Prices That Grow at Checkout

The total at the last step

A shopper finds what they want at a price they are happy with, adds it to the cart and works through the checkout. On the final screen, the total is higher.

A booking fee has appeared, or a service charge, or a cleaning fee nobody mentioned. Each is small. Together they change the price the shopper had agreed to in their head.

Some pay and feel tricked. Many close the tab. A few say so in a review, which more people will read than ever saw the fee.

It is also a legal question. Canada's rules against misleading advertising apply to prices on a website as much as to a printed flyer.

Fees that tend to appear late

• Booking or service fees added to every online order.
• Administration fees with no stated purpose.
• Required add-ons such as cleaning, setup or a damage waiver.
• Delivery on items that cannot be collected.
• Surcharges for small orders, weekends or fuel.

The third is the one businesses most often slip into without noticing. A charge that began as an option became standard over the years, and nobody went back to the product page to fold it into the price.

What the law looks at

The Competition Act forbids advertising that misleads people in a way that could affect their decision to buy, and it judges a claim by the overall impression it leaves as well as by its exact wording.

A price nobody can actually pay, because every buyer must accept charges added later, is the kind of claim that rule is aimed at.

A fee revealed in fine print or on the last screen does not necessarily correct the impression the first price gave.

Some provinces also have consumer protection rules of their own about advertised prices.

This is general information, not legal advice. If your pricing has several moving parts, a lawyer can tell you where it stands.

Mandatory or optional

One test sorts most charges: can the customer avoid it? If every buyer pays it, it is part of the price and belongs in the number you advertise.

A genuinely optional extra, such as gift wrapping, faster delivery or an extended warranty, can be offered along the way, as long as it is clearly a choice.

A charge that is optional on paper but unavoidable in practice, such as delivery on a bed nobody can carry home, should be treated as mandatory.

Taxes and shipping

Sales tax is the one addition shoppers in Canada expect, since prices are normally shown before GST, HST or PST. Saying plus applicable taxes beside the price removes any doubt.

Shipping varies by address, so it cannot always sit inside the price.

It can still be shown early: a table of rates on the product page, or an estimate in the cart from a postal code, before any payment details are requested.

A shopper who meets shipping for the first time on the payment screen feels the same surprise as one meeting a fee.

Pre-ticked boxes

An optional extra that arrives already selected works like a mandatory fee for everyone who does not notice it. Damage waivers, protection plans and donations are the usual examples.

Leave every optional box unticked, with the price beside the choice. Customers who want the extra will tick it themselves.

A worked example

A mobility equipment store rents wheelchairs, walkers and scooters by the week, often to families arranging help for a visiting parent or someone just home from hospital.

Its rental pages showed a weekly price. At checkout, three more lines appeared: a sanitising fee on every rental, a damage waiver already ticked, and a delivery charge on scooters, which the store did not let customers collect.

Customers phoned to ask why the total was higher than the price they had seen. Some abandoned the booking at the last screen, and one review called the pricing sneaky.

The reason was simple. People were budgeting from the first number, and each extra line felt like the store moving the goalposts.

The store folded sanitising into the weekly price and showed delivery on each scooter page as part of the total. The damage waiver became an unticked option, with one sentence saying what it covers.

The total at checkout now matches what the customer saw first, plus tax.

Showing the full price early

The price on the product or service page should be the price, with every mandatory charge included. Where something varies, show how: delivery by zone in a small table, setup by size.

A price that begins with from should be one a real customer can get, not the cheapest configuration nobody ever orders.

The same number has to appear everywhere the price does: AdWords ads, social posts, flyers and listings. An ad quoting an older figure creates the same problem one step earlier.

Use the same words throughout as well. A charge called a service fee in the cart and a booking fee on the receipt looks like two charges.

Explaining extras plainly

Each optional extra needs one sentence: what it is, what it costs, and that it is optional. A link to a separate terms page is not an explanation.

Put that sentence where the choice is made, beside the box, rather than in the footer or the confirmation email.

And if nearly everyone buys a particular extra, ask whether it should simply be part of the price.

The counter-case

Some costs genuinely cannot be known in advance: shipping to a remote address, custom work measured on site, a job whose size changes once it starts. There, say early that the figure varies, give a range, and explain why.

A small business will not get every case right at once. Start with the charges every customer pays, since those are the clearest problem.

The principle stays simple: if it cannot be avoided, it belongs in the price from the first page.

The checkout, line by line

1. Buy something from your own site start to finish.
2. List every line added after the cart.
3. Mark each one mandatory or optional.
4. Fold mandatory charges into the advertised price.
5. Untick every optional box by default.
6. Show shipping before payment details are asked for.
7. Match the price in ads and listings.

Step four is the one that changes how the business looks. A slightly higher price that holds to the end reads as honest; a lower price that grows reads as a trick, whatever the reason for each fee.

The same care applies to bold claims about price, covered in a lowest price promise on the website.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.