What the Traffic Will Bear
A major
switch in general business practices has emerged over the past 20 years. Today’s
average customer makes purchases largely without price recognition—making the purchase without knowing the correct
price. Appliances, hotel rooms, and
“discounts” are regularly sold without the customers being aware of the true
price. At one time, this practice was
restricted mostly to auto dealers.
Today, the practice covers almost the total spectrum of products and
professional charges. Probably
the first big jump of “priceless” products occurred when bar coding was
introduced in 1974. Originally,
sellers were required to post prices in addition to the coding. You will note that this is no longer a
common practice. While bar-coding
technology is very efficient, it also opens the door for hiding prices from
price-conscious customers. Consider
hotels, for example. Hotels almost always offer substantial discounts for
AAA, AARP, and some credit-card holders.
The new practice is for hotels to not mention these standard discounts
unless a direct inquiry is made—in which case the hotel responds with, “Your
reservation includes the discount.”
It’s very questionable if that was originally true. The sad fact is that consumers, especially
older Americans, are not aware of this practice. They lose out on the existing discount
price of the hotel room. Another
increasing problem is improper itemization on restaurant, hospital, doctor, legal
and other professional-services billings (for example, a certain attorney who
was billing over 1,000 hours per week).
When left to one’s own devices, it can be quite enticing to be
“broadminded” on hours billed. Even
airline ticket pricing now changes hour to hour according to customer
availability. We are told of
outrageous price differentials offered by the same airline for the same
destination on different dates. One airline
representative even suggested taking a package deal which included a hotel
reservation in order to get cheaper airfare. We are
aware of customers being charged a fee for using a credit card to pay for
legal bills, instead of using a check or cash where no fee is charged. You’ll
have an interesting experience with hospital billings and/or doctors. They will not let you pay directly for
services rendered. It may take weeks
to obtain a bill and the itemization is invariably confusing. Beware—you are also subsidizing the
hospital for those who cannot or will not pay their bills. I personally am familiar with a case where
a hospital’s chairman of the board required a heart operation. Upon receiving the bill, he made a number
of inquiries. Even a man with his position could not determine, to his
comfort and satisfaction, that the billing was appropriate. Government
should be limited in its ability to regulate.
However, a consumer should still have clear representation and
fairness in billing practices.
Political leaders and businesses should take a hard look at the
negative effect of
consumers’ reactions to the disturbing trends we have discussed
here. |
• Customer
Service: Myth vs. Reality • Changing our Health
Care System
• Feature: Pipestone, MN • Do You Trust
Your Mechanic? •
Open Record Requests • Back Cover