Saturday, June 19, 2004
 
Lose/Lose

Hey, everyone's a loser in this story:
    Attorney General Jay Nixon said Friday that Schnucks and Dierbergs stores had been adding a surcharge onto video rental bills that looked like a sales tax but wasn't. He said the companies had kept some of the money.

    Nixon said the two supermarket chains had agreed to stop the practice and pay $110,000 each in penalties to the state.
Salient points:
  • Business, since Dierberg's and Schnucks saw fit to levy a 7% surcharge on video rentals and labeling it a "tax/surcharge" even though the State of Missouri does not levy a sales tax in these situations. By breaking out the extra portion of the price, these supermarket chains do the same thing telephone companies, utilities, and mechanics do: they hide, deceive, and trick customers with extra line items on the invoice to generate extra revenue. Listen, you damn creative business types: mark one price that includes all of your costs of business and tell me up front.

    P.S. Thanks for the statements that you didn't do anything wrong here. Smeg off, you stooges. Even the laissez-faire amongst us recognize you're not victims here.

  • The consumers, who have paid extra seven cents per $1.00 rental for who knows how long. $1.07 isn't so bad for a video rental, but getting institutionally suckered is.

  • The attorney general, who had to conduct a year-long investigation to net $220,000 in fines. Certainly not cost effective, and certainly not where I would allocate assets, but unquestionably, the wrong doers were doing wrong.

  • The taxpayers, who had to underwrite an investigation costing more than $220,000.

- posted by Brian J. @ 11:38 AM
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