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Comment by vr46 | Hacker News Reader

In America. This would not fly in Europe, I hope. Pretty sure menus have to be displayed out front with full pricing and service charges have their own rules.

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Specifically it's illegal under EU rules. The priority is that the customer needs to know the final cost up front. You can add a surcharge for something customers can choose, e.g. customer wants delivery even though they walked into the store and could take the product with them, but the EU has repeatedly told vendors to knock it off with bogus surcharges that in practice just increase the price for all customers, and is currently fighting ticket companies for various "dark patterns" like "optional" surcharges where the opt out was some tiny unobtrusive text no normal user clicks.

Wouldn't fly in much of America either. Try this in the midwest and I'm pretty sure your restaurant would be closing in weeks.

Yeah, I live in an area that straddles the line between the midwest and the south, and I haven't seen anything like this. Same for the QR-code-only menus that the internet has been complaining about lately.

I'm sure that if one local restaurant implemented this they wouldn't last long, but if a lot of local restaurants started doing it at the same time, they'd probably get away with it. Maybe they're all waiting for someone else to take the plunge.

I had a sneaky service charge like that (10%) added in a bar in Vienna (Austria, EU). Asked them to take it off, and they did, but the attempt was certainly made.

Many other places add it routinely and have it listed in their menus. Not just for parties of 6 or more, but two guests.

>In America.

America is a big place, so is Europe. I wouldn't expect this to fly in a lot of places in America either. I've seen a place in America where they tried it and it failed.

I wrote the above and then I thought about Ticketmaster and the other members of this cartel of shitcreeps and I remembered the booking fee, the insurance fee, the print-at-home fee (the you gotta be fuckin' kiddin' me fee) and was thankful we weren't allowed easy access to guns because this is the sort of nonsense that leads to mild-mannered individuals turning to ultra-violence.

Online, you can get away with (figurative) murder.

The same concept is already heavily ingrained in American culture. Try and name a place that provides you with a price quote up front that is already inclusive of all taxes and fees.

The gas station

In Europe it is illegal to sell things without tax and fees included (unless it is B2B but they still include VAT listed next to the non-VAT price) so they couldn't even try this.

Saying that I have started seeing gratuity automatically applied to some of my bills... So perhaps it's not as illegal as I thought...

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