I still remember going to the travel agent with my mom to buy airplane tickets. It involved putting a little kid in and out of a car and took long enough that I was reduced to playing with the cardboard palm tree cutouts in the window. And then you got a paper ticket, which was once forgotten at my grandparents house and only remembered at the airport after a 2hr drive through California traffic.
I for one appreciate that in modern American life I can buy a ticket on my phone while nursing my baby, decide whether to pay for bags and show up at the airport with only my driver's license.
And anyway, it's way harder to mentally juggle different prices for different flight times/durations than added fees for seats and bags and the like which are pretty fixed.
A new one is high end restaurants adding a "3% fee for the healthcare of the staff" or something that they say they're happy to waive. All you have to do is tell your lovely single mother professional waitress that you specifically want to waive the payment for her health-care
Round-ups are quick and off by default. Your choice is a simple "yes" or "no", and it's applied instantly with tap of a button. Those added fees have to be noticed, then pointed out, then requested to be removed. Then the poor waitress has to go walk over to the machine, fiddle with it, re-print the bill and bring it back at the cost of her (and your) time.
“I still think that this is probably a place worth an intervention. I think the costs in lived experiences of such failures are high, and the risk of intervention is relatively low”
Counter point: Medical fees are absolutely awash in these sorts of issues, yet how doctors and hospitals charge for these services are extremely tightly regulated. That suggests the risk of intervention is quite high, as it will likely make the situation worse. Customers do not capture regulatory organizations, sellers do.
While I think this is a good counter-example to consider, we should be pretty careful about over-generalizing from almost _any_ example in the medical industry. While you are correct that these kinds of regulations exist there, there are _scores_ of other regulations, including the actual prevention of competitors from entering the market. In other words, we should be careful before deciding exactly which regulation is causing bad outcomes in medicine. There are lots, and they probably interact in a lot of bad ways that are hard to predict.
This shares the same underlying principle that first discredited libertarianism in my mind. I think Scott Alexander, or perhaps it was another blogger, pointed out that sometimes a marginal decrease in overall freedom leads to a significant net increase of individual freedom. Examples include the prohibition on (flagrantly) false advertising, and the use of prisons to reduce public risk exposure. This is exactly the sort of thing governments are good for - reducing the redundant burden upon individuals to responsibly practice their own freedoms.
Much like almost any "-ism", when it becomes the only thing you believe/consider/use, it is probably going to be bad in lots of cases. However, the idea of valuing and considering the impact on personal freedom is one that should be, at the bare minimum, a component in almost any political decision. In my opinion, I agree that "maximize individual freedom and choice, and damn the consequences!" will probably lead to sup-optimal outcomes in a lot of places, but our current society is so far in the other direction, that I think following that credo in 90% of cases would be better than what we currently have.
So even though I don't personally consider myself a "libertarian" (or any other -ist/-ian), and agree that personal choice/freedom is not always the most important consideration, I think that in the current political milieu it's a better political heuristic than most others.
Also, I think your sugar/salt example is ridiculous enough to undermine the point you are making.
You're right, I don't mean the whole breadth of the philosophy, rather how it is currently imagined and discussed by the majority of its advocates in the USA. I think the main reason it's such a good heuristic right now is that the US is old! There's a lot of legal "junk DNA" that causes unintended problems and makes better solutions seem less important. Also, trying to pass reform in that direction is like trying to get tigers to vote to remove the long grass.
Matt made an additional good point, not mentioned in your analysis here, that as a matter of what regular business travelers actually experience, unbundling has resulted in a race to the bottom due to contingent facts about how expense policies work and how the people who run expense departments are incentivized to (dis)approve upgrade charges. If the basic ticket price entitled you to be lashed to a frame on the exterior of the aircraft, that's what your company would reimburse you for.
(Then 2020 happened and business travel seems to have mostly stopped -- no more days of traveling to have a meeting that could have been an email! -- but I guess that is a different issue.)
I agree with most of what you've written. I do think that choice is good, but that's a separate matter. On bundling and hidden prices, well-crafted legislation could definitely bring an improvement. However, I am wary, as the same people that designed the current system will have a seat at the table when drafting the new regulations.
That said, there are things that that we can do to improve our experiences at the individual level. The main thing is to stop shopping purely on price. If you're taking a vacation and you don't want to start it unnecessarily stressed, avoid the low-cost carriers. Get PreCheck or Global Entry. Book a higher ticket category that allows you to pick your seats and bring more luggage. Pay the annual fee on a credit card that gives you lounge access and priority boarding. In a nutshell, accept that you get what you pay for.
The big lie of the internet is that we can all be super savvy shoppers who know all the tricks to getting that great deal. That's where the flim flam begins. For instance, I follow Conde Nast Traveler on Instagram. I expected their feed to be pretty pictures of interesting places, but it seems to mostly be nonsense tips on how to airline upgrades by dressing fancy and bringing chocolates to the flight attendants. The airlines have some of the smartest engineers in the world building their pricing models. You're not going to beat them with a sport coat. The sooner we internalize this, the better off we'll be.
Is there an example of similar regulations in the USA that is clearly net good? This strikes me as classic "something must be done, and this is something".
I know the USA is the only country that matters in the world, but something very similar has been done 20+ years ago in Australia and it just seems great. There are no unintended consequences I can think of, it's just easy to compare the prices of things because you know you're comparing the final price you'll actually pay
I'm not sure about *pricing* regulations, but in 2018 ago California implemented a "if you can subscribe online, you can cancel online" rule for auto-renewing subscriptions[0]. Cancellation flows can still have multiple "are you sure? what about this discount??" steps, but it's a major improvement over the old "you have to email/call us to cancel". As someone who's worked in subscription ecommerce since 2015, I consider it an unambiguous improvement for consumers, and essentially non-harmful to businesses.
The CAN SPAM Act seems like it was mostly good as well. I suspect there are similar things in phone marketing and SMS spam, though we've clearly been falling down on the job of enforcement.
I cannot understand how a airline can claim they care about safety if they even flirt with the idea that a 5-year-old could be required (or even allowed) to sit on their own.
The extra fees for sitting together on planes I find very strange. This does not appear to be a thing on flights I have taken in the UK / EU, which normally let you pick your seat at check in with more desirable seats commanding a premium.
The description of these fees as a “premium for sitting together” is silly and unhelpful. Many airlines are now offering two classes of tickets in coach: (1) for the cheapest fare you do not get to choose your seats; they are assigned at check in and are usually the ones no one else wanted. (2) when you pay the higher price you get to select your seats when you buy them. (There are additional fees for the most desirable seats such as those toward the front.)
The unintended consequence of not paying the extra fare to choose your seat is that you probably won’t get to sit together. It’s not a “fee for sitting together,” it’s a fee for picking good seats.
Australian consumer law has long held that the advertised price must have the full price that you'll end up paying including taxes and fees in a font at least as large as any other price advertised. Doesn't help with things like baggage inclusions, but frauds like "resort fees" are just non existent here.
I can't support the Amazon meme. Amazon's handling of shipping fees has been a slow-moving catastrophe, but the catastrophe has finally arrived.
The original system was that you paid separately for goods and for shipping. This meant you ordered whatever level of shipping you wanted.
Then they introduced Amazon Prime, where you paid a subscription fee and all of your orders received two-day shipping.
Then they stopped providing different levels of shipping. Even for non-Prime accounts. It's all best-effort. If you want two-day shipping, Amazon will no longer provide that.
$10.00 + $2.39 shipping meant you could substitute more expensive shipping if you needed it.
$12.39 + free shipping meant you could go screw yourself if you needed faster shipping, or even deterministic shipping.
Legislation of this type require the government to have a deep working knowledge of any industry it tries to regulate. You would essentially be inviting the government into micro manage every industry. This would quickly be followed by civil lawsuits by customers who believed "that should have been included".
The problem with option #3 (Require aggregation sites ... based on true cost), is now you have an adversarial relationship. Delta is strongly incentivized to keep Kayak in the dark and Kayak has no recourse if Delta succeeds. You have a psuedo-government / regulatory function handled by a private actor; the actor needs to possess real teeth.
An example would be a government mandate forcing Delta, et al to publish enough pricing data somewhere Kayak can reliably infer the truth. Rules in this realm can be vague enough to not create new problems like impeding the privacy of Delta's customers or allowing creative front-running of data, but any attempts to mislead now constitute lying to the Government instead of lying to Kayak.
Well first the meme's first panel should read $9.99 (+ $2.40 shipping). And second why not let the market take care of these market type of things? And finally I think we all have to stop taking price as the over ridding point of importance. To do so gives us the current race to the bottom. Way back in the past we use to fly on British Airlines, somewhat because they had the best food and service. Why can't an airline bill itself as family friendly and keep families seated together? Be willing as consumers to pay more for better quality, better service, locally made. Those are all long term investments, we need more long term thinking. Or Moloch shall rule us.
Mandating bundling of flight fares is a terrible idea. This terrible logic turns up in a lot of places where people think the dollar cost is the problem, but the real problem is availability. Families are not worse off having to pay to sit together, they are BETTER off. It is not a major problem for me to pay a little bit more to pick adjacent seats for my family. Typically the cost for seat choice in regular coach is very cheap, even $30 per seat for a cross-country flight.
What is a major problem for a family trying to fly together is not being able to find adjacent seats available at all. With seat choice costing money, people who care about their seat have many empty seats to pick, because a lot of passengers will be randomly assigned at the last minute. This is a terrible area for government to legislate. The people have spoken with regard to flight fares. A small minority may bitch and moan, but what actually happens is people flood to the cheap crap service because what they want is cheap service. If you want the fancy service, you can still get it. People just think they can give it for free and garbage politicians encourage that belief for votes.
I mean seriously, how dumb is this argument? It's not fair for people to pay $30 on top of their $200 fare to pick their seat. So we'll mandate a $230 fare with free seats. The best you can twist that is to say well we're probably only mandating $220 seats, so see it's a $10 benefit for this group over here that we think might vote for us.
None of this is hidden. I have no idea how someone can buy a flight ticket and be unaware of what is not bundled. Spirit literally has giant yellow popups that tell you at each stage.
Resort fees I can find no justification for. In theory they might be a way to differentiate their "resort" services, but hotels use crap like free phone calls to justify them, as if anyone has used a hotel phone to make a call in the last 15 years. I think the hysteria over them is certainly not justified though. I can't think of anywhere I've made a reservation where it wasn't disclosed at the time of booking. A surprise when you show up at the hotel may be fraud, a surprise when you click through a list of options is an annoyance. It's the kind of thing the government should probably stay out of, and people should fix it by patronizing sites that are better at disclosing them. Marriott lets you choose if you want the all inclusive price, or just the base price (I do find the base price search useful, though it's a niche use, and only because resort fees are a thing).
You're absolutely right regarding the seating. It's quite possible that eliminating seat charges makes families *worse off* on net to the extent that their unique preference for seating together becomes more difficult to satisfy when people who don't value it very much are now choosing seats early and eliminating large contiguous blocks in the seat map. What good is it to have free seat selection if there are no longer 4 contiguous seats together for your family? It's not a price transparency issue at all: as you say, it's very obvious and explicit that you have to pay for seats when you buy a basic economy ticket. So don't buy a basic economy ticket - you value seat selection if you're a family.
There are also technical and logistical issues with making this happen. If you require specifically PNRs with at least one passenger under the age of 18 to entail free seat selection, how does this work on the back-end exactly? What happens when you book a PNR with 4 people including an under 18, then split the PNR for the under 18 and refund that one? Easy hack for a bunch of adults to get free seats, and kind of difficult to counteract from an IT standpoint. People need to sit down and think this through more thoroughly, specifically the second and third order consequences. I suspect if this becomes law, airlines may just start bundling seat selection to avoid a lot of IT and logistical hassles. Which then just gives rise to what I said earlier about that potentially making family travel *worse off*. And that's not even touching on the price discrimination effects which are likely regressive on net.
Price transparency issues like resort fees are much more cut and dry. That should be tackled as soon as possible.
The airlines' marginal cost for booking a seat reservation is close to $0. They have to assign a seat earlier or later. Charging $30 on a $200 ticket - 15% - or $120 for a family of four seems like highway robbery, because it is. Most people buying multiples of something get a discount, whether it is the big bottle of shampoo or buy 2 get the third for free. One transaction to sell four tickets is a good deal for the airlines so they can afford to be generous with seat selection, and shouldn't charge them anything.
I can see that charging something is a way to allow early bookers and those who value seat preference to "buy" a better seat. Charing $10 (5%) for picking a seat seems okay. If you want two or three seats, I think charging the same $10 is appropriate. With four seats, the reservation is free. Some single fliers can choose to wait leaving seats available, couples can buy seats together, and families automatically get to stay together. Not as profitable as charging a 15% premium but it doesn't piss people off so they decide the government needs to get involved.
I still remember going to the travel agent with my mom to buy airplane tickets. It involved putting a little kid in and out of a car and took long enough that I was reduced to playing with the cardboard palm tree cutouts in the window. And then you got a paper ticket, which was once forgotten at my grandparents house and only remembered at the airport after a 2hr drive through California traffic.
I for one appreciate that in modern American life I can buy a ticket on my phone while nursing my baby, decide whether to pay for bags and show up at the airport with only my driver's license.
And anyway, it's way harder to mentally juggle different prices for different flight times/durations than added fees for seats and bags and the like which are pretty fixed.
A new one is high end restaurants adding a "3% fee for the healthcare of the staff" or something that they say they're happy to waive. All you have to do is tell your lovely single mother professional waitress that you specifically want to waive the payment for her health-care
That's on par with the cashier at the grocery store asking you to round up your purchase to help the Red Cross, etc.
Oh, it's much worse!
Round-ups are quick and off by default. Your choice is a simple "yes" or "no", and it's applied instantly with tap of a button. Those added fees have to be noticed, then pointed out, then requested to be removed. Then the poor waitress has to go walk over to the machine, fiddle with it, re-print the bill and bring it back at the cost of her (and your) time.
“I still think that this is probably a place worth an intervention. I think the costs in lived experiences of such failures are high, and the risk of intervention is relatively low”
Counter point: Medical fees are absolutely awash in these sorts of issues, yet how doctors and hospitals charge for these services are extremely tightly regulated. That suggests the risk of intervention is quite high, as it will likely make the situation worse. Customers do not capture regulatory organizations, sellers do.
While I think this is a good counter-example to consider, we should be pretty careful about over-generalizing from almost _any_ example in the medical industry. While you are correct that these kinds of regulations exist there, there are _scores_ of other regulations, including the actual prevention of competitors from entering the market. In other words, we should be careful before deciding exactly which regulation is causing bad outcomes in medicine. There are lots, and they probably interact in a lot of bad ways that are hard to predict.
This shares the same underlying principle that first discredited libertarianism in my mind. I think Scott Alexander, or perhaps it was another blogger, pointed out that sometimes a marginal decrease in overall freedom leads to a significant net increase of individual freedom. Examples include the prohibition on (flagrantly) false advertising, and the use of prisons to reduce public risk exposure. This is exactly the sort of thing governments are good for - reducing the redundant burden upon individuals to responsibly practice their own freedoms.
Edit: removed a real reach of an analogy
Much like almost any "-ism", when it becomes the only thing you believe/consider/use, it is probably going to be bad in lots of cases. However, the idea of valuing and considering the impact on personal freedom is one that should be, at the bare minimum, a component in almost any political decision. In my opinion, I agree that "maximize individual freedom and choice, and damn the consequences!" will probably lead to sup-optimal outcomes in a lot of places, but our current society is so far in the other direction, that I think following that credo in 90% of cases would be better than what we currently have.
So even though I don't personally consider myself a "libertarian" (or any other -ist/-ian), and agree that personal choice/freedom is not always the most important consideration, I think that in the current political milieu it's a better political heuristic than most others.
Also, I think your sugar/salt example is ridiculous enough to undermine the point you are making.
You're right, I don't mean the whole breadth of the philosophy, rather how it is currently imagined and discussed by the majority of its advocates in the USA. I think the main reason it's such a good heuristic right now is that the US is old! There's a lot of legal "junk DNA" that causes unintended problems and makes better solutions seem less important. Also, trying to pass reform in that direction is like trying to get tigers to vote to remove the long grass.
Matt made an additional good point, not mentioned in your analysis here, that as a matter of what regular business travelers actually experience, unbundling has resulted in a race to the bottom due to contingent facts about how expense policies work and how the people who run expense departments are incentivized to (dis)approve upgrade charges. If the basic ticket price entitled you to be lashed to a frame on the exterior of the aircraft, that's what your company would reimburse you for.
(Then 2020 happened and business travel seems to have mostly stopped -- no more days of traveling to have a meeting that could have been an email! -- but I guess that is a different issue.)
I agree with most of what you've written. I do think that choice is good, but that's a separate matter. On bundling and hidden prices, well-crafted legislation could definitely bring an improvement. However, I am wary, as the same people that designed the current system will have a seat at the table when drafting the new regulations.
That said, there are things that that we can do to improve our experiences at the individual level. The main thing is to stop shopping purely on price. If you're taking a vacation and you don't want to start it unnecessarily stressed, avoid the low-cost carriers. Get PreCheck or Global Entry. Book a higher ticket category that allows you to pick your seats and bring more luggage. Pay the annual fee on a credit card that gives you lounge access and priority boarding. In a nutshell, accept that you get what you pay for.
The big lie of the internet is that we can all be super savvy shoppers who know all the tricks to getting that great deal. That's where the flim flam begins. For instance, I follow Conde Nast Traveler on Instagram. I expected their feed to be pretty pictures of interesting places, but it seems to mostly be nonsense tips on how to airline upgrades by dressing fancy and bringing chocolates to the flight attendants. The airlines have some of the smartest engineers in the world building their pricing models. You're not going to beat them with a sport coat. The sooner we internalize this, the better off we'll be.
Is there an example of similar regulations in the USA that is clearly net good? This strikes me as classic "something must be done, and this is something".
I know the USA is the only country that matters in the world, but something very similar has been done 20+ years ago in Australia and it just seems great. There are no unintended consequences I can think of, it's just easy to compare the prices of things because you know you're comparing the final price you'll actually pay
I'm not sure about *pricing* regulations, but in 2018 ago California implemented a "if you can subscribe online, you can cancel online" rule for auto-renewing subscriptions[0]. Cancellation flows can still have multiple "are you sure? what about this discount??" steps, but it's a major improvement over the old "you have to email/call us to cancel". As someone who's worked in subscription ecommerce since 2015, I consider it an unambiguous improvement for consumers, and essentially non-harmful to businesses.
The CAN SPAM Act seems like it was mostly good as well. I suspect there are similar things in phone marketing and SMS spam, though we've clearly been falling down on the job of enforcement.
[0] https://www.upcounsel.com/automatic-renewal-clause-business-to-business-california
Yeah, these seem like clear cases where something was indeed helping. The question is what the proper reference class should be...
I cannot understand how a airline can claim they care about safety if they even flirt with the idea that a 5-year-old could be required (or even allowed) to sit on their own.
The extra fees for sitting together on planes I find very strange. This does not appear to be a thing on flights I have taken in the UK / EU, which normally let you pick your seat at check in with more desirable seats commanding a premium.
The description of these fees as a “premium for sitting together” is silly and unhelpful. Many airlines are now offering two classes of tickets in coach: (1) for the cheapest fare you do not get to choose your seats; they are assigned at check in and are usually the ones no one else wanted. (2) when you pay the higher price you get to select your seats when you buy them. (There are additional fees for the most desirable seats such as those toward the front.)
The unintended consequence of not paying the extra fare to choose your seat is that you probably won’t get to sit together. It’s not a “fee for sitting together,” it’s a fee for picking good seats.
Australian consumer law has long held that the advertised price must have the full price that you'll end up paying including taxes and fees in a font at least as large as any other price advertised. Doesn't help with things like baggage inclusions, but frauds like "resort fees" are just non existent here.
I can't support the Amazon meme. Amazon's handling of shipping fees has been a slow-moving catastrophe, but the catastrophe has finally arrived.
The original system was that you paid separately for goods and for shipping. This meant you ordered whatever level of shipping you wanted.
Then they introduced Amazon Prime, where you paid a subscription fee and all of your orders received two-day shipping.
Then they stopped providing different levels of shipping. Even for non-Prime accounts. It's all best-effort. If you want two-day shipping, Amazon will no longer provide that.
$10.00 + $2.39 shipping meant you could substitute more expensive shipping if you needed it.
$12.39 + free shipping meant you could go screw yourself if you needed faster shipping, or even deterministic shipping.
Legislation of this type require the government to have a deep working knowledge of any industry it tries to regulate. You would essentially be inviting the government into micro manage every industry. This would quickly be followed by civil lawsuits by customers who believed "that should have been included".
The problem with option #3 (Require aggregation sites ... based on true cost), is now you have an adversarial relationship. Delta is strongly incentivized to keep Kayak in the dark and Kayak has no recourse if Delta succeeds. You have a psuedo-government / regulatory function handled by a private actor; the actor needs to possess real teeth.
An example would be a government mandate forcing Delta, et al to publish enough pricing data somewhere Kayak can reliably infer the truth. Rules in this realm can be vague enough to not create new problems like impeding the privacy of Delta's customers or allowing creative front-running of data, but any attempts to mislead now constitute lying to the Government instead of lying to Kayak.
Yes, I agree that the mandate would need to be applied here to Delta as well to make the information available to Kayak.
Well first the meme's first panel should read $9.99 (+ $2.40 shipping). And second why not let the market take care of these market type of things? And finally I think we all have to stop taking price as the over ridding point of importance. To do so gives us the current race to the bottom. Way back in the past we use to fly on British Airlines, somewhat because they had the best food and service. Why can't an airline bill itself as family friendly and keep families seated together? Be willing as consumers to pay more for better quality, better service, locally made. Those are all long term investments, we need more long term thinking. Or Moloch shall rule us.
Mandating bundling of flight fares is a terrible idea. This terrible logic turns up in a lot of places where people think the dollar cost is the problem, but the real problem is availability. Families are not worse off having to pay to sit together, they are BETTER off. It is not a major problem for me to pay a little bit more to pick adjacent seats for my family. Typically the cost for seat choice in regular coach is very cheap, even $30 per seat for a cross-country flight.
What is a major problem for a family trying to fly together is not being able to find adjacent seats available at all. With seat choice costing money, people who care about their seat have many empty seats to pick, because a lot of passengers will be randomly assigned at the last minute. This is a terrible area for government to legislate. The people have spoken with regard to flight fares. A small minority may bitch and moan, but what actually happens is people flood to the cheap crap service because what they want is cheap service. If you want the fancy service, you can still get it. People just think they can give it for free and garbage politicians encourage that belief for votes.
I mean seriously, how dumb is this argument? It's not fair for people to pay $30 on top of their $200 fare to pick their seat. So we'll mandate a $230 fare with free seats. The best you can twist that is to say well we're probably only mandating $220 seats, so see it's a $10 benefit for this group over here that we think might vote for us.
None of this is hidden. I have no idea how someone can buy a flight ticket and be unaware of what is not bundled. Spirit literally has giant yellow popups that tell you at each stage.
Resort fees I can find no justification for. In theory they might be a way to differentiate their "resort" services, but hotels use crap like free phone calls to justify them, as if anyone has used a hotel phone to make a call in the last 15 years. I think the hysteria over them is certainly not justified though. I can't think of anywhere I've made a reservation where it wasn't disclosed at the time of booking. A surprise when you show up at the hotel may be fraud, a surprise when you click through a list of options is an annoyance. It's the kind of thing the government should probably stay out of, and people should fix it by patronizing sites that are better at disclosing them. Marriott lets you choose if you want the all inclusive price, or just the base price (I do find the base price search useful, though it's a niche use, and only because resort fees are a thing).
You're absolutely right regarding the seating. It's quite possible that eliminating seat charges makes families *worse off* on net to the extent that their unique preference for seating together becomes more difficult to satisfy when people who don't value it very much are now choosing seats early and eliminating large contiguous blocks in the seat map. What good is it to have free seat selection if there are no longer 4 contiguous seats together for your family? It's not a price transparency issue at all: as you say, it's very obvious and explicit that you have to pay for seats when you buy a basic economy ticket. So don't buy a basic economy ticket - you value seat selection if you're a family.
There are also technical and logistical issues with making this happen. If you require specifically PNRs with at least one passenger under the age of 18 to entail free seat selection, how does this work on the back-end exactly? What happens when you book a PNR with 4 people including an under 18, then split the PNR for the under 18 and refund that one? Easy hack for a bunch of adults to get free seats, and kind of difficult to counteract from an IT standpoint. People need to sit down and think this through more thoroughly, specifically the second and third order consequences. I suspect if this becomes law, airlines may just start bundling seat selection to avoid a lot of IT and logistical hassles. Which then just gives rise to what I said earlier about that potentially making family travel *worse off*. And that's not even touching on the price discrimination effects which are likely regressive on net.
Price transparency issues like resort fees are much more cut and dry. That should be tackled as soon as possible.
The airlines' marginal cost for booking a seat reservation is close to $0. They have to assign a seat earlier or later. Charging $30 on a $200 ticket - 15% - or $120 for a family of four seems like highway robbery, because it is. Most people buying multiples of something get a discount, whether it is the big bottle of shampoo or buy 2 get the third for free. One transaction to sell four tickets is a good deal for the airlines so they can afford to be generous with seat selection, and shouldn't charge them anything.
I can see that charging something is a way to allow early bookers and those who value seat preference to "buy" a better seat. Charing $10 (5%) for picking a seat seems okay. If you want two or three seats, I think charging the same $10 is appropriate. With four seats, the reservation is free. Some single fliers can choose to wait leaving seats available, couples can buy seats together, and families automatically get to stay together. Not as profitable as charging a 15% premium but it doesn't piss people off so they decide the government needs to get involved.
In the case of couple, one fee of $10 for reserving two seats, if that wasn't clear.
Drip pricing (https://passingtime.substack.com/p/perfidious-pricing) is a growing problem; it's a multipolar trap a la Meditiations on Moloch.