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Ditto as an Australian. To be fair, we have a valid historical reason for prices down here always including tax - GST (our name for VAT / sales tax) was only introduced in 2000, and before that there was never any tax involved at point of sale - so it would have been too big a cultural change for "the marked price" to suddenly not be "the exact price that you pay". (Tipping is also rare here, same as in most of Europe.) So, yeah, the American way of "marked price plus tax plus tips" seems like egregious fraud to us too.

Although, over the past decade or so, "credit / debit card surcharge" fees (generally of 1-2%, but sometimes much more) - which aren't included in the marked price - have become pervasive here. And they're often charged (both online and in-store) when there is no alternative form of payment available (either a really lousy alternative - e.g. "pay by bank transfer, but we won't give you the product until the transfer has cleared, which may take up to 3 business days" - or literally no alternative at all, which is supposed to be illegal, but plenty of businesses seem to get away with it). But I guess it's a good sign, that quite a lot of people here complain loudly about such fees - maybe in the USA, the vast majority just resign themselves to it being yet one more gotcha creeping into everyday payments.




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