The junk fee legislation seems like a great way to make companies waste millions of dollars in resources rebuilding their backend systems just to result in the exact same fees being rolled into the remaining SKUs or charged to more customers than necessary.
> just to result in the exact same fees being rolled into the remaining SKUs
Yes, that’s the stated goal: if I’m looking for plane flights, I don’t want to think United is cheaper because I haven’t gotten to step seven of the checkout flow where they say that oxygen is billed separately and the bathroom takes all major credit cards.
Companies are adding these fees instead of raising prices precisely because it makes comparison shopping harder, and that’s never good for society as a whole. They’re keenly aware of the psychology here: once people start putting in the cost of filling out forms, etc. they’re less likely to abort halfway in even if the additional fees bring the total higher than they would have picked at the beginning. The companies have spent a lot of additional time and money redesigning their systems to exploit this, and you’re paying for all of that.
The fees aren't the problem, it's that they're hidden until the very end. Makes it impossible to compare services, feels like extortion when asked for after you've already eaten, and is just misleading.
In the EU the advertised price has to be with all fees included. No surprises, and I don't have to care if the hotel is €75 + €25 service fee, or just €100.
if their backend systems are such brownfield crap that they're unable to easily make these kinds of simple changes to their pricing structure, then they deserve to pay millions in incompetent leadership tax.
if prices are presented side by side or are otherwise compared by consumers, they should not have hidden post-comparison mandatory additions that distort that process. price comparison is pretty much the bedrock of a market economy, allowing market participants to distort that process for unfair advantage is clearly a problem.
Hey, more work for software engineers, increasing demand, increasing salaries. Who can complain? Your vacation is easier to plan, and you can take more of them ;)
