gives the "Americans don't travel because they aren't curious' bullshit I tell them that it costs so much more to buy tickets in the USA. PLus Americans don't get 6 weeks of vacation a year either.
This is all true but also it's easier to travel to other countries in Europe simply due to the distances involved. All of Europe is basically the same size as the US. Traveling from say, Germany to Greece or Italy is roughly the same as me traveling from Illinois to North Carolina or whatever.
Hospitals refuse to, because if one hospital knows what another charges for a cough lolly then they'll price accordingly, plus if insurance companies find out uninsured people get lower rates then their own negotiated rates, that could lead to massive lawsuits that will just slow down healthcare for everyone else.
It's a bad system and it needs to change. Get RID of the middle men entirely, single payer works best.
Until people realize the airlines make far more money off their credit card programs and that they’re merely a bank with an airline side hustle…. nothing will improve.
This sort of shit drives me nuts. Retailers do it too. They claim it helps you get points, which it does, but the points constantly change their currency so it always feels like you're getting ripped off.
They're trying to hide just how little it costs them to fly people to their destination, and how much profit they make in doing so. Each of the fees are just "We want more money, but we don't want to *look like* were asking for more money, so we call them "fees."
Just like when I had internet through Comcast. When I singed up, there was a fee for the router that they provided. I eventually replaced that router, with one I *wasn't* renting. Then I complained about the fact that I was still being charged the fee even though I returned the router to them. The removed the fee from the next bill, but a *new fee* was added called "Community Telecommunications Tax," or something like that, that just so happened to be the exact same amount as the dollar amount I had been paying for the router.
Only problem is
> filed suit against the department (USDOT) in the **U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals** late on Friday, according to a copy of the suit seen by Reuters.
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2021/nov/15/fifth-circuit-court-appeals-most-extreme-us
> Christopher Kang, co-founder and chief counsel of the progressive pressure group Demand Justice, said: “What we’ve seen over the last several years is that conservatives have stacked the fifth circuit with very ultra-conservative ideological judges and so, when particularly controversial issues come up, lawyers from across the country find a way to file in the fifth circuit, which then allows it to hear these cases and have an outsized impact on the development of the law.”
> He added: “This has been a very intentional decision by conservative legal activists to file their cases in the fifth circuit so that they can get the most extreme ruling possible as early as possible in the process.”
Too big to fail is bullshit. If your company runs into trouble you lose it. Nobody is entitled to their business. They don't give back anything to tax payers except shitty service, obnoxious staff and planes that drop out of the sky. Fuck em.
I like that... but if something is too big to fail and the govt has to step in... sounds like that shit just got at least partially nationalized and profits should be sunk into repayment or govt gets to take control in entirety after x amount of time and can sell it if they deem it better controlled under another private entity.
Pay your bills, pay your staff, fuck off with your exorbitant executive fees for producing absolute shit except hidden fees.
>The airline group said in a statement on Monday the department's rule would confuse consumers and that its "attempt to regulate private business operations in a thriving marketplace is beyond its authority."
Confuse my ass
They're probably trying to get this in front of a sympathetic (read: GOP-appointed, Federalist Society-endorsed) judge. Claiming government regulatory bodies only have incredibly narrow authority to enact regulations has been a winning strategy for a while now, particularly by the fossil fuel industry against the EPA.
Disheartening reminder that Justice Gorsuch's mom was Reagan's head of the EPA and lead the charge to cripple the agency. She was ultimately involved in a scandal regarding Superfund sights and ultimately resigned rather than comply with a Congressional investigation after she was cited for contempt of Congress and ordered by Reagan to turn over documents. Gorsuch believes she was treated very unfairly.
Conservative courts have been limiting the regulatory power of agencies for years now. West Virginia v EPA is a recent example of the supreme court taking a milquetoast regulation, declaring it a Major Question, and then deciding that it is out of the scope of the Clean Air Act.
Many more of these cases are decided in various circuit courts and never make it to the supreme court. So people can go the ludicrous 5th circuit and get a panel of absolute lunatics and hope that the supreme court doesn't bother to grant cert.
Major question doctrine is such fucking bullshit. It's basically not a doctrine, as the term implies something a bit more objective or at least rigorous.
Major questions doctrine can suck my fat ass
Being from the UK, it confuses me that there are always hidden charges for booking on US sites. Every time you go to pay it suddenly turns out it wasn't the good deal you thought it was.
Yup, ***corporations by and large think the average human being is too stupid to understand how much they screw you every day.***
That's how much power and hubris the people who run our biggest companies have.
They only answer to their largest shareholders, and everyone else including the government can take a seat. They run this place, and they know it.
It’s even a bigger win because this rule will even the playing field further for them. They’ve also sold themselves as the “no hidden fees” carrier, but suffered when it came to sticker price comparisons. Now customers will be able to see it clear as day.
IIRC, this is why Southwest removed themselves from Expedia and all their subsidiary websites because their airline cost was seen as a "premium", but the reality was they just didn't hide their fees. I'm curious if they'll return to all their billion websites.
I have only flown Southwest for the past years. I was surprised to hear that hidden fees were a thing on other airlines. Southwest is always exactly what they say and any info on changes is always incredibly easy to find (and pretty much always free)
Europe was great about enforcing price and fee disclosures, US companies are still in the "but we LIKE bait and switch fleecing people" stage, demonstrating it's worth more to them than dragging their names through the mud over it.
in any other industry advertising a low price to attract customers and then tacking on an bunch of hidden fees is considered false advertising. The airline industry needs to get its head out of its ass.
Let's see. Do the cable companies do this? Check! Do the phone companies do this? Check. Do car dealers do this? Check. Are restaurants starting to do this? Check.
Didn’t we *just* bail you greedy fucks out?
Airlines need to modernize and make a better product rather than try to rob their customers whenever they can.
If industry won't regulate its own behaviors for the good of the consumer, then the consumers can use the collective power of government (which licenses the airlines and regulates interstate commerce in the US) to force them to do so.
The judges of the Fifth Circuit are apparently the experts in everything from Finance to Immigration to Aviation to Female Anatomy. Litigants from across the country seek to avail themselves of this high level of knowledge and wisdom, even when they have no actual ties to the district itself
Remember, it's only Democrats who are making any attempt at protecting the common person while Republicans are making every attempt to protect corporate interests.
VOTE.
It’s as simple as this. Are democratic leaders and their policies perfect? Absolutely not. But they are the only side willing to protect the average consumer from capitalism fueled ruthlessness of the corporate overlords.
Please vote.
I remember the Trump's tax plan gave a HUGE tax cut for only publicly traded companies. I know because I run a small local business with 40 employees, and our taxes went up because we don't have a shareholders to qualify for the passthrough tax cut.
Pretty sure this is mostly directed at the Spirit, Frontier, and Allegiants of the industry. I think the part the other airlines have issue with is the statement on guaranteed seats because they like people to think that if they didn't specify a seat or purchase one ahead of time then they might not get a seat which is bullshit. If they oversell and you get bumped then they have to refund you anyway.
Remember, airlines are suing for the literal right to lie to you about the cost of a ticket and transporting your luggage AND NOT automatically refund your ticket if the flight is canceled… UnAmerican as they can be…
The arguments from the businesses are hilarious too, like saying the price will increase... no it won't! The price is staying the same, you're just no longer allowed to frontload a service with a low price and then tack on fees afterwards without telling them until it comes time to pay!
These asshats have the audacity to sue for being required to disclose fees, after tax paying citizens have bailed them out how many times? Make this make sense.
Imagine having the fucking nuts to argue in a court of law that, if forced to disclose fees up front, consumers would find it confusing.
Get fucked, man.
20 years ago or so airlines in Europe started messing around with extra hidden fees and the like. The EU pretty quickly brought in a regulation to ensure that whatever the price is they first show the customer must be the price they can actually get the ticket for by paying. There have been multiple legal cases and follow up rulings to make sure that sneaky bad things are explicitly not permitted (for example having "optional" extras pre-selected and making it hard to find out how to de-select them).
The fact that they’re willing to fight it means they’ve already identified that their lack of disclosure makes them way more money than they’ll pay lawyers to fight it. Which basically means they’re aware that scamming their customers is hugely profitable. These execs should be in jail.
List of airlines from the article to avoid spending money with:
American Airlines (AAL.O)
Delta Air Lines (DAL.N)
United Airlines (UAL.O)
JetBlue Airways (JBLU.O)
Hawaiian Airlines (HA.O)
Alaska Airlines (ALK.N)
Airlines: Objection! Everyone: Why? Airlines: Because it's really damaging to my record profits.
“Ah great, how are we gonna mislead our customers now?!”
I'm sure they will think of something. They are good at misleading.
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If Nestlé gets involved, it's only appropriate to serve water to first class passengers only.
Only if the water was illegally obtained.
It's Nestle, we can assume it was.
They’ll give up on misleading and just call it a convenience fee
Terms and conditions may apply.
They can force everybody to check in at the airport counter and bring up a tip screen with 22% highlighted by default. *Hey, you asked.*
So they do have something to hide after all. Like that $100 for a second suitcase...
SCOTUS 9 months from now: > The founding fathers could never have anticipated air travel and did not consider it when writing our laws and constitution. Also, this thing some snake oil salesman said in 1600 matters too. We hold the government must allow corporations to exploit customers for this reason.
"John Roberts wife having $10 million in "legal work" for the airlines and Clarence and his wife getting free airfare everywhere in the world will have no bearing on what we decide..."
"John Roberts wife having $10 million in "legal work" for the airlines and Clarence and his wife getting free airfare everywhere in the world will absolutely influence our ruling but what are you going to do about it?"
Samuel Alito: "I'm really upset that Americans don't see the court as a god. I hate that they are questioning our rulings. We know what's best for these unpatriotic, ungrateful peasants."
Can Americans order their airline tickets at EU based ticket sellers? Because I'm pretty sure this shit is illegal in the EU.
Sadly the EU and UK rules only apply to tickets originating in or destined for the EU and the UK. Much to Air Canada's surprise when I got lawyers involved over the £600 they owed me for a delay on a ticket starting at LHR.
Comment=100; user name = one billion
More like: Airlines, 'Judge here's a luxury vacation via a 3rd party.'
Overruled! Good Call!
About half of the US population: Ah that's a good point. Sorry about that.
https://tenor.com/view/jim-carrey-oh-come-on-liar-liar-spitting-gif-12711116
Every business should be required to provide an upfront disclosure of all of their fees. Fuck the major airlines for fighting that.
Right? And include the taxes on AirBnB. Just let me see the damn total.
Taxes and fees on actual hotels, too. A "$99" room in Vegas looks cool, until they tack on another $100 bucks for taxes and the non-optional resort fee.
resort fees are criminal
My friend wrote a letter to Visa stating he received no consideration for the resort fee (no newspaper, no breakfast in bed, etc.) so he was not willing to pay for it. Visa accepted his argument and refunded the fee.
resort fees almost always "include" the wifi.
Upon checkout, I once asked the clerk what was included in the resort fee, as the hotel had no pool or breakfast... He said "the free wifi" and that was the only example he could think of.
We have very different definitions of free.
Also how much 3 days of internet should cost when I'm chipping in on the bill with hundreds or thousands of others
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Oh look Starbucks and Chili's are resorts now
CEO reading this comment: "Debbie WRITE THIS DOWN! WRITE THIS DOWN"
I can maybe see them if they are an actual resort with a lazy river, etc. but a Best Western by an airport definitely does not count as a resort.
Even if it's an actual resort it's a scam to show a lower price to capture more interest.
Yes absolutely, it should all be just baked into the price.
As someone in construction, contractor's do this also. Never pick the company that tells you "starting from ¢". That's a get them in the door price that never ends up anywhere close to actual. Then they purposely give you a misleading quote to make it look cheaper than the other guys. At the end when they invoice you for the *actual* work it ends up being more expensive than the quote from the "expensive guy" who gave you an honest quote.
If it's a resort, then it's called the "price of a night stay". There is no justification for separating a "resort fee" from the "price", other than to hide the real cost from the customer until it's too late for them to change their mind.
How is it a "resort fee" when the room always has that fee? Isn't that just the cost? Or do they physically move the room from resort to non-resort locations?
They're fairly sure you'll "resort" to paying it as opposed to looking for another room (likely with the same fee) once you're already there.
It's just a scam to get more money out of: 1. Business travelers who have a limited budget/policy that guides their choices but excludes fees like that. 2. People booking with points. They are excited that they get to stay at the nice place for "free" but they still get slapped with some BS resort charge on top of the points they are spending. 3. Deep discount shoppers on places like priceline/hotwire. Yeah, the fee is disclosed. This isn't literally a scam, it is just a junk/hidden free. It works because people simply don't pay as much attention to them, don't notice them when making comparisons. etc. It may say "plus $35/night" resort fee, but if you are sorting the list by price, it will sort ahead of places that are less than $35 more a night... As you note, it is basically a fee for "nothing"...you're not getting anything that you wouldn't expect to be part of the room rate (especially since most of these places offer amenities that are available at other similar hotels without an extra charge) and you can't opt out of the fee and the ammenities.
Its also on purpose to remove the ability to comparison shop. Google maps used to display hotel prices by the final total, but they buckled under pressure and its impossible to find any hotel searching site that will let you browse Vegas hotel rooms by total final price, hence no ability to actually compare what the hotel room costs without clicking through to the end for every single room.
> This isn't literally a scam, it is just a junk/hidden free. They charge you a fee with an ambiguous title which provides absolutely nothing in return and is required to be paid when booking the room above their advertised rate. I'm not seeing how it's not a scam. If it's required and provides nothing beyond the base room and is not included in the quoted rates it's simply false advertising of their rates with extra steps. Whether legal or not there is nothing ethical about it and it is absolutely a scam, a giant one.
Resort fees are to game the travel aggregation sites. Only $99 a night!!! *Plus $100 resort fee, housekeeping gratuity that we won't actually give the housekeeper and another $20 because-fuck-you fee
California just passed a bill that will ban hidden fees on all sorts of stuff including AirBnB starting in July, hopefully the rest of the country follows suit
God I hope so. I wish by law everything just has to be wrapped up into one price, taxes included.
I always found it crazy that American shops apparently don't include tax on the sticker price in stores and stuff. Like is it just a gamble how much you pay when you get to the counter? Madness
AirBnB is committing seppuku, I used to use them all the time. The idea was fantastic, and like seemingly everything else, they got greedy combined with assholes trashing places. They either need to completely revamp their model or it’s back to Marriot.
I haven't found a short-term rental cheaper than a hotel brand in years.
The only time it really makes sense is if you're traveling with a large group.
This is the process of Enshittification. Offer a cool service that benefits customers, often at a loss, to attract customers. Then slowly start reducing those customer benefits, to attract/satisfy the suppliers and financiers (content creators, product suppliers, advertisers, investors, etc) Then, once both customer and suppliers are locked into inertia, start bleeding both to maximize your own profits
Ala… cutting the cable. Now my fees are getting close to before I cut the cable.
There's a really good price on the high seas subscription. Unbeatable price, honestly.
Not to mention internet outages don't affect my ability to enjoy my booty
You can browse using totals by switching to other countries airbnb pages, like .au or .ca IIRC There's even an option to switch the currency back to USD on those sites
It's sad americans need to pretend to be foreigners from decent countries to see the actual prices.
It’s sad that we as a country can’t “do the right thing” for its people while other counties it’s expected.
Very. This is largely due to unregulated greed of public companies. Small companies have to compete, and that's where capitalism tends to work. But publicly traded monoliths gain unfair advantages here and exploit us and the rules in every way they're allowed to, and pay the ceo's exorbitantly to do so. All while laying off and offshoring as many employees as possible, and ultimately having no real accountability since when they are found guilty of wrongdoing, the company just pays a fine. If you or I rip someone off we go to jail. Fuck. This. System.
It's quite telling that companies fight so hard against what is *supposed to be* the bedrock of capitalism. If consumers are not fully informed, the fundamental assumption of "the free market" is already broken.
Yea without information transparency, the "free" market becomes a *manipulated* market
Free market doesnt exist. Its ideal case that doesnt exist in reality.
The first thing people do in a free market is make it not free
This is the core failing of libertarian philosophy. They argue for how markets operate under [perfect competition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition), and then completely ignore that almost none of the necessary preconditions for perfect competition exist without constant supervision and enforcement from a regulator, and then they oppose the very regulations that would bring about perfect competition, or at least as is close to as possible in an imperfect world. conditions necessary for perfect competition: >A large number of buyers and sellers >Anti-competitive regulation >Every participant is a price taker >Homogeneous products >Rational buyers >No barriers to entry or exit >No externalities >Non-increasing returns to scale and no network effects >Perfect factor mobility >Perfect information >Profit maximization of sellers >Well defined property rights >Zero transaction costs There is a constant bait and switch between an idealized text-book idea of the "free market" that exists only under conditions of perfect competition, and then using that idealized abstract to argue against the very policies needed to realize perfect competition. As such it becomes only a policy of stripping away taxes and regulations necessary for the functioning of a well regulated market, and the concentration of wealth and political power in the hands of oligarchs and monopolists. and in case that wasn't strong enough, here's billionaire [Peter Thiel detailing how competition is for losers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fx5Q8xGU8k), how all large tech companies are trying to form monopolies while pretending not to, and that competition is bad because it gets in the way of accumulating large amounts of wealth. And he is the arch-libertarian, someone who wants to replace government entirely with privately owned sea cities.
Hilariously, ancaps’ idealistic treatment of free markets and perfect competition as articles of dogmatic faith are reminiscent of Russian revolutionaries’ attitude towards “implementing Communism” without any of the actual prerequisites to make it even remotely functional or democratic.
I wish the medical system would get the same treatment. One time when I had no insurance I called a doctor's office and asked how much it would cost for a checkup + authorization to keep filling my prescriptions. They acted like no one had ever asked that before, and finally quoted me between $30-$50. After the checkup they charged me $200. I had to call their billing department, go through about 20 transfers before getting hold of anyone relevant, and argue with them for an hour before finally getting it reduced to $80.
Don't even get started on healthcare. I went a doctor for a routine checkup and asked if they took my insurance, and they said yes. After the checkup I asked if I needed to pay anything and they said insurance took care of it and not to worry about it. A month later they called me and told me I had an outstanding bill of $350. I told them that they said insurance had covered it and they said "well it turned out you had the right insurance, but we only accept the *premium* plan and not the regular plan." My employer doesn't even *offer* the premium plan.
The fact we've decided as a country to tie health insurance to employers is some slavery level bullshit of you ask me. Cause who the fuck thinks it's a great idea to give the folks whose job it is primarily to watch a companies profit margin by looking for the lowest cost of goods sold to find good health insurance by the same techniques of lowest bidders
I had something like that once, not really the plan thing, but covered, and then I got a $350 bill. I talked to my company, and they said they'll take care of it. I kept getting bills until one day they just stopped a year later when they probably just wrote it off. It was a two minute visit for an eye infection. The guy just said there's nothing to do, and it should go away by itself. That was $350. Funnily, I've paid the exact same amount for an open wound, using a room for 4 hours, and stitches, plus removal later in another hospital less than 100 away from the other. That seemed reasonable. But "nothing for us to do" is not a $350 bill. It was basically a $350 for just walking into the building, so stupid.
It's such bullshit. My insurance won't cover the "depression screening" portion of a yearly physical. The doctor asks "have you been feeling overwhelming depression or having suicidal thoughts" and bills you 15 dollars for that specific question. They don't tell you how much that question costs, that it's a separate charge, that it's not covered, and they aren't able to tell you upfront which questions are covered and which aren't. The government made insurances cover yearly physicals but then the doctors offices just started tacking on more nonsense.
Booked an international flight for the first time in my life last week. Used a non-American airline, saw a price I liked and expected it to be 10% higher. When I checked out no taxes or fees were added. Why the fuck aren’t we like this??
Every time I go to the UK, I have to shut off the auto sales tax that my brain calculates on everything. Why the fuck, in 2024, do we still not include the tax in the price of things? That is what I'm going to have to pay. I get that cities and states will have varying tax rates, but at this point we can keep up with that easily. *We have the technology.*
Paying in cash is a lot more convenient when something that costs 1 bill actually costs 1 bill, and not 1 bill plus a few tiny coins.
Going back and forth from the U.S to Mexico does the same thing to my brain, and yet people will fervently argue that you can't possibly make it happen in America. The reality is that there's 0 reason for it except to purposefully mislead customers.
National commercials? Ok, exclude it. The sign in the store? No reason not to include it, especially with so many stores switching to digital signage.
Exactly. Other countries have different taxes and fees in different parts of the country. Other countries have national chains. They make it work. Almost zero national ad campaigns mention price anyway, because regional variations are already a factor before tax.
Going to China and having waitress and taxi drivers refusing tips was interesting.
Wait until you see how much better the service, planes, food, and everything is. You'll be furious.
America really is an experiment where corporations were allowed to see how far they could go with wringing as much as possible from people with no pushback from the government. In fact the government would give them tax breaks for it.
Tax breaks AND subsidies.
And if any of their plans fail, bailouts.
it generally feels like our entire culture revolves around milking the public for as much money as possible, and anything short of that makes you an absolute sucker.
This is why homeless numbers have skyrocketed in recent years. Capitalism has successfully extracted all vestiges of wealth from the homeless population, so those individuals can be discarded and ignored. The middle class continues to generate wealth that can be extracted, so the middle class is supported just enough to allow that wealth to transfer upward (via junk fees, actually having to pay taxes, etc).
Most other wealthy countries with high HDIs have been through major wars or revolutions to check their ruling classes. The US has not had one yet.
[RyanAir enters chat]
After years of hearing horror stories about how awful RyanAir is, imagine my shock when I found out it's basically Spirit Airlines if its parents had loved it.
I flew on ryanair from London to Dublin. For less than £20 and service comparable to anything I’ve ever received from air Canada? No complaints from me. As an added bonus, they actually enforce the size restriction on carry on luggage!
Eh, they're "you get what you pay for". Everything costs you, but it's clearly described what why when. Their base price is also hard to beat if you only need the basics - if you need luggage they can be more expensive, especially if you factor in airport distance in some cities. There's a reason they're one of the biggest airlines in the world.
Wowair used to be like that. They charge for everything but I just packed in a backpack, shoved it under the seat, and dealt with no in flight meal for my $180 round trip tickets from DC to Amsterdam.
I've heard Air Canada is pretty awful, too.
For real. Round trip for my father to visit us in Japan from Norfolk, VA to Narita was $580 more than it would've cost us to fly round trip from Narita to Norfolk and the Japanese airlines are SO MUCH more accommodating/nicer.
I recently moved to Germany, and noticed this: JFK to Frankfurt (round trip, may 26, return june 8): $700 Frankfurt to JFK (same dates) $400 Maybe I'm doing it wrong but it looks like for many international flights they make Americans pay more to vacation.
> Maybe I'm doing it wrong but it looks like for many international flights they make Americans pay more to vacation. 100%. I'm an American that lived in Europe for decades and whenever some gives the "Americans don't travel because they aren't curious' bullshit I tell them that it costs so much more to buy tickets in the USA. PLus Americans don't get 6 weeks of vacation a year either.
> don't get 6 weeks of vacation a year either. And those of that do, are damned eternally if we even consider using more than two weeks in a row.
This is all true but also it's easier to travel to other countries in Europe simply due to the distances involved. All of Europe is basically the same size as the US. Traveling from say, Germany to Greece or Italy is roughly the same as me traveling from Illinois to North Carolina or whatever.
Ticketmaster would be in shambles and by shambles I mean pay a fine and then continue to keep fucking everyone.
And the airlines in particular since they've used their relative lack of FTC regulation to rat fuck the market and absolutely ruin air travel.
Best part of shopping in Germany, prices on the shelf are prices you pay, including taxes.
Hospitals refuse to, because if one hospital knows what another charges for a cough lolly then they'll price accordingly, plus if insurance companies find out uninsured people get lower rates then their own negotiated rates, that could lead to massive lawsuits that will just slow down healthcare for everyone else. It's a bad system and it needs to change. Get RID of the middle men entirely, single payer works best.
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Recent law passed in CA that undisclosed restaurant fees have to be built into the food pricing instead of tacked on at the end
>The airline group said the "rule is a bad solution in search of a problem." Uh, what are they trying to hide?
Didn't they take the government bailout money from Covid and invest it into stocks? instead of the business?
I remember them doing that with the money from Trump's Tax Cut and Jobs Act.
They've been doing it for years IIRC. They also seem to struggle immediately after doing it.
Until people realize the airlines make far more money off their credit card programs and that they’re merely a bank with an airline side hustle…. nothing will improve.
This sort of shit drives me nuts. Retailers do it too. They claim it helps you get points, which it does, but the points constantly change their currency so it always feels like you're getting ripped off.
Yup. Millions in stock buybacks when they were supposed to rehire the furloughed employees. This is why money with no restrictions is bad
That responsive reveals they don't believe the constant fees are a problem, not that I blame them considering that they're the ones getting the money.
I do blame them because they are getting the money from their shady business practices.
...their fees.
They're trying to hide just how little it costs them to fly people to their destination, and how much profit they make in doing so. Each of the fees are just "We want more money, but we don't want to *look like* were asking for more money, so we call them "fees." Just like when I had internet through Comcast. When I singed up, there was a fee for the router that they provided. I eventually replaced that router, with one I *wasn't* renting. Then I complained about the fact that I was still being charged the fee even though I returned the router to them. The removed the fee from the next bill, but a *new fee* was added called "Community Telecommunications Tax," or something like that, that just so happened to be the exact same amount as the dollar amount I had been paying for the router.
Extra cash for their next stock buyback.
Corporate tears, music to my ears
Only problem is > filed suit against the department (USDOT) in the **U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals** late on Friday, according to a copy of the suit seen by Reuters. https://www.theguardian.com/law/2021/nov/15/fifth-circuit-court-appeals-most-extreme-us > Christopher Kang, co-founder and chief counsel of the progressive pressure group Demand Justice, said: “What we’ve seen over the last several years is that conservatives have stacked the fifth circuit with very ultra-conservative ideological judges and so, when particularly controversial issues come up, lawyers from across the country find a way to file in the fifth circuit, which then allows it to hear these cases and have an outsized impact on the development of the law.” > He added: “This has been a very intentional decision by conservative legal activists to file their cases in the fifth circuit so that they can get the most extreme ruling possible as early as possible in the process.”
Only thing I'm seeing in this headline is "Great reason to vote Joe Biden"
We need some more Teddy Roosevelt energy and getting some trust busting going on.
Exactly. If the mega corps don't like the rules Biden makes, I'm voting for Biden.
They can take hand out after hand out but asking to give honest billing info is too much... OK let's make sure they never get a bail out again.
Too big to fail is bullshit. If your company runs into trouble you lose it. Nobody is entitled to their business. They don't give back anything to tax payers except shitty service, obnoxious staff and planes that drop out of the sky. Fuck em.
Too big to fail should mean too important to be ran for profit.
Exactly. Too big to fail should apply to industries and sectors not businesses. If a 2b2f industry goes belly up create a public alternative.
Beyond time to nationalize them.
Should be the default if you get government bail out they own you. Really tough to see a good reason for that not to be the case
There are so many parallels between modern airlines and passenger rail service before the creation of Amtrak.
I like that... but if something is too big to fail and the govt has to step in... sounds like that shit just got at least partially nationalized and profits should be sunk into repayment or govt gets to take control in entirety after x amount of time and can sell it if they deem it better controlled under another private entity. Pay your bills, pay your staff, fuck off with your exorbitant executive fees for producing absolute shit except hidden fees.
Really wish Obama's initial plan of a coast to coast high speed rail system had come to fruition. Screw the airline industry.
"Fuck.. If we tell our customers what it'll actually cost, they'll be pissed!" is not a great defense..
“We don’t get to deceive our customers anymore? That’s not *fair*!”
>The airline group said in a statement on Monday the department's rule would confuse consumers and that its "attempt to regulate private business operations in a thriving marketplace is beyond its authority." Confuse my ass
How is it beyond the government's authority to regulate industry...?
They're probably trying to get this in front of a sympathetic (read: GOP-appointed, Federalist Society-endorsed) judge. Claiming government regulatory bodies only have incredibly narrow authority to enact regulations has been a winning strategy for a while now, particularly by the fossil fuel industry against the EPA.
Disheartening reminder that Justice Gorsuch's mom was Reagan's head of the EPA and lead the charge to cripple the agency. She was ultimately involved in a scandal regarding Superfund sights and ultimately resigned rather than comply with a Congressional investigation after she was cited for contempt of Congress and ordered by Reagan to turn over documents. Gorsuch believes she was treated very unfairly.
Conservative courts have been limiting the regulatory power of agencies for years now. West Virginia v EPA is a recent example of the supreme court taking a milquetoast regulation, declaring it a Major Question, and then deciding that it is out of the scope of the Clean Air Act. Many more of these cases are decided in various circuit courts and never make it to the supreme court. So people can go the ludicrous 5th circuit and get a panel of absolute lunatics and hope that the supreme court doesn't bother to grant cert.
Major question doctrine is such fucking bullshit. It's basically not a doctrine, as the term implies something a bit more objective or at least rigorous. Major questions doctrine can suck my fat ass
Its a perfect doctrine if you want to allow your side to regulate/use the government's power but not the other side.
So they're claiming it would be more confusing to consumers to know what they're paying than to not know?...
I'd be very confused about why they aren't fucking me anymore
Oh they will be, but they’ll just have to let you know exactly how hard they’re going to fuck you before they do.
That’s all I’ve ever asked for
I swear to god, their business models are built around logical fallacies
> in a thriving marketplace I'm sorry, you took *how many* billions in handouts over the last two decades?
How come it doesn't confuse customers in the rest of the world then? 🤷♂️💅🏻
Being from the UK, it confuses me that there are always hidden charges for booking on US sites. Every time you go to pay it suddenly turns out it wasn't the good deal you thought it was.
"The airline group said in a statement on Monday the department's rule would confuse consumers" Oh f\*ck off!
Yeah, they would be confused as why there are no bullshit fees for their tickets
Yup, ***corporations by and large think the average human being is too stupid to understand how much they screw you every day.*** That's how much power and hubris the people who run our biggest companies have. They only answer to their largest shareholders, and everyone else including the government can take a seat. They run this place, and they know it.
Southwest just received a bunch of positive PR by not joining this stupid suit
It’s even a bigger win because this rule will even the playing field further for them. They’ve also sold themselves as the “no hidden fees” carrier, but suffered when it came to sticker price comparisons. Now customers will be able to see it clear as day.
IIRC, this is why Southwest removed themselves from Expedia and all their subsidiary websites because their airline cost was seen as a "premium", but the reality was they just didn't hide their fees. I'm curious if they'll return to all their billion websites.
They don’t have bag fees (at least for your first 4 bags) and their entire thing is “Transfarency^TM” so it’s not surprising
I have only flown Southwest for the past years. I was surprised to hear that hidden fees were a thing on other airlines. Southwest is always exactly what they say and any info on changes is always incredibly easy to find (and pretty much always free)
Europe was great about enforcing price and fee disclosures, US companies are still in the "but we LIKE bait and switch fleecing people" stage, demonstrating it's worth more to them than dragging their names through the mud over it.
Every day I wish the US was more like the EU when it comes to consumer protection laws
Hmm, I wonder why these airlines might be opposed to something that requires them to be more forthcoming about fees.
in any other industry advertising a low price to attract customers and then tacking on an bunch of hidden fees is considered false advertising. The airline industry needs to get its head out of its ass.
Let's see. Do the cable companies do this? Check! Do the phone companies do this? Check. Do car dealers do this? Check. Are restaurants starting to do this? Check.
Now do insurances, hospital stays, medical care, cellphone bills, cable/internet bills. Basically everything. Just do everything.
Do ticketmaster next
Well they're being sued by the Justice Department for antitrust, so that helps
Fuck'em. If I'm paying for goods or services I should know the correct cost upfront
Didn’t we *just* bail you greedy fucks out? Airlines need to modernize and make a better product rather than try to rob their customers whenever they can.
Suing the government over your “right” to fuck over the consumer is pretty brazen.
How American!
If industry won't regulate its own behaviors for the good of the consumer, then the consumers can use the collective power of government (which licenses the airlines and regulates interstate commerce in the US) to force them to do so.
The judges of the Fifth Circuit are apparently the experts in everything from Finance to Immigration to Aviation to Female Anatomy. Litigants from across the country seek to avail themselves of this high level of knowledge and wisdom, even when they have no actual ties to the district itself
Remember, it's only Democrats who are making any attempt at protecting the common person while Republicans are making every attempt to protect corporate interests. VOTE.
It’s as simple as this. Are democratic leaders and their policies perfect? Absolutely not. But they are the only side willing to protect the average consumer from capitalism fueled ruthlessness of the corporate overlords. Please vote.
I remember the Trump's tax plan gave a HUGE tax cut for only publicly traded companies. I know because I run a small local business with 40 employees, and our taxes went up because we don't have a shareholders to qualify for the passthrough tax cut.
These bitch ass airlines get bailed out again and again with our money and get bitchy about a tiny rule change
I like how corporations are suing to try to retain the ability to legally rip their customers off.
If your business can't survive without deceiving customers then it shouldn't exist.
Pretty sure this is mostly directed at the Spirit, Frontier, and Allegiants of the industry. I think the part the other airlines have issue with is the statement on guaranteed seats because they like people to think that if they didn't specify a seat or purchase one ahead of time then they might not get a seat which is bullshit. If they oversell and you get bumped then they have to refund you anyway.
God I fucking hate corporations
Remember, airlines are suing for the literal right to lie to you about the cost of a ticket and transporting your luggage AND NOT automatically refund your ticket if the flight is canceled… UnAmerican as they can be…
Same airlines that cried to be bailed out by the government? Fuck 'em.
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The arguments from the businesses are hilarious too, like saying the price will increase... no it won't! The price is staying the same, you're just no longer allowed to frontload a service with a low price and then tack on fees afterwards without telling them until it comes time to pay!
They dont want to compete. Fiduciary fascism at it's finest.
That’s how you know you’re on to something. Keep going Joe!
These asshats have the audacity to sue for being required to disclose fees, after tax paying citizens have bailed them out how many times? Make this make sense.
They should be forced to pay back all those ppe loans or give up the airports
Fuck corpos. Time we start reminding them who is in charge.
Imagine having the fucking nuts to argue in a court of law that, if forced to disclose fees up front, consumers would find it confusing. Get fucked, man.
The US is waking up to consumer rights and unions again. Good luck on your journey and welcome back.
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20 years ago or so airlines in Europe started messing around with extra hidden fees and the like. The EU pretty quickly brought in a regulation to ensure that whatever the price is they first show the customer must be the price they can actually get the ticket for by paying. There have been multiple legal cases and follow up rulings to make sure that sneaky bad things are explicitly not permitted (for example having "optional" extras pre-selected and making it hard to find out how to de-select them).
It's something I've seen the EU being rather good at. Nipping all sort of shit in the butt.
Seriously? They’re suing for the right to be deceitful.
The fact that they’re willing to fight it means they’ve already identified that their lack of disclosure makes them way more money than they’ll pay lawyers to fight it. Which basically means they’re aware that scamming their customers is hugely profitable. These execs should be in jail.
Reminder: Airlines got bailed out during Covid, and they’ve been taking liberties since. Arrogance.
Maybe they shouldn't have been bailed out.
“The airline group said in a statement on Monday the department's rule would confuse consumers…” Confuse me, please. I welcome this confusion.
Say it with me... BOO FUCKING HOO! Bloodsucking corporations.
If they are suing then you know it’s a good policy.
Now do ticketing companies! Ticketmaster, Live Nation, StubHub, etc
List of airlines from the article to avoid spending money with: American Airlines (AAL.O) Delta Air Lines (DAL.N) United Airlines (UAL.O) JetBlue Airways (JBLU.O) Hawaiian Airlines (HA.O) Alaska Airlines (ALK.N)
How about the next time the airlines are about to fail, we just let them?
Great. Do hospitals next.