Americans can see the price of live event tickets upfront as the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) banned “junk fees.”
The FTC passed a rule on Tuesday that requires ticket seller, hotels, and vacation rental sites to be forthcoming with their prices and not wait until the last minute.
“Today, the Federal Trade Commission is answering my call to lower costs and promote competition by banning hidden junk fees when you book a hotel or purchase event tickets,” Biden said in a post on X, the microblogging platform formerly known as Twitter. “This builds on my work to ban junk fees and lower costs – saving many families hundreds each year.”
Biden also said, “We all know the experience of encountering a hidden fee at the very last stage of checkout — these junk fees sneak onto your bill and companies end up making you pay more because they can. Those fees add up, taking real money out of the pockets of Americans.”
The FTC passed the ruling 4-1, with the lone dissenting vote coming from Donald Trump’s FTC chair pick, Andrew Ferguson. Ferguson voted against the ban because “the time for rulemaking by the Biden-Harris FTC is over.” If confirmed, Ferguson and the Trump administration could seek to withdraw the rule for further review with Republicans taking over Congress and voting to reverse the ruling.
Current FTC chair Lina Khan said in a statement, “People deserve to know upfront what price they’re being asked to pay, without worrying they’ll later be hit with mystery fees they can’t avoid.”
Khan noted that the FTC had “received thousands of comments in response” to the proposal “with people sharing how prevalent, pesky, and costly” the add-on fees had become.
The ruling doesn’t limit the fees sellers add on but makes them visible before customers enter their credit card numbers, not catching them by surprise in the end.
