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RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) — North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson is calling on the Federal Trade Commission to crack down on food delivery fees that he said get deceptively added to customers’ bills, according to his office.
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According to the Office of the North Carolina Attorney General, a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general including Jackson on May 18 encouraging the FTC to expand its efforts in addressing unfair fees to food delivery services after the commission announced in April that it was seeking public input on a potential rule to address deceptive food and grocery delivery fees.
In the letter, according to officials, the attorneys general noted food online food and grocery services have become more popular, especially for older customers and those who have difficulty moving, but they also frequently commit “drip pricing” by adding new charges at the end of a transaction.
Officials said customers rarely know about the extra fees until they’ve picked and checked out their items, while these services don’t make the purpose of the fees clear.
“These bait-and-switch tactics make it difficult for consumers to compare prices across platforms,” the North Carolina Attorney General’s Office said in a statement.
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According to the attorney general’s office, prices on food delivery services are often different from those offered directly through a restaurant or store.
The prices can also be different between customers because of “personalized pricing/surveillance pricing”, which is when platforms use customer data to determine how much to charge them, sometimes resulting in prices being higher than normal, especially if the company knows what the customer needs most, according to the attorney general’s office.
In addition to encouraging the commission to apply its rules against unfair and deceptive fees to food delivery platforms, according to officials, Jackson and his fellow attorneys general are asking the FTC to add new rules requiring the platforms to:
- Make the total cost clearly displayed during each stage of the order process
- Have the purpose of each fee and its calucation accurately described
- Disclose in-store price markups
- Acknowledge any use of setting prices from a person’s data through pricing technology, any prices set through pricing technology by the company, and any differences between a fixed price and the price offered to a customer
“People should know upfront how much they’ll pay for something, instead of getting to the checkout page to see surprise fees tacked on,” Jackson said in a statement. “Many food delivery apps play this game. It’s not right and I’m urging the FTC to take action against it.”
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