These dark patterns are also pervasive across all of American society in general. A common one that is spread across many aspects of American society is the hiding of the full cost of something, e.g., flights, apartment leases, home purchases, car purchases, internet contracts, etc. where there are all kinds of last moment cost ad-ons. That may look like extra monthly fees on apartment leases beyond the price that was advertised, air travel that obscures things like the baggage charges, internet service that requires monthly equipment rental and various fees, etc.
You know it’s all deceptive and fraudulent just by virtue of that they hide it, but also that the companies usually vehemently resist being transparent about the coerced extraction of money, not really all that different than theft. When someone holds a gun to your head you also have a choice to not hand over your money.
I'm constantly seeing companies trying that shit here in Denmark. Usually they stop with that specific dark pattern once our consumer protection agency (Forbrugerombudsmanden) threatens them with fines. But then they just try with something else. It's a big game of whack-a-mole and the consumer protection agency is serverely underfunded and understaffed - they have just 24 employees tasked with enforcing marketing and consumer protection law for every single company in Denmark)
This is a bit too harsh evaluation, IMO. I visited USA a few times, and I think people there are just used to not knowing exactly how much they'll pay. I am a bit stingy with money (some would say miserly), so when at home I usually count how much I'll pay before proceeding to checkout. This is impossible in the US:
* even something as mundane as a grocery shopping involves taxes (different in every state), not included in the price displayed in the store.
* In restaurants it's mandatory tipping
* for food delivery it's tipping, delivery fees, marketplace fee and more
* for tourists it's "yes the trip costs just $15, but see we forgot to mention that to actually see something you need to buy entrance ticket for another $15"
* etc
Only the last one I would call fraud, but nobody except me was angry so I think it's just the way it is.
> I think people there are just used to not knowing exactly how much they'll pay.
I've been an American my entire life and I've never gotten used to it. I'm pretty sure the pervasive dark patterns are what is deranging our society to the point where we think electing a conman, genital-grabbing, reality TV star as our president will solve things.
If the law clearly tells you the relation between the displayed price and the billed price, and the business is doing exactly what the law requires, it can't be fraud.
Anyway, you can ditch the first part. If the law requires it, and the business does exactly what the law requires, it's not fraud.
You can't go around demanding that business violate the law, arguing that not doing so is a crime. You can push for it on moral basis, but never on legal basis.
I see it all the time in Europe. Go to any online store and see how the listed price jumps up during checkout due to "taxes an fees". Even though I specify that I'm shipping to Finland, they're incapable of calculating taxes until the last stage of the checkout process.
Airlines do those things here too. Air Baltic charges you something like 15 euros to print a boarding pass. Ryan Air is notorious for these various hidden fees.
It's possible that the foreign website shows the price including VAT at their local percentage. Finland has 24% VAT (25.5% in 2025) on most products so at checkout you get the price with Finnish VAT. It is also possible that Finland has various consumption fees that are only applied after the website verifies that you are indeed Finnish.
VAT is a complicated tax. I prefer to get petrol in The Netherlands because despite higher gas prices than Germany and Belgium, it is much easier to get the VAT back at the Dutch tax office than it is with the German or Belgian tax offices. Every country is its own silo.
For a European like me, most commercial transactions in USA feel more or less like fraud. It's really hard to figure out price of almost anything beforehand. E.g. in restaurant your meal will cost someting like 50% more than the sticker price. Even vending machines ask for tips, with dark patterns of course.
I'm a European. When I travel to another country (which I can do in about 30 minutes) and use my bank card the machine asks me if I want to pay in local currency or foreign currency. If I use local currency the local bank does the conversion, if I use foreign currency then my own bank will do the conversion (typically at a favourable rate).
On machines with larger displays you get a long text with the usual fear mongering about not knowing the exchange rate of your own bank and having security of knowing exactly how much will be withdrawn if you pick the exchange rate of the local bank.
I have similar annoyances at holidays, train tickets and flight tickets being advertised at very low prices, but when you want to book that price is only available on February 28th 2025. Any other date is at least 30% extra.
And don't get me started on the costs that are added at the checkout for my local super market. Suddenly I get plastic tax, bottle deposit, bag tax etc. The prices that are used on the shelf are only for club members so I get to pay a little bit extra if I don't have my member card with me. This is for The Netherlands. It can be difficult to know exactly what you have to pay at checkout while shopping.
Not a Californian, but which bill number is it? SB 1524 seems to do the opposite: service fees are allowed (terrible, but a separate issue), and non-tax fees have to be rolled into menu prices [1].
Your link says SB1524 does exactly what I wrote in my post. SB478 banned junk fees, including at restaurants, in Oct 2023, and then SB1524 a week ago allowed restaurants to charge junk fees.
> SB 1524 was a last-minute bid by lawmakers to extract restaurants from the junk fee ban known as Senate Bill 478, which Newsom approved in October 2023.
There is no reason that a restaurant menu should have a mandatory charge on everything shown separately from the prices for the food, other than for restaurants to be able to make prices seem lower than they are.
Oops, you're completely right. I retract my previous comment. I not only copied the wrong article (got the "rolling" part from https://www.latimes.com/food/story/2024-06-25/restaurants-ch...) but also misidentified which bill would have required rolling.
Genuinely interested, is this perhaps a result of the practice of writing prices without VAT? As a european, I always felt this has a fraudulent touch.
Ditto as an Australian. To be fair, we have a valid historical reason for prices down here always including tax - GST (our name for VAT / sales tax) was only introduced in 2000, and before that there was never any tax involved at point of sale - so it would have been too big a cultural change for "the marked price" to suddenly not be "the exact price that you pay". (Tipping is also rare here, same as in most of Europe.) So, yeah, the American way of "marked price plus tax plus tips" seems like egregious fraud to us too.
Although, over the past decade or so, "credit / debit card surcharge" fees (generally of 1-2%, but sometimes much more) - which aren't included in the marked price - have become pervasive here. And they're often charged (both online and in-store) when there is no alternative form of payment available (either a really lousy alternative - e.g. "pay by bank transfer, but we won't give you the product until the transfer has cleared, which may take up to 3 business days" - or literally no alternative at all, which is supposed to be illegal, but plenty of businesses seem to get away with it). But I guess it's a good sign, that quite a lot of people here complain loudly about such fees - maybe in the USA, the vast majority just resign themselves to it being yet one more gotcha creeping into everyday payments.
You know it’s all deceptive and fraudulent just by virtue of that they hide it, but also that the companies usually vehemently resist being transparent about the coerced extraction of money, not really all that different than theft. When someone holds a gun to your head you also have a choice to not hand over your money.