Hidden Costs (Sneaking / Drip Pricing)

Definition

Hiding or omitting information about additional fees and revealing them only at the final stage of the transaction.

Psychological mechanism

Sunk cost fallacy. A user who has already invested time and effort in the checkout process is more likely to complete the transaction despite unexpected costs.

Consumer impact

• Consumer perception: High harm, directly strikes at the economic interests of consumers. Creates frustration and breach of trust.
• Measured impact: Identified in OSINT research as "drip pricing" with a relatively low frequency (3% of cases) but severe financial impact.
• Vulnerable demographics: Based on qualitative report conclusions.

Detection Signals

• On-page evidence: Delivery costs, service fees, or other surcharges appear only at the final step of checkout, not in the initial cart view.

Evidence (Code examples)

Information about an additional service fee is fetched from the API and added only in the cart.

"fees": [{ "name": "serviceCharge", "type": "amount", "value": 199 }]

Regulatory Angle

Strict enforcement required. Violation of basic consumer rights regarding price transparency.