Drip Pricing

A technique of online pricing where the total cost is revealed only at the end of the purchasing process, after a series of (compulsory/hidden) charges have been added.

Some 4 million British bargain hunters took to the Internet on Christmas Day, according to The Times of London:

But the belief in big savings at the click of a button may be ill founded. A survey of online retailers for The Times has found that shoppers who buy online face paying up to 22 per cent more in hidden charges.

Although the advertised prices for electronic equipment, clothes and furniture sold online are often cheaper than their high-street counterparts, consumers are falling foul of an array of marketing techniques. These include “drip” pricing, whereby customers are given an initial price only for further costs to be surreptitiously added during the purchasing process.

In a recent report for The Independent, Martin Hickman noted that Ryanair, one of Europe’s largest budget airlines, had been criticized by the chief executive of Britain’s Office of Fair Trading over its pricing practices:

The no-frills carrier – along with other airlines and ticketing agencies – is being investigated by the OFT over online pricing and advertising. Of particular concern is “drip-pricing” where shoppers only discover the full cost of a service late in the booking process, which makes it difficult to shop around.