EU Pushes for Changes To Google's Flight and Hotel Search Results (nypost.com) 37
The European Union is pushing for clarity from Google about how the company processes flight and hotel searches. From a report: The tech giant must explain why it ranks certain flights and hotels above others and provide more clarity about how it calculates prices, European Union regulators demanded Monday, accusing the company of having "misled" consumers. The final prices that Google displays should include all fees and taxes that can be calculated in advance, regulators said in a statement. "EU consumers cannot be misled when using search engines to plan their holidays," EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders said. "We need to empower consumers to make their choices based on transparent and unbiased information." The regulators are giving Google two months to propose a fix to the issues or face possible unspecified sanctions.
Why do airlines get to advertise base rates? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google's just taking the data from the airlines. Why do airlines get to publish their pre-tax rates?
Re: Why do airlines get to advertise base rates? (Score:1)
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Google is a one stop deep pocket shop.
Which is the only reason for the EUSSR to start regulating it. They just want to steal American money by "fining" an American company for its innovations.
Re: Why do airlines get to advertise base rates? (Score:4, Insightful)
Give me the real price!
The US did something similar 7 years ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The EU (and all governments) prefer the taxes be included in the last price because then people don't realize how much of their money is going to taxes.
Heck, if income tax was billed to workers at the end of the year instead of automictally coming out each paycheck, the tax discussions would be very different than they are now.
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"people don't realize how much of their money is going to taxes."
The taxes are still printed on your receipt.
"if income tax was billed to workers at the end of the year instead of automictally coming out each paycheck"
Taxes are still printed on your paystub.
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Why do airlines get to publish their pre-tax rates?
Why does anyone? This problem is everywhere in the US. Restaurant menus leave off tax and mandatory tips. Shops leave of sales tax. There are not many things you can buy for the price on the sticker.
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That's the USA, not the EU. In the EU and the UK, the price advertised is almost always the amount of money I will have to give to the vendor not some fictional number on to which they will be adding VAT and other taxes. I say "almost always" because airlines are notorious for not doing this. They advertise a price and then add all sorts of extras on top, like airport taxes and baggage allowances etc. The only way to find out the true cost of a flight is often to go all the way through the booking process u
Re:Why do airlines get to advertise base rates? (Score:5, Informative)
They don't in the EU or Australia. A lot of the world has "bottom-line pricing" rules - advertised price has to be actual price customer will pay.
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They don't in the EU or Australia. A lot of the world has "bottom-line pricing" rules - advertised price has to be actual price customer will pay.
This.
But it doesn't stop airlines in particular from manipulating it. I.E. advertising a flight "starting from $299" but not saying that the flight is in the middle of the night with an 18 hour stopover in Bumfuckistan and only 4 seats are available for that flight. If you want decent flight times the price goes up. So they don't fall foul of the ACCC or other regulators because it's possible to get that price, just highly unlikely.
With price aggregators that don't see on their site (I.E. Google Flights) of
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Airlines can offer that data via an API (and it is useful, sometimes the cheapest option is not the most direct route because of the tax the taxes work), but the important thing is that the sites displaying price to the consumer show the bottom line cost including all taxes and fees.
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Google's just taking the data from the airlines. Why do airlines get to publish their pre-tax rates?
Airlines, in the US at least, show the all inclusive price on their websites and break it down when you chose an flight.
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They don't, and that's the problem. Google is showing one price but the actual airline when clicked through shows a full price which is higher than Google's.
This shit may fly in America (pun intended) but most of the world the sticker price is the final price we expect at checkout (with an exception for logistics fees such as shipping).
Is that even possible? (Score:1)
I mean I assume it's possible to calculate in advance if the EU regulators are asking for it. In the US it's basically impossible to reliably calculate taxes as not only it varies by state but also by county and even township. Not just sales tax, but there is a huge range of possible hotel taxes in the US. It's maddening that you can't quickly compare prices. On the other hand if you want to know how much something costs all you have to do is call them up and ask for the final price.
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There's an easy, 2-part, solution for that though:
1) Disallow any government, anywhere, to impose taxes outside its physical jurisdiction. Here in the US, for example, that would mean overturning South Dakota v. Wayfair (And any similar law or ruling.) and bringing back the physical nexus rule from Quill v. North Dakota. The EU would need to do the same, of course. That done, any business would only need to calculate the taxes and such in their own location, not based on the location of some random web
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But I bet the EU won't do that. Because it's not about fairness or truth in advertising. It's about milking what they see as their cash cow: suits, fines, and new taxes specifically targeting only US tech companies.
No, it's making companies that trade in the EU comply with already existing EU law. Under EU law anything sold as business to the private consumer must show the price including taxes. It can only be shown without those taxes if it is a business to business sale.
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I agree that they should list both the final price plus the pre-tax price.
Banishing cities from charging their own taxes would collapse cities like San Antonio, where the bulk of (non-property) taxes are targeted against tourist.
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That's not what I meant. San Antonio certainly should be able to charge its own taxes... but only within the confines of San Antonio's city limits. If I'm selling something over the internet... streaming media, advertisements, physical goods like books, whatever... and my business is not actually in San Antonio, I shouldn't owe San Antonio one red cent. I should certainly calculate and pay the sales tax where my business is actually located. But jurisdictions where I have no representation and from whic
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You realise that this story is about Google search? This is not about flights booked through Google (if that is possible) or even what taxes Google pays. This is about Google's search results not being misleading.
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In the US it's basically impossible to reliably calculate taxes as not only it varies by state but also by county and even township. Not just sales tax, but there is a huge range of possible hotel taxes in the US.
If one cannot determine it now, then how can it be determined later?
Anything that varies by 'where purchaser is' or 'where delivery address is' can ask for that and then use that for "final price" comparisons.
Some places like AirBnB are horribly bad at adding additional fees on afterwards. Some hotels also with mandatory 'resort fees' not included in prices.
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If one cannot determine it now, then how can it be determined later?
Some information about the business and possibly the consumer is necessary that is probably not reliably present when using a search engine.
I would be in support of some consumer protection laws in the US that are more like the EU. Where the advertised price is the final price. That taxes and fees from cable bills to hotel bills are stated up front. It could be legislated at a relatively simple addition to the Universal Commercial Code, which already defines different types of sales and warranties for goods
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It is possible to calculate the taxes in advance in the EU, and the reason Google is in trouble is because every other site is both required to and does show the full price you actually pay.
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> On the other hand if you want to know how much something costs all you have to do is call them up and ask for the final price.
Not necessarily. Three years ago, I halfway contemplated subscribing to Comcast. The CSR was LITERALLY unable to give me a concrete price that included taxes, fees, and commitments.
Argument: every market is different.
Retort: Yes, but you KNOW what my "market" is, or at least... you SHOULD. I mean, Jesus Christ, you're installing Cable TV service at a fixed address. It doesn't ge
Garbage in, garbage out. (Score:2)
The numbers they're talking about are not coming from Google. Google is scraping the advertised costs along with fee information and tax information from the company web site. In many cases they attempt to figure out the fees and other add-ons (as best they can), and displaying the total. From what I have seen they do a pretty good job, not perfect, but I've found it is far better than I'm able to do when comparison shopping and trying to hunt down those hidden fees and tax rates.
Truly fixing it would requ
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Good luck on that, though, many companies do everything in their power to mask the actual price. They'll hide costs in any way they possibly can so the $150 item looks like $79.95 when comparison shopping.
Isn't that why the "abandoned cart" [sleeknote.com] numbers are up? Automated systems fill a cart, walk all the way through till the final numbers, then drop the cart.
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Yes, that is part of it.
Unscrupulous companies will take any legal means (and sometimes illegal means) to hide their real prices. Hiding fees and taxes varies by location in the globe. But there are also often different rates based on cookies, browser information, location data, and whatever the company can grab from marketing data. Higher prices because they detect you live in a more expensive zip code, for example.
That kind of price manipulation includes (potentially fake) low prices when they detect a
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That site you linked to notes that the number one cause of abandoning a cart is unexpected fees. The number two reason is having to register... I wonder if that is before or after the shipping fee is displayed. Well, either way, I don't need an account on every site just to buy something.
Re:Garbage in, garbage out. (Score:4, Informative)
Good luck on that, though, many companies do everything in their power to mask the actual price.
In the EU they're not allowed to for business to private consumer sales. One thing that always confuses Americans coming to Europe is that when they get to the till the price they saw on the shelf is the price they pay and there's no additional sales tax added.
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True that for most goods you must be informed of the total price, including taxes and additional charges ... BUT...
Companies can (and do) charge different rates to different people based on details. They aren't allowed to vary based on nationality or country of residence, but they are allowed to vary based on other factors. They can (and do) look at other information, including purchase history, ad history, and browser information. They may change prices to match a local physical store, change prices based
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The numbers they're talking about are not coming from Google. Google is scraping the advertised costs along with fee information and tax information from the company web site.
No they aren't. This is the fundamental issue here, Google are advertising prices lower than the advertised costs by not including fee / tax information.
It's so taxes can stay high (Score:1)
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They are high, but not outrageously high when you consider the services they fund. Most EU countries provide some form of universal healthcare which is funded out of taxation. If Americans counted their medical costs and insurance as taxes, their tax burden would be as high - or higher - than EU taxes.
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"helping consumers forget the outrageously high taxes they have to pay"
The taxes are printed on your receipt. It's just that the listed prices each item include the tax amount so the total is just the sum of the listed prices for each item rather than the sum of the listed prices plus a magic fraction of a sum of a subset of listed prices and then another magic fraction of the sum of another subset of the listed prices.