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Surprises

by Mike Masnick

Tue, Sep 2nd 2003 12:48am





Shopping Sites Finally 'Fessing Up On Total Price

from the took-'em-long-enough dept

I'm still surprised it's taken this long, but online travel sites are finally realizing that adding a bunch of taxes and fees later on to the total bill is pissing off customers who feel that they're getting lied to and ripped off. So, now, a few of them are starting to show an option for "total price" that reveals the real price that the user will be paying. It appears that Travelocity is leading the pack with this one, though some of the others are looking to catch up. They're all still displaying the misleading "base price" at the beginning to keep customers from immediately jumping ship (and later discovering the extra charges) - but they're being more upfront about the real charges right after that. It's good that the industry is finally coming around. It's still unfortunate that some believe that customer loyalty and happiness is so unimportant that they'd rather be misleading than honest.

5 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    Eliminate the middle man... yeah right.

    identicon
    dorpus, Sep 2nd, 2003 @ 1:49am

    I never bought that mantra of the dot-com era -- after all, a web page is still run by people looking to make a profit.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    shopping sites - total price

    identicon
    Thomas Brown, Sep 2nd, 2003 @ 4:09am

    If only this could be applied to cell phone carriers, as well...

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    Loyalty?

    identicon
    Doug, Sep 2nd, 2003 @ 8:16am

    It's still unfortunate that some believe that customer loyalty and happiness is so unimportant
    Is this the same customer loyalty that the Internet is destroying?

    Online companies are learning that price is what matters to online shoppers, and online customers have no loyalty. So is it surprising that the online sellers are now emphasizing price, without concern for building loyalty?

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  

    No Subject Given

    identicon
    Glenn, Sep 2nd, 2003 @ 2:09pm

    I admit that I'm a little low on concrete details here... but the CEO of overstock.com was on NPR a few weeks back. He said that he built his web site to cater to women, which is why he uses flat shipping and no suprise expenses at the end of the transaction. According to his data, women are much more likely to balk at the surprise fees at checkout.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  5.  

    No Subject Given

    identicon
    If your power goes out, give us a call, Sep 6th, 2003 @ 6:47pm

    ATT is doing the same thing when you call about switching your local service over. When you ask for a price comparison with your current bill, they quote you 16.95. Only after probing do the mention that doesn't include certain "Federal charges". The total ends up being the same or more than the current bill.
    This has happened on two separate calls I made, so its not a mistake, its policy.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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