Service charges; resort fees; “surcharge” add-ons: If you’ve been startled by unexpected fees when you pay your check at a restaurant — or book a hotel room or buy a ticket to a game, you’re far from alone. But if you live in California, change is coming. A new state law requiring price transparency is set to take effect in July.
“The law is simple: the price you see is the price you pay,” Attorney General Rob Bonta said on Wednesday, as his office issued long-awaited guidance about a law that applies to thousands of businesses in a wide range of sectors.
Restaurant owners like Laurie Thomas, who heads the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, say the changes will bring higher prices and sticker shock, which could then raise a psychological hurdle in customers’ dining habits. That, in turn, will hurt restaurants and their workers, she warns.
“If it’s in the core price of the menu, there will be a pullback” in patrons’ spending, she told NPR shortly before the attorney general released the guidelines. "There are some people, I think, that are hoping that the restaurants will just absorb that cost, because we’ve seen people say, ‘Oh, it’s too expensive with the service charge.’ "
Restaurant Association head thinks it’s perfectly OK to mislead customers into thinking that prices are lower than they actually are, and gouge them after they’ve consumed/used the product. Because having knowledge of true prices would cause some customers to make informed decisions that might hurt sales. What other product information could be withheld to boost sales? What product misinformation could be provided to get those customers to “yes”?
Fuck Lauren Thomas of the Restaurant Association. What an out of touch thing to say. And to think that she not only had the gall and confidence to say it publicly and out loud, but has since doubled down on it…
Ok this is nice but for fucks sake can we just include tax in the prices too?
And not just restaurants, do it everywhere.
Restaurant owners like Laurie Thomas, who heads the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, say the changes will bring higher prices and sticker shock,
Of course it’s much better to sucker punch guests with the equivalent of exit fees which they have no choice but to pay after they’ve already eaten than to be honest up front with them about pricing. Oh, I’m sure the fee is in fine print on the back of the menu, or a little sign by the front of house register that nobody is looking for.
This is a good law. Now apply this law to medical providers.
No one is worse at price transparency than medicine.
Means you’re gonna have to tackle insurance companies, they dictate and drive most of the cost.
I’m all for single payer healthcare and the abolishment of our health being a for profit business
“prices will go up” no, if demand drops due to people seeing your higher price, prices will go down
I’ve never seen a restaurant lower their prices. Restaurants don’t really work that way. They can’t negotiate for lower prices of the food they buy, especially if they’re buying less (you get a better deal buying in bulk). The only way to cut costs is to cut staff, which then leaves service lacking if they do get busy, or buy cheap low quality food and freeze it. People definitely stop going when service or food quality gets worse. This is the restaurant death spiral.
Does this include sales tax? If you see a burger on the menu for $8, will it really be $8, or will it be that plus tax? I love that this is across the board, yes there will be some sticker shock once it goes into effect, but that will affect all restaurants, and consumers will adapt quickly.
Don’t just do restaurants, do all stores. Ideally all price stickers are inclusive of tax.
If that was the case, I’d totally pay in cash more, which means less waste to the payment networks.
It’s bizarre to non-Americans that their sales tax is only visible when the bill comes. Australia for example has a 10% Goods and Services tax across the board and that is included in the price you see on the menu, on the shelf or in the commercial. The exclusions being goods sold B2B which are usually quoted excluding GST, as businesses can claim GST they pay as a rebate. They know the true cost to their business and keeping tax separate makes it easier to record and track their liabilities from a bookkeeping perspective.
Then problem is, depending on the state, some towns can add on to the state tax rate. This means if you shop at the same retailer one town over the sales tax might be cheaper.
And that’s before talking about states that lower the sales taxes in certain areas to try and drive business to those “less fortunate” communities.
You mean that this is a problem of the current system and why the US should switch to displaying price with tax included, right?
Because if there are different taxes for every town, how should the average customer know what he is going to pay?
Agreed; it is a problem with the current system.
How do you know what you’re going to pay at the register? You don’t. It’s a surprise (albeit a crappy one). Certain things don’t have tax (in certain states) so those items it’s easy to figure out.
Then the retailer one town over would have to have cheaper prices printed on their labels, what’s the issue?
None; just explaining the argument that retailers use.
Gotcha. I still don’t see the reasoning behind the argument, but I’m guessing you don’t either?
I do not.
Probably something along the lines of “it’s more work for the retailer”. Which I could see being a potential issue for smaller stores. But overall, no, I don’t get it and the price on the shelf/sign should be what I pay at the register.
If you label and ring up all your stuff by hand without some digital inventory system, yeah, that’s gonna be work.
So what? Print the fucking price I pay.
I agree.
This is pretty cool. It really helps to level the playing field in prices.
Recently, I have felt more restaurant have tacked on prices and fees which was uncommon before the pandemic.
Change in topic, but I really do wish we had a good way of addressing tipping. California took the step of forcing minimum wage to apply to even tipped workers, but that didn’t really affect our tipping culture (though its great the change was implemented). Tipping really helps certain people (White women, near their 30s) more so than others (black waiters). Not to mention, I’ve been hearing people encouraging inflating tips 20% being the new standard rather than 15%. I’ve no idea how this would even be addressed (note: I’m not saying food should be cheaper because of the removal of tip, I’d prefer for the full worker wages, that usually includes tip, to already be baked into the price of my food like with other services).
Inflation to 20% must be 5-10 year old news here in California (anybody confirm)? At least SF Bay Area
Tipping fatigue now common the past year or so
@brbposting coke costco 2019 9,95 now 18.99
The only thing that hasn’t changed in inflation in California is the chicken and the costco hot dog
Can restaurant customers place a card on the table that says, “We get a 10% discount”? When the restaurant complains, we say “You should have read the card”.
Restaurant owners like Lauren Thomas, who regularly deceive and defraud the public…
Fixed it.
Their menus will be required to list comprehensive prices for each item, with all mandatory charges baked into one figure. Only fees that are entirely optional — like leaving a tip for staff — can be left out of the posted price.
In its new guidelines, the state says it won’t focus initial enforcement efforts on “fees that are paid directly and entirely by a restaurant to its workers, such as an automatic gratuity. However, businesses may be liable in private actions.”
If I’m reading all that correctly, they’re saying that automatic gratuities that are paid in full to staff are supposed to be included in the listed menu price, but they won’t actually be enforcing that initially? That’s odd and bound to cause some confusion for people when some restaurants choose to take advantage of this loophole.
Overall, this is quite exciting, but I’m still disappointed that sales tax seems to be exempt from this new law.
I feel like this will be a boon to all the restaurants who aren’t paying their staff well. Their prices will stay the same. Meanwhile, restaurants trying to pay a living wage will have much higher prices but won’t be able to tell you why. Customers will “vote with their wallets,” putting the higher paying restaurants out of business.
Overall it’s a good idea to get rid of extraneous fees, but I feel like they didn’t quite think it all the way through.
