I've seen this over and over in SF and now rarely eat out. Many friends and coworkers are taking the same approach, most of whom never used to cook at home. Scamming your customers 5, 10, 20% at a time doesn't seem like a great long term strategy
That's the inevitable outcome of this type of behavior. Like so many startup's attempts to squeeze customers in the short term, it works for a small window of time but leads to longer term consequences that are never properly accounted for.
For most tech workers an extra 20% on top of everything else is not that big of a deal, but for anyone who saves up for a night out that can be a big upset.
The only companies that can do this drip pricing and hope to get away with it long term are essential services without serious competition (for example telcos). All of the rest of these drip pricing schemes will come back to hurt companies in the long run.
I just wanted to say that this practice backfires with me. Those want to excercise such tactics better be in the 'deceive a large amount of persons once then go under and repeat' kind of business because they will never see me again. Assuming they could scam me once. Which is harder and harder by each passing occasions others give the liberty to themselves. Being tired of being scammed got me to reacting harsh even to a faint smell of such and make my stand. Especially when they try to wrap it into supposedly guilt triggering tactics like calling it Fair Wage fee, only to expose how unfair they are with their employees. Those wan't to engage in fair and transparent practices will meet my appreciation as it is so hard meeting such services I want to hang on to them and pay fair prices without forcing on me.
Same for me. I am feeling more and more that a lot of businesses are becoming more and more dishonest and are basically just trying to rip their customers off. I don't enjoy concerts, sports or restaurants anymore because of this and lately I also resent going shopping at places that have one of the tablet checkouts that tries to guilt trip into a 20% tip. One more reason to become cynical. As if the world isn't cynical enough already.
Showing one price on the menu and then charging a different price is deceptive and dishonest. I don't see how this creatively named fee is different from saying "the sandwich costs $10" and then later saying "actually you owe us $1000".
I've basically given up on restaurants entirely. Even without ridiculous tipping and other surcharges, prices have gotten out of control. The food just isn't that great, and restaurant food is not known for being healthy, with excessive amounts of fat, sugar, and salt. The only function it fulfills is that I'm less hungry after eating it.
So these days I just prepare my own food. It's better in so many ways: cheaper, healthier, faster, no risk of disappointment.
Exactly. My solution is also to just not eat out. Like the article says though, it's unfair to the businesses that choose not to do this. Maybe the solution is to just not pay extras if places don't disclose all costs up front.
