Can they go after restaurants adding mandatory 20% fees? I don’t mind paying more to pay for ethical pay for employees but adding a mandatory 20% free us just lying about menu prices. It should illegal. Just bake the price into the menu prices.
where do you live that tipping is mandatory? or are you talking about something else?
It is essentially a tip, but it’s listed on the bottom of the menu as a mandatory service charge. The restaurant keeps the money (it’s not split like case tips) and just pay the employees a good wage without them relying on tips.
It’s good in theory but it’s dishonest pricing.
Yeah, I’d say the same about any “fees” that get tacked on above any advertised prices. The only time it shouldn’t be included in an advertised price is when it doesn’t scale with number of things purchased. So a % fee would always be included, but flat fees can be separated (like if they had a table charge or something that didn’t change based on how much food was ordered).
Online shop “convenience” fees are at the top of my mind for this. Especially because there’s even more convenience on the merchant’s side due to how websites scale vs brick and mortar shops. They might have to pay large salaries to developers and IT people (emphasis on “might”), but that’ll be much less than the leases and staffing costs to open physical stores to serve the same size of market.
Agreed. The only fee I can swallow is mom-and-pop stores and governments charging a small fee for credit card processing.
In the government’s case, law only provides for them to charge $X and they must gather $X. They can’t make up for the provider fees. Legislation should roll that into consideration moving forward.
Or even better, create a public payment infrastructure that isn’t predatory to both merchants and consumers. Finance being a private industry instead of a public service is a part of the problem.
But I agree that that is an example of a good use of fees. “Oh, if you do this thing, it costs more money to service you, so rather than pricing it in for everyone regardless of whether they do it, just charge the difference when it is done.”
This is Capitalism 101 my friend. Don’t go to those places. They’ll kill themselves off or adjust. As an exercise to the student, explain why you have to give such cretinous establishments your money.
As to voluntary tips, funny thing, you only see consumers complaining, never the wait staff. Worked at a payroll firm that serviced several local restaurants and brother, some of those people make bank.
You know what’s way, way more effective than the invisible hand of the “free” market? Regulation. Hidden fees at restaurants are almost non-existent here in Australia, and if you ever encounter one, because it’s illegal, you can just not pay it, what are they gonna do? And so the business either quickly stops doing it, or they end up with a fine from the ACCC 🤗
Also, as a former cafe employee, let me tell ya, I was much happier being paid a guaranteed wage than relying on tips. Which for morality’s sake, is practically another hidden fee.
Finally.
I hope it ends with better results than that poor attempt that they did in Canada.
Price fixing is temporary, and doomed to fail in the long term. Nixon tried it with an Executive Order and it was a disaster. It caused supply chain constraints and prices shot well past inflation when the Order expired.
Congressional legislation setting grocery store presentation limits would increase brand variety, foster competitive pricing, and put an end to the corporate control over pricing.
Limiting the number of products and facings in a store by percent of available retail space.
Limiting the number of products alone doesn’t suffice, because larger companies will pay retailers to increase the number of facings of a product to keep out competition in that product space.
FTC head should be putting a halt on the Kroger+Albertsons merger if he’s really serious.
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But you are correct. My state is suing to prevent that since that would make them a huge percentage of the market and create many areas with no competition.
But didn’t you hear? Less competition makes prices go down. The head of Kroger said so!!!
How they have gotten around it before is to promise they will keep prices down and then show how things will be much cheaper for them so they can do it. Unsurprisingly they all fail on their promises shortly after but they have already merged by that point and have little fear of being broken up.
You know things are getting bad when even capitalists are arguing against market economics.
My town has a Kroger (city market) and an Albertsons (Safeway). Only other option is Walmart… the proposed merger would be catastrophic to our ability to afford groceries especially since Kroger is already price gouging to the point I can save $10 per 3ish days worth of food going to Walmart.
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Crime happens
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People notice the crime happening
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Journalists report on the crime
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Documentarians spend thousands of hours collecting data to illustrate the size and scope of the crime
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A national outcry erupts
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Politicians finally consider this worth their attention
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“We’re going to look into it.”
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Economic collapse occurs because of all the crime
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Giant bailouts for all the criminals
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“Now is not the time to place blame. Also, blame migrants and poor people and idk, maybe Jimmy Carter or something.”
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Economy recovers
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New Crime happens
I buy almost exactly the same stuff every week except when the odd condiment/coffee runs out. I went from $60-75/week to $90-100, and now more recently $110+ all within roughly 18 months…
So now I cut back everything… I eat baked/grilled chicken with beans and canned vegetables for lunch and have salads for dinner, only eating twice a day… All that just to get back to $70/week.
