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Comment by forgotmysn | Hacker News Reader

I share your sentiment, but I'm not sure there are any legislators I trust to understand or regulate dark patterns effectively.

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https://www.adlawaccess.com/2022/02/articles/dark-patterns-a...

Marriott has settled a lawsuit over similar pricing "dark patterns": https://www.travelweekly.com/Travel-News/Hotel-News/Marriott...

> Among other provisions, the agreement requires Marriott to prominently disclose the total price of a hotel stay, including room rate and all other mandatory fees, on the first page of its booking website as part of the total room rate.

Seems to mainly be a matter of enforcement, it's probably worth contacting your state AG with something deceptive like this. Hard to expect them to take action on something they don't know about!

Ya, I have much more faith in the courts to discern fair deployments of dark patterns than I do any legislative body.

As everyone already knows, a large percentage of "major brand" hotels are owned and operated independently (like a franchised restaurant, for example).

If you ever get a Marriott that tries to add fees that you didn't expect, call up corporate Marriott and complain about a violation of their legal settlement regarding hidden fees. They will absolutely lay the hammer down on the hotel and you'll end up with credits far in excess of the attempted hidden fee ;)

Really? They sure successfully nailed airlines on the practice a decade ago. [1]

It doesn't take a world-leading regulator to say "it is an unfair and deceptive business practice not to list the total price in a search result."

I think a regulator may be able to handle this one.

[1] https://www.transportation.gov/individuals/aviation-consumer...

For all the (somewhat legitimate) cracks about airline add-on fees for things like checked baggage (for non-status flyers), airlines are actually one of the better travel categories in terms of fully disclosing costs up front. Hotels and car rentals generally will before you press the confirm button but often don't up-front--and this makes comparison shopping difficult because the patterns aren't consistent.

Definitely, because they were super forced by the DOT under 49 U.S. Code § 41712. [1,2,3]

[edit to include text:]

  The Department considers any advertising or solicitation by a direct air carrier [...] that states a price for such air transportation [...] to be an unfair and deceptive practice in violation of 49 U.S.C. 41712, unless the price stated is the entire price to be paid by the customer to the carrier...

  [...] Although charges included within the single total price listed (e.g., government taxes) may be stated separately or through links or “pop ups” on websites that display the total price, such charges may not be false or misleading, may not be displayed prominently, may not be presented in the same or larger size as the total price, and must provide cost information on a per passenger basis that accurately reflects the cost of the item covered by the charge.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparent_Airfares_Act_of_20...

[2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/41712

[3] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/399.84

"Not knowing the price of something until it's time to pay for it" is about as American as apple pie. From retail stores, where shelf prices don't show tax, to your cellphone/cable bills with a half dozen opaque fees added on to the quoted monthly rate, to the hospital, where literally nobody providing the service knows what it will end up costing. Good luck getting rid of this mentality--it's permanently baked into our business and consumer cultures.

Dark patterns in general, yes, but I'd think "The displayed price must include all fees" would be easy to write into law.

I think people would find ways to partially skirt the law using formulas.

There are some legitimate uses for formula pricing, e.g., rent a U-Haul with a per-mile cost, or a cell phone bill with a per GB data cost, or a per-user SAAS model.

I imagine a dark pattern for the "resort fee" might be a complicated formula described in words in size 6 font at the bottom of the page if you took the time to read the footnote.

It's actually illegal in Europe (EU) to NOT display the final price, and the price shown on the search in Airbnb or airline searches is the final price.

Specially because in EU all the prices shown in stores/everywhere is the final price, with VAT, service, tip, etc, etc...

What if the final price depends on your entity status as a purchaser? E.g. delivery city, whether you are a business or an individual. Taxes and shipping trivially depends on that.

The website needs to include VAT in the price if they sell to consumers, and can show prices without VAT if they sell only to businesses. VAT depends only on country, so that is not as difficult to calculate as sales tax in the US.

Some companies (eg. Alternate) have different websites for consumers and business customers, other companies (eg. Conrad) allow you to toggle between pricing modes (with tax or without).

The price is usually shown without shipping, but there's usually a little button "calculate shipping prices" where you can type your zip code and then they show the shipping prices.

Is that for properties in EU or when you book from EU?

"Understand" in the sense of the Upton Sinclair quote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Or, in this case, his/her campaign contributions.

I believe advertising a false price is already illegal. "On the internet" doesn't change that, so afaik no new legislation is needed, only some minimal will to enforce what is already on the books.

Despite the shiny new veneer created by computers, this is a very old dark pattern called "fraud". While there are definitely shortcomings and failures of regulators, I'd say we're better off expecting them to generally crack down on fraud rather than not.

DC is currently suing Doordash for this sort of deceptive pricing arguing that it violates existing laws. https://www.npr.org/2022/03/22/1087988691/washington-d

It’s primarily a US problem if you don’t trust them let them copy and paste it from somewhere else…

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