News Canadian Government Sues Canada's Wonderland Over Junk Fees

[Zachary]

Based Canadian behavior.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/competition-bureau-canada-wonderland-alleged-misleading-advertising-1.7526933

tl;dr: The Canadian Government's Competition Bureau is suing Canada's Wonderland over their advertising of prices that are not available to consumers as a result of the park's various junk fees applied during checkout.

 

[jscll]

Canada's Wonderland's website is currently very upfront regarding the fees. Every time it gives a price it also states "*Plus processing fee up to $9.99 & applicable taxes." Looking at the Wayback Machine, it appears that they started putting this message around the beginning of 2024. Before that they used the message "*Plus applicable taxes and fees."
I personally do not like fees, and would prefer them to build them into the price. I would get what the Canadian government is doing if there stated goal was to eliminate fees; but their allegation of "drip pricing" would imply the fee is not shown until checkout - I cannot find an example of this on their website. According to the linked artical, the Canadian Competition Bereau lawsuit seems to be limited to online advertisements.

 

[Zachary]

If you use any of the Buy Now buttons that open the accesso module on the CW website, it's very easy to see the pass prices advertised for the first time with zero disclaimers. The AlpenFury announcement page is an example of this.

 

[jscll]

I think you may have great influence Zachary. Assuming I am looking at the same page, it seems someone addressed the issue. Is this the page in question Launch Coaster | AlpenFury | Canada's Wonderland?
When I clicked on the first Buy Now button, I got redirected to a page with all of the passes and fees. When I clicked on the bottom Buy Now button, I got:

 

[Zachary]

Yep, that's the page.

I was just looking through other pages on the CW website trying to find other examples, but they have been litigious elsewhere about not sending people straight to that accesso module and instead sending all clicks through the main season pass page. Interesting.

The moment a customer gets into that accesso module though—whether by navigating there through somewhere other than the full CW pass page or being linked there directly—it's all over. The lack of a surcharge disclaimer on the accesso pass listings seems like a significant oversight.

I don't know much about Canadian consumer protection laws, but do we know that their fine print disclaimers re: the price are even allowable or does the main price presented have to be obtainable? This page seems to suggest that advertising any unobtainable price is illegal (based).

Hopefully we see some more info from this case eventually—I'd love to see the details of the suit.

 

[warfelg]

Yep, that's the page. I was looking through other pages on the CW website trying to find other examples, but they have been litigious elsewhere about not sending people straight to that accesso module and instead sending all clicks through the main season pass page. Interesting.

The moment a customer gets into that accesso module though—whether by navigating there through somewhere other than the full CW pass page or being linked there directly, it's all over. The lack of a surcharge disclaimer on the accesso pass listings seems like a significant oversight.

I don't know much about Canadian consumer protection laws, but do we know that their fine print disclaimers re: the price are even allowable or does the main price presented have to be obtainable? This page seems to suggest that advertising any unobtainable price is illegal (based).

Hopefully we see some more info from this case eventually—I'd love to see the details of the suit.

From what I understand from my cousin (he lives almost right on the boarder and is in Canada quite often), the law being enacted here isn’t about fees, it’s about MAP pricing and how easy it is to get.

He used car purchases for an example because they tend to be the biggest offender:
Let’s say Ford says you can get an F150 starting at $22,000, but then to basically make the car functioning there’s an option the makes it $25,000, it’s illegal.

So in this case he said it could be something like they advertise dynamic pricing, prices as low as $39, but then you have fees and stuff along with one day in the year it’s actually that low, then they are advertising an unattainable price.

He said this is effectively what the US is trying with going after Ticketmaster. They advertise tickets at a certain price but you can’t actually buy tickets remotely close to that price.

I’m actually fine with these laws in place. The bigger question is where is the price being shown much lower than you can actually buy it for. I’m not smart enough to go figure that out.

Anyways tl;dr - yes the minimum price advertised needs to actually be attainable.

 

[Thriller]

advertising a price online and then adding fees to it at checkout is a rather low ethics way of doing business. It’s part of the cedar fair bait and switch tactics. I know a lot of companies do this, but it doesn’t make it ethical. They advertise an unobtainable price online to lure in the customer.



They may be advertising the fees in the fine print, but you can never get a ticket for what they advertise in their ads, such as Facebook, etc..

Good for the Canadian government