UK Bans Fake Reviews and 'Sneaky' Fees For Online Products (theverge.com) 40
The United Kingdom has banned "outrageous fake reviews and sneaky hidden fees" to make life easier for online shoppers. From a report: New measures under the Digital Markets, Competition, and Consumer Act 2024 came into force on Sunday that require online platforms to transparently include all mandatory fees within a product's advertised price, including booking or admin charges.
The law targets so-called "dripped pricing," in which additional fees -- like platform service charges -- are dripped in during a customer's checkout process to dupe them into paying a higher price than expected. The ban "aims to bring to an end the shock that online shoppers get when they reach the end of their shopping experience only to find a raft of extra fees lumped on top," according to Justin Madders, the UK's Minister for Employment Rights, Competition and Markets.
The law targets so-called "dripped pricing," in which additional fees -- like platform service charges -- are dripped in during a customer's checkout process to dupe them into paying a higher price than expected. The ban "aims to bring to an end the shock that online shoppers get when they reach the end of their shopping experience only to find a raft of extra fees lumped on top," according to Justin Madders, the UK's Minister for Employment Rights, Competition and Markets.
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I suppose it is difficult for you Limeys to understand the American attachment of value to free speech... If you had it, you would hold on to it with a revolution if necessary.
Re:UK's Left Wing Deep State Fascism (Score:5, Interesting)
Sort of like the attachment to guns. You'll cheer on the first and second amendments as you descend into fascism.
Your king has already declared that the wrong ideologies must be scrubbed from the government, truth be damned. And you've somehow managed to lock up more people than anywhere else in the world, a status which makes them not have free speech.
So you might want to check the windows in your glass house before flinging rocks.
Think is in I'm happy to crap all over my government and their record, bit not to someone who's being both insufferably smug and also wrong.
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Oh do fuck off you tiresome Limey.
I was responding to a rude comment from your fellow countryman. Maybe the original comment was you as an anonymous coward who knows.
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If you do not wish to hear me speak, the door is over there --->
And you are most welcome to use it.
As an alternative instead of being partisan and nationalistic, you could try having an actual discussion. You may find that more enriching than flinging ineffective slurs
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If the King happened to be walking past I could tell him to fuck off and take his nonce brother with him with no consequences.
But I can't post online with eaton-com's real name, address, and a remark that someone should kill him.
Seems reasonable enough to me.
Re: UK's Left Wing Deep State Fascism (Score:2)
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In the USA drip pricing violates laws against bait and switch as well as false advertisement.
"Bait and switch" is different:
~ Store advertises product X at what sounds like a good price. (The bait.)
~ Customer goes to buy X and is told it's sold out or 'unavailable'. The store likely never had product X in the first place.
~ Store offers a different product Y that will make them more profit. (The switch.)
Drip pricing is where you go to someone like Ticket Master. They are selling tickets to the event you want to attend; there's no switch involved. Instead, they advertise a ticket at, say $100, but th
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
You really do slurp up the right wing propaganda over there in America dont you?
Theres nothing wrong with the UKs freedom of press or freedom of speech for the average person - sure, hate speech is banned, which is good. It also means we dont have anywhere near the issues that you do in America.
By the way, your President recently called a boycott of a private companies products "illegal", and many of your states have laws which make boycotts of Israel illegal. Is everything ok over there?
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but your freedom of the press and freedoms of speech are getting closer to nonexistent
Good challenge. Let's put it to the test.
UK is currently ranked 23rd in the world for Freedom of the Press. Not bad, but could be better, trending the wrong direction too since they were 21 in 2023. Let's all learn from America shall we?
Except America is currently ranked 55th. Down 10 points from 2023. But that's just now right? Bad orange man's fault. Oh except you need to go all the way back to the Obama era to find the USA anywhere near the UK in press freedom ranking, and when you do that you don't so m
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This is nonsense. The seller obviously has a computer that is capable of figuring out how much to give the government for this sale, because they manage to do it! They can therefore display the resulting total cost before the sale.
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As a matter of fact, it is an old-fashioned system.
Wishful Thinking (Score:4, Interesting)
I just wish all prices, everywhere in the world were required to be "the price" - in person and online. If an item has a price tag for $139.99 and it's the only item I'm buying, I should only be paying $139.99. Not $139.99 plus taxes, plus fees. Calculate that ahead of time and include it in your prices before I get to the register/checkout. A long time ago, when you had to do everything manually, I could see it being a pain in the ass, but it would be trivial to do it now a days. Hell, it's one of the smartest things a retail business could do nowadays.
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No there isn't business can't control a lot of thing, like rent, price of electricity whatever they know what sales tax they are paying. As a consumer, in general I don't care what portion of the cost comes from where, all I care is what price it is going to be to me. Things like tax rates varying between states only makes it harder because how is a consumer meant to know and keep up to date with all the variations in tax rates. If you wish for more clarity shops are quite welcome to put the price, or amoun
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Why should I care about the tax rate where...
When traveling and used to very low, if any, sales taxes, it's not very appreciated when I suddenly have to pay more than expected for the same items advertised at the same prices. Traveling is one actually an argument FOR including all taxes into the advertised price.
it's packaged into a box with the price on it
Why would you think anyone would want, or even think it's a good idea to start with, to print the price directly on the packaging? When the store can either get digital price tags (I know, BestBuys in the US use them) which would allow them to
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why wouldn't you just assume sales tax is about 10% wherever you go?
Why should the consumer have to assume anything? The price displayed in the store should simply be what I'm going to pay. There are literally no good reasons to do it any other way, other than sheer incompetence and laziness.
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I grew up in Europe where the final price is the displayed price, and as a consumer I do agree with you that stores should show the final prices within their own stores.
Unfortunately sales taxes vary from city to city not just from state to state.
For example I just purchased countertops in my city and picked them up at a wharehouse a few miles further away where the sales tax is higher, not by much but it can add up.
This mean that a chain that would advertise prices with taxes would probably need to disclai
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For example I just purchased countertops in my city and picked them up at a wharehouse a few miles further away where the sales tax is higher, not by much but it can add up.
You pay the sales tax of wherever location you're buying from. Where it's stored is irrelevant.
As for advertising for places that have multiple sales locations with different tax rates, that's a problem for the advertisers to figure out. I'm sure they would quickly come up with something.
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and makes advertising across a wide area difficult. Sales tax rates can vary as much as almost 10% between neighboring states...
Not a problem that I care about. That only affects chains and is something for them to figure out. "Oh no, we can no longer create one nationwide advertisement, oh whatever shall we do?!"
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It doesn't need to be though. Here in Australia we have the 10% GST (I believe most places call that VAT. Thats the thing trump accused of being a "Tariff on american goods", except its on all goods and services, including those produced in australia.Its a universal sales tax, nobody really likes it, but it replaced a whole mess of older state taxes, and it probably is here to stay. Its 10% and probably wont change anytime soon for political reasons).
Anyway, part of it is that advertised prices have to incl
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the business doesn't control them
Not at all true. The business is in exclusive control over the price of product to the consumer and as the collector of taxes it is no more passed on as a line item to the consumer as the day to day variance of energy, or the spot price of the product they buy, or the delivery fee they pay for a screwed up order. The business can eat regional variance quite easily, and even if they didn't there's no reason not to specify the exact price. Taxes aren't different day to day, they are fixed often for many years
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For online it should be mandatory to display the shipping price along side the item. At least an estimate based on general location.
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I just wish all prices, everywhere in the world were required to be "the price" - in person and online. If an item has a price tag for $139.99 and it's the only item I'm buying, I should only be paying $139.99. Not $139.99 plus taxes, plus fees. Calculate that ahead of time and include it in your prices before I get to the register/checkout. A long time ago, when you had to do everything manually, I could see it being a pain in the ass, but it would be trivial to do it now a days. Hell, it's one of the smartest things a retail business could do nowadays.
Laws in most countries already do this. That you must be able to buy a good or service for the advertised price. If Ryanair advertises a £10 fare to Lisbon, then I must be able to purchase said fare for 10 of my finest British pounds and no more. This new law just seems to codify that failing to do so "with a computer" is explicitly not an acceptable excuse. Sadly every few years a company finds a new way to get around this, booking fees, platform fees, delivery fees, fuel surcharges and every t
Ban credit card data upfront next (Score:4, Interesting)
The next step should be to ban another sourge of the internet being "free" trials of online services that require your credit card details upfront, on day 1, and where it automatically autorenews at the end of the "free" period. If something is free, in the light of GDPR and other related regulations, you should not be asking for credit card information because there is no payment to make therefore you don't need credit card data to fulfil the function of setting up a free trial. Then, the default policy should be for the subscription to expire by default at the end of the trial.
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This pattern appears darker than it really is. In this world of unlimited email addresses on demand, a completely wide open free access period is just begging to be abused. Requiring a verified payment method is one way of keeping trials limited to one per user.
Now expiring with a negative option, as in defaulting to not entering into a paid subscription, that could still be done even with the card now on file. But if the complaint is against up front provisioning of a payment method, how would you prevent
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The next step should be to ban another sourge of the internet being "free" trials of online services that require your credit card details upfront, on day 1, and where it automatically autorenews at the end of the "free" period. If something is free, in the light of GDPR and other related regulations, you should not be asking for credit card information because there is no payment to make therefore you don't need credit card data to fulfil the function of setting up a free trial. Then, the default policy should be for the subscription to expire by default at the end of the trial.
I largely agree with your sentiment, however I think this is a "caveat emptor" situation. People need to learn that if they need to enter card info, what you're getting isn't "free". I agree the law should be geared to protect the consumer but you can go too far.
What is needed is a simple means to cancel without any recourse from the vendor. If one is not clearly provided a simple email saying "I $name wish to cancel my service as of the end of the current billing period $date", if they do not comply the
real reviews for fake products (Score:2)
Whew, real reviews for fake products are safe. Trust me, the fees are real too.