But you are correct. My state is suing to prevent that since that would make them a huge percentage of the market and create many areas with no competition.
“We believe the way to be America’s best grocer is to provide great value by consistently lowering prices and offering more choices. When we do this, more customers shop with us and buy more groceries, which allows us to reinvest in even lower prices, a better shopping experience, and higher wages,” said Rodney McMullen, chairman and CEO of Kroger.
It’s a load of tripe. All these big companies come in with lower prices, drive their local competition out of business, then raise them once they’ve got a local monopoly. Even if Kroger currently has the best of intentions (I don’t believe that), I wouldn’t trust the next person or the one after that.
We’re already fighting a losing battle with suppliers gouging and creating higher prices or shrinking portions for the same price. I’m scared to see what grocery bills would look like under a store monopoly in addition to that.
How they have gotten around it before is to promise they will keep prices down and then show how things will be much cheaper for them so they can do it. Unsurprisingly they all fail on their promises shortly after but they have already merged by that point and have little fear of being broken up.
My town has a Kroger (city market) and an Albertsons (Safeway). Only other option is Walmart… the proposed merger would be catastrophic to our ability to afford groceries especially since Kroger is already price gouging to the point I can save $10 per 3ish days worth of food going to Walmart.
Betsy DeVos is the sister of Erik Prince who founded Blackwater, the controversial mercenary group, for those that didn’t know. She vehemently suppressed anything that would benefit public education and funneled public funds to private education while she was Secretary Of Education.
Betsy DeVos reported at least $225 million — and potentially well over $414 million — in outside income while working as Donald Trump’s education secretary, according to an analysis of DeVos’s financial disclosures by CREW. It is impossible to know the exact amount because DeVos’s income is reported in broad ranges, but we do know for a fact that she made nine figures during her four years in office.
Can they go after restaurants adding mandatory 20% fees? I don’t mind paying more to pay for ethical pay for employees but adding a mandatory 20% free us just lying about menu prices. It should illegal. Just bake the price into the menu prices.
It is essentially a tip, but it’s listed on the bottom of the menu as a mandatory service charge. The restaurant keeps the money (it’s not split like case tips) and just pay the employees a good wage without them relying on tips.
Yeah, I’d say the same about any “fees” that get tacked on above any advertised prices. The only time it shouldn’t be included in an advertised price is when it doesn’t scale with number of things purchased. So a % fee would always be included, but flat fees can be separated (like if they had a table charge or something that didn’t change based on how much food was ordered).
Online shop “convenience” fees are at the top of my mind for this. Especially because there’s even more convenience on the merchant’s side due to how websites scale vs brick and mortar shops. They might have to pay large salaries to developers and IT people (emphasis on “might”), but that’ll be much less than the leases and staffing costs to open physical stores to serve the same size of market.
Agreed. The only fee I can swallow is mom-and-pop stores and governments charging a small fee for credit card processing.
In the government’s case, law only provides for them to charge $X and they must gather $X. They can’t make up for the provider fees. Legislation should roll that into consideration moving forward.
Or even better, create a public payment infrastructure that isn’t predatory to both merchants and consumers. Finance being a private industry instead of a public service is a part of the problem.
But I agree that that is an example of a good use of fees. “Oh, if you do this thing, it costs more money to service you, so rather than pricing it in for everyone regardless of whether they do it, just charge the difference when it is done.”
This is Capitalism 101 my friend. Don’t go to those places. They’ll kill themselves off or adjust. As an exercise to the student, explain why you have to give such cretinous establishments your money.
As to voluntary tips, funny thing, you only see consumers complaining, never the wait staff. Worked at a payroll firm that serviced several local restaurants and brother, some of those people make bank.
You know what’s way, way more effective than the invisible hand of the “free” market? Regulation. Hidden fees at restaurants are almost non-existent here in Australia, and if you ever encounter one, because it’s illegal, you can just not pay it, what are they gonna do? And so the business either quickly stops doing it, or they end up with a fine from the ACCC 🤗
Also, as a former cafe employee, let me tell ya, I was much happier being paid a guaranteed wage than relying on tips. Which for morality’s sake, is practically another hidden fee.
It’s called a hidden fee for a reason, it’s hidden from you. So, yeah, it’s a non-option for first time patrons.
Why are you defending these business? Inb4 you say, I’m not, but the free market will correct this! The “free” market clearly isn’t, because we’re talking about it right now lol, hidden fees are common place in many places in the US.
And regulation (in Australia, for this issue), clearly IS working, because this is practically unheard of here.
fast food or dine in? it’s funny because the less “corporate” the restaurant, the more likely it is that they’re getting a lot of their ingredients in the same place that you get yours
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