They do it because it works, so you must be in the minority.
People often lament the lack of practical training for things like personal finance and media literacy in schools. We should add consumer awareness to that list. We are raising kids to become obedient little consumers.
FTC/FCC are supposed to protect people from misleading stuff like this and level the playing field so that companies can remain competitive without resorting to dark patterns because their competitors are.
Alternatively, we could, as a country, ban the display of partial charges on advertisement. In Europe it's standard for sales taxes and other charges to be included in prices displayed to consumers. We just don't do that over here because... I guess we like charging a stupid tax? That's what it is in the end, if you think the broom for 19.95 actually costs 19.95 and budget for that we'll punish you for not properly doing advanced mathematics.
This happened to me a bunch of times as a child visiting US from Chile where they don't break out the tax, saying Oh I can get this 4.95 thing at the BullshMart, then you take $5 and you get there and oh you need to come up with 38 cents in tax, sorry, waste of a trip. I get it if you live in USA you can adapt, but if you're coming from a different country it's a burden and it's wrong.
And weirdly it's the same right-wing guys in each country including the tax in Chile and breaking it out in US. In USA of course they want the citizens to hate taxes because taxes in USA support democracy, and they figure by making it a painful hidden cost they will get me, for instance, to hate taxes instead of putting them first. And I did in fact hate them when I visited, the trick worked on me, despite being an excellent math student.
In Chile, it's because the state needs money from somewhere for concrete, courts and cops (the three things right-wing guys actually think taxes are good for) and also for incredibly shitty orphanages and "albergues" whose purpose is be able to construct arguments around that there are in fact
already orphanages and "albergues" to deny real assistance...So they have regressive taxes, mostly paid for by VAT. So poor people and to a lesser extent the middle class don't protest that they're the tax base, they hide the tax. And in fact if you look at fancy magazines like Ed, an interior design magazine in Chile, they do break out the tax to communicate that you can get out of paying it, tee hee, or split it with the seller, on a $4000 USD Ottoman.
> This happened to me a bunch of times as a child visiting US from Chile where they don't break out the tax, saying Oh I can get this 4.95 thing at the BullshMart, then you take $5 and you get there and oh you need to come up with 38 cents in tax, sorry, waste of a trip. I get it if you live in USA you can adapt, but if you're coming from a different country it's a burden and it's wrong.
It's more that if you're not a child you're almost never spending the exact full contents of your wallet.
Why bother with an already lost war like "consumer education"? Fuel charges, cleaning costs, etc. are all the cost of doing business. Require companies to list the out the door price. If your distributor switches from fuel to electric they can lower their prices and do more business.
This just sets up Amazon to charge a flat fee while they lower their costs and reap all the benefits.
People often lament the lack of practical training for things like personal finance and media literacy in schools. We should add consumer awareness to that list. We are raising kids to become obedient little consumers.