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A Virginia The man is suing the company behind SeaWorld Orlando And to add bush garden “Illegal” hidden fees On its ticket prices.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Florida last week, lawyers for Matthew Beaman accused United Parks & Resorts of breaking Virginia transparent pricing law With “bait and switch” tactics that trick customers into paying more.
“Defendants hide their mandatory fees until consumers have spent substantial time selecting tickets and committed to purchasing based on an incomplete, deceptively low advertised price,” reads the lawsuit,
“Each step of defendants’ multi-step checkout process is designed to increase consumer commitment so that, by the time the hidden fees are disclosed, consumers – having already spent time and effort – are more likely to complete the transaction.”
As a result, it alleged, the Florida-based company “knowingly employed an illegal hidden fee strategy in clear violation of Virginia law”.
United Parks & Resorts did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Independent And has not yet responded to the lawsuit in court.
The lawsuit stems from less than $40 in service fees apparently added to four tickets purchased by Beaman for Busch Gardens Williamsburg and Water Country USA in July this year through three separate transactions on the park’s websites.
After selecting his tickets, Beeman said he had to click through a long series of selection and optional add-on screens before showing hidden fees, at which point the website was counting down the minutes before his booking was lost.
Fees started at $11.99 per purchase for a single ticket and increased depending on the number of tickets ordered.
Although the website had shown Beeman an additional amount for “taxes and fees” in the first step, the final itemized totals revealed that none of this amount was actually taxes, and all of it was fees.
Beeman’s lawsuit alleges this is a clear violation of Virginia’s advance pricing law, which prohibits companies from advertising or displaying prices without “clearly and conspicuously including” any fee or surcharge.
This could also be an example What experts call “dark patterns”: a general term for a manipulative online design strategy that shapes users’ behavior in a way that benefits the system designer.
Among them is “drip pricing”, which the Federal Trade Commission describes “As a pricing technique in which companies advertise only part of a product’s price, and reveal other changes later as the consumer moves through the purchasing process.”
SeaWorld Orlando also charges the same $11.99-or-more fee Independent Found as we went through the process of purchasing tickets from California.
Beeman’s lawsuit asks the judge to grant class action status representing anyone in Virginia who recently purchased a ticket from United Parks and Resorts to Busch Gardens Williamsburg or Water Country USA without showing the full price.
United faced a similar action last year, when a woman in Osceola County, Florida, sued it for adding a 5 percent fee to items she purchased during a trip to SeaWorld Orlando. The company said it had disclosed the fee prior to purchase.
Other states have also passed transparent pricing laws, sometimes leading to legal action. The FTC and a bipartisan group of state attorneys general sued Ticketmaster last month It has been accused of defrauding both artists and consumers by advertising falsely low prices, as well as colluding with scalpers to sell tickets to users at substantial markups.
In April, A Maryland woman also sued Ticketmaster Under his own state’s price gouging law, he was accused of “deceptive and manipulative” tactics, including “drip pricing.” Ticketmaster said its claims were false, and it is fighting the lawsuit.
StubHub has also been sued by the city of Washington DC for drip pricing and other “deceptive practices”.That has resulted in residents reportedly losing $11 million in hidden fees since 2015.