When is there a moral obligation to support implicit or unenforceable contracts in a business model?

[jack]

Some people claim the answer is "always" or "never" although this approach seems bizarre when presented with one of the obvious extremes. For instance:

Example #1. You visit a small book shop. You ponder what you might like, and a clerk gives you some excellent advice. You thank them, look at the price, and go and buy it somewhere else. I think most people agree you should avoid doing that -- certainly not set out to do it.

I think it doesn't matter whether the shop has a sign saying "please don't do this" and doesn't matter that if they did it would be unenforceable. I think the shop is implicitly providing a service in the hope that you will be grateful. (I think it's fine to take the advice even if you're only browsing, especially if you make that clear, so long as if you suddenly decide you do do it there.)

Example #2. Conversely, I think Ryanair's business plan isn't just to sell flights at supposedly and deceptively low prices. They do do that, but I think they also hope to make a lot of money out of people who are tricked into thinking it's cheaper, but forgetting that if they want to check a suitcase, or pay by debit or credit card, or forget to pack a sandwich for the flight, they'll pay an exorbitant fee.

However, if the fare is cheaper (which now is often not the case by very much if at all, but sometimes is), I don't feel obliged to follow their expectation and buy lots of overpriced extras. I feel sorry for people who do, but I don't think that if the deal is marginally good for me refusing to participate will help anyone else, so I'll take it, and Ryanair will presumably make their money back from the people who DO buy extras, and if they don't, well, they deserve it.

Further examples: If you're eating in a restaurant, do you feel obligated to buy a drink? If you get a lot of use out of a free version of a program, do you feel compelled to buy the upgrade even if have most of the functionality you need already? If there's a special offer and you assume it's intended to benefit the business somehow, do you mind taking advantage of it?

I think these examples do have something in common, but you should judge whether it's a case of "follow the implied contract" or "Caveat venditor" based on:

(A) Is the vendor setting up an expectation on you, or providing a pricing model and inviting you to partake or not as you choose?
(B) Do you feel the vendor is genuinely helping you and deserves genuine reciprocation, or solely screwing you the maximum amount permissible under law?

Comments

[hatam_soferet]

This is why you need to be learning lots of Talmud, Engaged-To-Liv!

[kerrypolka]

Agreed! *g*

[jack]

ROFL. Yes. Is there anything specific I should ask her about about this? :)

[seryn]

This actually comes up a lot among knitting people in my area. Retail stores are extremely expensive and yarn stores apparently make very little profit per item sold. The idea of buying yarn in person is that you get to touch it and see the colors for yourself, you can compare two skeins through the sunlit window for yourself instead of relying upon dodgy thumbnail sized pictures which probably weren't color-adjusted. Plus the people working in the shop are generally knowledgeable and will offer suggestions for yarns that might substitute in a pattern.

However, one can buy yarn online, usually for 20% less and free shipping. Compared to driving somewhere, paying for parking, dealing with snooty clerks who think fat women shouldn't be helped when there's a skinny woman there, only to be told the store will be glad to order the 7 of 8 skeins that are needed (for full price plus handling fees) so the process will need to be repeated again next week when picking up the order. (Nefarious people will say ordering online means no sales tax either although one is supposed to remit the tax owed annually.)

So if I shop for yarn in person, I either go to a store that has unique things or I buy just one thing. And even though I buy a lot of yarn, I very very rarely go to the stores in person so I do not feel obliged to buy overpriced junk.

The interesting aspect of the shopping that you didn't touch upon is the implied contract that if you enter a shop, you are obliged to buy something. If the clerk helps you, you're supposed to buy more things. "Looky-loos aren't welcome inside the shop. That's what window displays are for."

Restaurants around here give significantly worse service if you do not buy a beverage and just drink water. If it's evening, they give worse service if you do not buy alcoholic beverages. At lunch they do not push alcohol and merely ask if you'd like something to drink. At dinner they say, "Some wine, something from the bar, just to get you started? A glass of our [expensive] chardonnay will go nicely with the mussels we have as tonight's special appetizer." A single mixed drink from the bar sells for the cost of the entire entree at lunch at the place around the corner. Admittedly the dinner entrees are more expensive, so the proportion is less that 100%. Non-alcholic beverages at restaurants have become so expensive at all that places which used to have stereotypically outrageous drink prices like movie theaters and airports have bargain priced cokes now comparatively. (This is regionally specific to my location. When we visited the middle of the country to see family, you could get a coke for a buck instead of 3.) I do not buy a beverage unless I want one. If I get bad service, I do not go back. If they need people to buy beverages then they should sell it that way and charge more for it, "Beer included with lunch!"

[ptc24]

One of the things I found very notable when visiting the USA was that the serving staff would suggest specific things unprompted. I'm not sure whether this is universal or something specific to the sorts of places (e.g. hotel restaurants) that idiot conference guests go to.

I wonder if this is connected with the way that the tips in the USA are larger (typically 15% rather than 10%, and it seems that there's more pressure on you to tip), and so the staff have a greater incentive to make a sale.

[seryn]

If you're only tipping 15%, you're cheap. 20% is the standard and it's basically a non-explicit fee for service. You can legally leave without tipping, of course, because it's theoretically optional. But restaurants do not pay their employees even minimum wage. The restaurant pays about a third of the employees' salaries and the rest comes from tips. The tips are their main source of income. So of course they're going to suggest things, encourage the more expensive options, come around to tables who have ordered the tiny alcoholic drinks because they're going to want another round.

Menus also typically do not list prices for beverages. So if you enter a restaurant, order the $8 sandwich of the day and a lemonade, by the time you leave, you can easily spend $16. Fresh lemonade is often $4, and you're going to pay about 30% of your total in tax and tip.

[ptc24]

Tax is the other thing I found strange. In the UK prices generally include VAT if it applies (this is less true for big-ticket items like computers), and the with-VAT price is often a round number, or number ending in 99 or 95. In the USA I found I never knew whether sales tax was to be charged or not and how much it would come to and things like that - also the round numbers were often pre-tax. It made paying with exact change difficult so you ended up with far too much loose change.

Not listing the price - over here, this makes me think of "if Sir has to ask how much it is, Sir can't afford it", so it's strange to think of it as something that applies everywhere.

While I'm here I'll mention how typically in American hotels breakfast isn't included in the price, whereas elsewhere it is.

I found America to be a place where it was quite hard for me to control how much money I was spending, part of the culture shock I experience when over there.

[seryn]

There are more hotels offering breakfast included now, but you have to check. And it's often a "special" deal on hotel websites where if you mention it when booking, you'll get free breakfast just for asking.

I don't order things that do not list the price. Because of exactly that feeling. If I have to ask, it's too dear.

It's rare for tax to be included in the price because most prices for big chain stores are set at the corporate level and tax is done locally. That actually means if you live near a border with a different locality, you can pay less by shopping there.

Very few people pay in cash because it's extremely inconvenient to do so. You can usually pay with a credit card for even a $3 coffee at Starbucks. So when I eat in independently owned tiny restaurants (the majority of my dining out) and they only take cash, I usually have to buy lunch for any friends who accompany me because they don't have any real money in their wallets.

I think restaurants should pay their employees, raise the price of the food as necessary, and leave me out of it. I shouldn't be paying their employees. I also think everything should be priced with the tax included, it's not like paying the tax is optional. I don't care that the store wants to blame the government, I just want to know what it is going to cost.

My international travelling experience was different in that I got an idea what a low-priced lunch usually cost in the local currency and set that price in my head as a basic quanta for expenses. "Would I spend three lunches on a pair of jeans? Yes, absolutely, that's an excellent deal."

Breakfast wasn't included when I visited Canada.

[hatam_soferet]

Yes. You ask her "Liv, will you learn the mishnayot of the fourth chapter of Bava Metzia with me?"