Creeping Costs
1
Basket
2
Details
3
Delivery
4
Payment
Your basket
Aura Portable Speaker
Wireless Bluetooth, 12hr battery, IPX5 waterproof
£29.99
Qty: 1
Your details
Alex Johnson
alex.johnson@email.com
07700 900123
M1 4BT
42 Piccadilly, Manchester
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4242 4242 4242 4242
09/27
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Order summary
Aura Portable Speaker
£29.99
Total
£29.99
HIDDEN COSTS
What just happened
Advertised
£29.99
You paid
£47.83
+60%
Where the fees appeared
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Product price shown
£29.99
Details
Standard delivery
+£5.99
Delivery
Handling fee
+£2.50
Delivery
Packaging protection
+£2.99
Payment
Service charge
+£3.99
Payment
Card processing surcharge
+£2.37
You didn't add anything. They just hadn't finished telling you the price yet.
Each fee was small enough to feel trivial. All of them were hidden until you'd already entered your address and card details. By then, walking away feels like losing. That's the sunk cost fallacy, and drip pricing is designed to exploit it.
StubHub's own experiments showed that hiding fees this way increased revenue by 21% and made users 14% more likely to complete a purchase.