I genuinely find it hard to tell on LinkedIn sometimes. But satire is fine here. If/when we have the ability to add post flairs I’ll make them so people can filter out satire if they don’t want to see it.
The benefit is to the corporations. Tickets seem cheaper when you are planning, even though we all know it will be more expensive. Something to do with our dumb monkey brains
The reason is that politicians of a certain persuasion don’t want taxes to be “hidden.” They want them to be open and explicit to keep people angry at the government for taking so much of their money.
There is, in truth, also an advantage for retailers. They can advertise one price for the whole country, or a whole state or whatever, and not need to worry about the thousands upon thousands of different tax jurisdictions with not only different rates, but different categories that products and services can fall into.
For the consumer, it all means you have no fucking clue what you’ll actually end up paying.
I am American and there is no benefit to not having the prices reflect after taxation, unless you’re some kind of big business where they screw over the patrons at the register like Walmart does.
The problem is that every location has different tax rates. For example here in Texas I pay 8 cents on the dollar where I live, but other locations have a city and/or a county tax which is added to the 8 cents per dollar state tax.
My buddy wanted to use a 25% off coupon from fandango when we were buying tickets, so they used fandango and I used the theater’s website to purchase tickets. They had a service fee while I did not and in the end they saved a whopping ¢25 over me.
Those fucking "service fees" should be regulated. It's all just part of the cost so include it in the price instead of adding it on last second and acting like they have no control over it. I think final price should be what is advertised when possible, with a breakdown offered in addition to that if that's helpful. Obviously certain things like taxes and shipping can depend on the buyer's location, but a good faith effort to show the final cost should be made, including allowing users to anonymously put that information in to see what the final cost works out to.
IMO it's all manipulative salesmanship to not advertise the final price, but especially so when it's just that site or service adding in their own fees or other fees that should have been considered their cost of doing business.
And especially fuck fees when they are used to manipulate numbers life "profit" to avoid taxes or fuck over people who think a product will be profitable when the other side is negotiating based on whether a company will be profitable (and deliberately structure it so that it won't).
You’re preaching to the choir! While they fiddled trying to get the promo code applied they ended up losing their selected seats, it was a huge waste of time for them. Modern day capitalism is tricking the consumer into buying their product. “You’ve already made it this far, what’s a few more fees before you check out?” is a terrible business model.