In San Francisco restaurants, I’ve seen this tactic applied liberally. Maybe AirBnb and DoorDash are rubbing off on them:)
A common one sees the restaurant charge you separately for the employee health benefits, cynically marketing it to consumers as “healthy SF” and “SF health mandate”.
What’s sort of fun is that like cryptocurrencies, you can always materialize new ones out of thin air.
One popular establishment demands that you pay a separate “carbon offset fee”.
If it isnt that sounds pretty damn fraudlent to me.
We have a similar issue where I am from because businesses are not required to give tips to their employees. Most people dont know about this law and a reasonable person would think that the money would go to the employees because that's what the word 'tip' means.
So in my mind any restaurant that doesn't have a sign next to the tip jar spelling out who the money is going to in this situation is commiting fraud.
The name they're choosing is intentional and the purpose is to trick you into spending your money in a way you otherwise would'nt. That's a crime.
Usually there's some little footnote on the menu or sign on the door stating the fee, so it would be impossible for a prosecutor to prove fraud. But this kind of bullshit is one of the reasons that I don't visit SF as much as I used to.
> Usually there's some little footnote on the menu or sign on the door stating the fee, so it would be impossible for a prosecutor to prove fraud.
which is, of course, an outcome of the current regulatory regime.
US prices are not advertised with taxes included either - even locally, where it is obvious what the nexus is. But this is not legal in the EU. We can outlaw random footnotes being an excuse for random fees too - there is a number on the menu, that should be the price of the item. Require all prices to be inclusive of fees/taxes etc so that people can see the full, final price before they get emotionally invested/etc.
Frankly this probably would result in lower total prices for consumers - people decide to buy based on the advertised number, people are not (reliably) rational/efficient about purchasing decisions, especially in situations with highly opaque information (is the other restaurant going to tack on an even higher fee? etc). Forcing all the fees to be rolled into the final price is, just like healthcare, a win for enabling people to have the most information to make the most accurate decisions, which helps drive costs down.
Forcing all taxes to be itemized separately is a win for enabling people to have the most information to make the most accurate decisions. It allows them to see how much money the government is taking from them, and depending on whether they think that number should be higher or lower, allows them to make informed voting decisions. Voting is far more important than choosing which restaurant to eat at.
Where are you from? In the US goods and services are normally quoted as one price and charged as another if there are taxes and fees. Restaurants, grocery stores, hotels, retail, etc. Everywhere basically. “Junk fees” take this further but your definition of fraud describes basically every sale already.
"In January 2008, the voter-approved San Francisco Health Care Ordinance went into effect, requiring any business with more than 20 employees to set aside money for their workers' health care."
It's ok for business to tell their customers why prices are increasing via line item.
Sure, if they actually increase the prices written on the menu. But the way I understand the parent comment, they didn't, they just tacked them on as extra fees at the end.
No it isn't. The cost of my widget isn't broken out to material sourcing, transportation, and other overhead. Doing it this way causes unnecessary mental gymnastics and is done for the sole purpose of creating political pressure. I don't mind companies having and sharing political opinions, but keep it off my receipt. Just put up a sign that says "prices have increased due to new regulation" and feel free to hand out pamphlets decrying the state of things, don't be disingenuous about your motives.
Exactly. If the SF restaurants OP mentions are not also itemizing all their other taxes and expenses on their customers' bills, yet singling out the “SF health mandate” one, it's pretty clear that they are just using those bills to make a passive aggressive political complaint.
Nobody cries and moans publicly in front of customers when their business license fees rise 5% or when the cost of their utilities go up, but suddenly when there is a mandate to make their employees' lives marginally better, they weep their crocodile tears all over the customers' checks.
Not the sole purpose of creating political pressure: there is also the benefit to business of showing a customer a lower price and psychology easing them into spending more.
OMG, "The Screener" is something I've always wanted.
There's a lot to love about this.
Something I am nervous about is using a @hey.com email. Similarly to domain, it's a world-visible and sticky, but unlike domains, it isn't portable, the only options are: pay Basecamp forever, or lose access. gulp
Per the FAQ: if you paid for at least a year, you can then cancel and have your @hey.com forward all emails to another address of your choosing, forever.
gevent has some serious drawbacks. Stack traces are incomprehensible, it works by monkey patching existing code, and it falls apart if you have a blocking operation gevent can't make async. Loom is a bit like monkey patching, but at the VM level, so I expect it to be much more stable.
The 24/7 support sounds promising. This has been their Achilles heel for many years.
Anecdotally, I once checked into an Airbnb with a leaky roof.
After spending a good 20 minutes trying to get to a human (a small eternity when you’re in an unfortunate situation), Airbnb asked that I spend hours negotiating with my non-responsive host on a solution, which is obviously nonsensical given the situation.
Being able to instantly talk to someone and feel like I am being taken care of would have made all the difference in the world.
Instead, I churned from their platform.
My personal experience with Airbnb is that they simply don't know how to do support.
Even basic issues take multiple days to resolve, and usually involve many phone calls.
HotelTonight has been awesome there. You can get a representative on live chat and resolve most issues while you're still en-route from the airport.
On one hand, I am hopeful Airbnb will be able to learn from HotelTonight, but in reality, it seems most acquisitions end up with the acquired company diffusing into nothingness :(
Or I book with a hotel directly and I (essentially) never have issues that require me to deal with the corporate support line. I realize I’m not as price sensitive as some but I mostly want to minimize lodging hassle when I travel.
I've had HotelTonight installed on my phone for years, but have only had to use it once or twice. I only travel a few times a year and tend to use it when my plans fall through. I generally book ahead of time, often with the hotel directly.
The most obvious example I had using it was when I missed a flight and it was rebooked for the next morning. I was tired and I remember getting in a cab/Uber and finding out the friend who dropped me off wasn't able to let me crash there for the night. Before we had left the airport I had booked a room nearby and could direct the driver there. The hotel was nice. I might have had to wait 10m for the hotel to receive a fax confirming my booking (faxing reservations seems to be pretty common with a lot of hotels).
There's no way I could have done that booking directly. It would have taken me 10x as long to figure out which hotels were nearby, near my cost, what rooms were available, and check out. I do those things when booking ahead of time, but they're also much harder to do on a phone.
Fax? Seriously? I haven’t used a fax with a hotel in decades. I’d probably try one or two major chain apps and, failing that, Expedia or booking.com. Perhaps HotelTonight has more options for last minute but there are plenty of other sites that let me book quickly online.
:shrug: I've booked quite a few times in various ways online and it seems fairly common for the hotel to receive the booking via fax--at hotels big and small. I'm pretty sure I've had this happen when booking through the chain's own booking site. If you book ahead of time it probably happens without you knowing all the time.
I just pulled up the reservation. It was in 2013 to a Fairfield/Marriott 3 miles from the airport.
For an example of the types of hotels, the other two bookings I've made were to Sonesta ES Suites in 2014 (during a surprise blizzard) and a Four Points/Sheraton in 2015.
If I had status or points I'd probably check out that chain first. Since I don't, sticking with a single chain isn't the most convenient or the cheapest.
I'm based in SF, and I've taken over 200 rides with Ford GoBike (operated by the same company).
It is awful.
The bikes: big, heavy and ugly. Due to their sheer weight, peddling up the gentlest of hills will make you question your life choices, and consider other, much faster options, like walking, or just gently slithering around the pavement.
Additionally, Motivate's chosen method of bike cleaning - a dude hosing them down - tends to leave the bikes drenched with ice cold water. I suppose the feeling of freeze gnawing at your body does act as a replacement for caffeine for some, but I find it very unwelcoming.
The stations: Sparse, not well maintained, and honestly, an eyesore. They're this giant, lumbering object that takes away precious public resources, and is only available for Motivate's usage. You also constantly have to plan around them -- is there one next to where I want to go? Is it almost full?
E-Bike deployment: what a joke. They are rarely available, and even you've spotted one of these precious unicorns, you'll often by greeted by a beaming red dot, indicating that the bike is unwell, likely due to the battery giving up in the middle of day.
Other than that, the app spams you with ads, many of which are strangely enough for buying an e-bike. I thought this company is about bike sharing??
I understand people who want more expressiveness in their reviewing, but the reality is that the 5-star system just leaves too much ambiguity.
It's like how in Uber/Lyft, most people just default to 1/5 star ratings.
In that case, the average rating a driver has to maintain gets skewed to a a pretty high number, like 4.5, and people who think "oh, this was a pretty good ride! 4 stars!" end up unintentionally boning the driver.
A common one sees the restaurant charge you separately for the employee health benefits, cynically marketing it to consumers as “healthy SF” and “SF health mandate”.
What’s sort of fun is that like cryptocurrencies, you can always materialize new ones out of thin air. One popular establishment demands that you pay a separate “carbon offset fee”.