Price Transparency Guidelines Needed For Online Travel Booking Sites, Says CCCS

I’m sure I’m not the only who has experienced this:

You see a ‘good’ travel deal and you click on it, but by the time you add all the ‘optionals’ you end up with a crazy high checkout price.

Singaporeans Misled By Pricing And Marketing Practices Commonly Used By Travel Booking Providers

According to The Straits Times, a lot of other Singaporeans have also experienced the strange phenomena of an ever-increasing checkout price, mostly as they’ve been misled by pricing and marketing practices.

These practices are apparently commonly used by online travel booking providers, which has been pointed out by the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore (CCCS).

Don’t worry though, to protecc unassuming consumers, CCCS is proposing a set of guidelines on price transparency for all consumer-facing businesses.

In doing so, they hope to make it more clear as to what is an infringement of consumer protection laws.

They will do so by spelling out the ‘factors and circumstances’ in which practices will be considered potentially misleading.

Four Common Pricing And Marketing Practices

Drip Pricing

• The practice of adding mandatory or optional fees during the transaction or payment process.
• Results in a higher final price than advertised.
• Lures customers into buying based on the incomplete price information.
• Makes it harder for consumers to compare prices across suppliers.
• Eg. Booking fees, credit card fees and add ons.

CCCS has recommended that suppliers include mandatory fees in total headline price.

Pre-ticked boxes

• Checkboxes to purchase more products or services that suppliers have pre-selected for consumers
• Consumers may accidentally buy products they didn’t intend to buy.

CCCS recommends that suppliers should avoid pre-ticked boxes.

Strikethrough Pricing

• The practice of showing the discount for a product by crossing out the original price and placing it beside the sale price.
• Can mislead consumers into buying or paying a higher price if the comparison between current and crossed out price is untrue or misleading.

CCCS recommends that the genuine previous price should be revealed so consumers aren’t misled on how much they will save.

Pressure Selling Technique

• May create false sense of urgency for consumers to buy the product based on false information.
• Eg. The famous fire sale or closing down sale for a store that never seems to actually close down.

CCCS recommends that any misleading claims that pressure consumers to buy items should not be made at all.

CCCS will be reviewing comments and feedback from the public regarding the proposed guidelines until 21 October 2019.