As Biden noted, the FCC “proposed a new rule that would require cable and satellite TV providers to give consumers the all-in price for the service they’re offering up front.” The proposed rule would force companies like Comcast, Charter Spectrum, and DirecTV to publish more accurate prices.
I’ll believe it when I see it. It seems like things like this come up all the time and never actually go anywhere.
Now do ticket prices.
Now do everything.
Australia recenlty rolled out some pretty simple “applies to everything” rules. Whatever price you advertise, you have to sell your product/service for that price.
You can only charge extra fees if those are optional fees for additional services on top of the product you’ve advertised. If they are mandatory fees, then you have to sell the product for the lowest price you’ve advertised. And you can be forced to issue partial refunds to every customer you’ve ever had who paid too much.
If I had a dollar for every news article that talked about how such-and-such regulatory body “might” do something that benefits consumers over corporations, I could actually afford all those hidden fees.
Let’s get pharma out of advertising too. NZ and USA are the only countries in the world to allow it.
NZ and USA are the only countries in the world to allow it.
No, a ton of others also allow it but there might be more more (or fewer) restrictions. But yes, advertising pharma products is pretty weird. Your doctor should proscribe your meds and you should not ask for something specific because an ad told you so. And many of those proscription free cold medicines are not really necessary or effective anyway.
Direct-to-consumer advertising is the promotion of prescription medicines to the general public. New Zealand and the USA are the only two countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that allow direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription medicines.1 Feb 2004
