There is a federal all-in pricing rule, it is in force, and it has already been enforced. What almost nobody says out loud is the next sentence: it covers live-event tickets and short-term lodging, and it covers nothing else. Not your grocery delivery, your online order, your car hire, your gym, your broadband bill or your apartment. Which pile your checkout is in decides whether you can point at a section number, point at your state's law instead, or rely on the general ban on deception and your card issuer. Three amounts of leverage — find out which one you have before you write anything.
FTC, et al. v. Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. and Ticketmaster, LLC, No. 2:25-cv-08884 (C.D. Cal.), complaint filed 18 September 2025, paragraph 36.
Since 12 May 2025 the advertised price has had to be the price you actually pay — for two industries. The Commission found the evidence of misleading fee practices to be economy-wide and then narrowed the rule anyway, saying it would first focus on live-event ticketing and short-term lodging. As at 27 August 2026 it has not gone further, and a stated intention to consider something later is not a rule that binds a seller today.
The confusion is not the reader's fault. In December 2024 the Federal Trade Commission announced the rule in a press release describing it, in its own words, as a rule banning junk ticket and hotel fees. It is not a ban on fees at all — the Commission states in terms that the rule ‘does not prohibit any type or amount of fee or specific pricing strategies’ — and it is not economy-wide. A $60 venue fee is perfectly lawful if it sits inside the first price you are shown.
§464.1 defines it as the maximum total of all fees a consumer must pay for the good or service and any mandatory ancillary good or service, except that government charges, shipping charges and optional extras may be excluded. Maximum, not a starting price. Must, so declining has to be a real option. Except, and only three categories are allowed out.
§464.2(b) requires a business to disclose the total price more prominently than any other pricing information. The single thing permitted to outrank it is the final amount of payment — which is larger, not smaller. It is not a loophole.
§464.2(c): before you consent to pay, the nature, purpose and amount of every excluded fee, the identity of the good or service it is charged on, and the final amount of payment. Permission to leave a charge outside the headline is not permission to keep it quiet.
§464.3 makes it unlawful to misrepresent the nature, purpose, amount or refundability of any fee, or the identity of the thing it is imposed for. It bites even where the fee was properly included in the total, because it is about the description rather than the arithmetic.
The book is built around your receipt. Which body of law it sits under is the question almost nothing else in circulation answers correctly, and everything you can do next follows from the answer.
Live-event tickets and short-term lodging — hotel, motel, inn, short-term rental, vacation rental — are inside 16 CFR Part 464. A residential lease, a car hire, a delivery order and an online retail order are not, however the fee is labelled. Knowing that in thirty seconds stops you spending a week demanding something no federal rule requires.
Four states were verified individually from a statute, a regulation, an official bill record or an attorney general's own guidance. California's is the widest and the only one that hands the consumer a way to sue. If your state is not among the four, the book does not conclude you have nothing — it tells you it did not check.
The advertised price disappears. Screenshot the search result, the selection screen, the screen where the fee first appeared and the final payment screen, in order. The sequence is the case; a single receipt shows only the end of the story. Then write the arithmetic in one line.
Letter 1 first, and keep it: the strongest credit card route formally requires a good faith attempt to resolve the dispute with the merchant. Then §1026.12(c) claims and defences, which lets you assert against the issuer the claim you have against the seller, alongside a written billing error notice inside 60 days of the statement.
Neither the FTC nor your state Attorney General is a refund mechanism. Both are how the government finds out what is happening, and both have visibly produced money for consumers — months or years later, and to a class rather than to a complainant. The card route is the one with a clock on it.
Instant download. PDF and DOCX, so the letters can be edited rather than retyped.
Twenty-two chapters in five parts — the federal rule and how far it reaches, the state laws that reach everything else, tickets specifically, getting your money back, and the paperwork.
The definition of covered good or service printed whole, six boundary cases decided by it, and the one the book refuses to decide because no government source classified it.
The price at checkout was higher than advertised; a demand citing your state's all-in pricing law; a complaint to your state Attorney General; a credit card billing error notice with claims and defences; a debit card notice of error; every mandatory fee in writing before you sign; and what is this fee for.
The seller while the screen is still open; your credit card issuer; your bank on a debit card; your state Attorney General's consumer line; a leasing office before you apply; and a ticket seller on a fee you were not shown.
California, Minnesota, Colorado and Massachusetts — what each covers, what may be excluded, when it came into force, and who can enforce it. Plus what could not be confirmed, and where that leaves you.
Order the same meal from the restaurant and from an app, in California, and you are under two different regimes — because the carve-out expressly excludes third-party delivery platforms.
A rule, a statute about bots, an executive order, a bill that passed one chamber, and state law. Only one of them binds a seller on price, and the book separates them with dates and vote counts.
Why credit is not debit — the written notice, the 60 days from the statement, the bank's own deadlines, and the claims and defences right that actually fits an overcharge. Plus why Regulation E is usually the wrong instrument here.
Four prompts that genuinely help, and a blunt list of what never to ask — starting with what your state's law says, which assistants state with total confidence and routinely get wrong.
Eight routes with what each one will not do, fourteen terms in plain English, and honest answers to nine questions people actually ask.
The definition of covered good or service names two things and stops. Almost everything written about this rule describes it as economy-wide, and a reader who believes that spends a week demanding something no federal rule requires of the seller they are arguing with.
Connecticut's general junk fee law could not be verified because the enacted text could not be retrieved. New York's all-in requirement is tickets only, and the bill that would widen it has passed one chamber. A Georgia citation named by the Congressional Research Service was not opened in the Georgia Code, so it is not printed as this book's own. No Tennessee statute was found.
The Ticketmaster, Epic Seats and Altice matters are pending. Every figure taken from them is labelled as an allegation rather than a finding — including the one this book put on its cover, which is the hardest place to keep that discipline.
Regulation E's definition of error is a closed list, and a merchant charging more than it advertised is not on it: you authorised the payment, and the amount that reached your account is the amount requested. There is no Regulation E equivalent of the claims and defences right. If you expect to argue about a price, pay with a credit card.
Chapters 1 to 3 for what the seller owed you, then Chapter 5 for what happened to the first company the FTC caught breaking the rule — a settlement announced 9 April 2026, with $10 million refunded to consumers.
Part Two, because whether you have a right to an all-in price depends entirely on which state you are in. Four were checked in full, and two more have ticket-only laws.
Chapter 14 tonight for the evidence, then Chapter 17 for the card routes. The credit card route and the debit card route are not the same, and readers lose remedies by treating them as though they were.
Chapter 18 and Letter 6, which ask for every mandatory fee in writing first. The FTC alleged one landlord advertised rents excluding mandatory fees that could total more than $1,700 yearly, disclosed only when the lease arrived.
Chapter 16 sets out what the FTC will do with your report and what your state Attorney General will do, which are different things — and neither of them is a refund.
No route here does that. The rule governs where the number appears, not how big it is, and the FTC says so in terms.
Four state laws were verified individually, plus ticket laws in two more. That is six, not fifty, and printing a national table from four would be exactly the error this book is written against.
The rules cited are US federal regulations and US state law.
Most of these differences are small enough to shrug at individually, which is the whole design. The evidence method in Chapter 14 is free to run and takes one evening, and it is what makes every letter afterwards work.
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An explanation of pricing rules and how the disclosure duties are written. Not legal advice, and reading it creates no professional relationship.
It can tell you which body of law your receipt sits under, which is the question almost nothing else in circulation answers correctly.
The most repeated figure for what junk fees cost Americans each year has no government publisher at all. The one that does covers ten specific fee categories rather than all fees, draws several components from an advocacy publisher, a comparison site and a hotel trade body, and now exists only as an archived snapshot. Both are named in Chapter 22 and neither is relied on.
Every number here is published by a government body — a rule, a statute, a court filing, an enforcement order, an attorney general. Every large company named is a defendant or the subject of an enforcement action, and none of them supplied a figure.
This edition has just been released. Rather than publish testimonials from people who do not exist, these spaces are held for the first genuine reader reviews. On a product whose whole argument is that unsourced numbers should not be trusted, that seemed like the only defensible choice.
If Chapter 4 saved you a week by telling you what you were not covered by, we would like to hear it — and to publish it in your own words, with your permission.
We will not publish claims about amounts recovered. What a card issuer or a seller decides depends on facts no book controls.
Reserved for someone who screenshotted every screen in order and used the sequence rather than the receipt. That is the chapter we would most like to hear worked.
Screenshot the advertised price before the page changes, and check whether the charge is on a credit card. Those two facts decide most of what follows. Chapters 14 and 17.
For live-event tickets and short-term lodging, yes, since 12 May 2025. For everything else there is no federal rule — only your state's law, if it has one, and four states were confirmed for this book. Chapter 4.
Not under the federal fees rule, which does not cover delivery. In California, Minnesota, Colorado or Massachusetts your state's all-in pricing law is the instrument — and in California the restaurant carve-out expressly does not protect third-party delivery platforms. Everywhere else, the route is deception generally, plus your card.
Not by this route. The FTC says the rule does not prohibit any type or amount of fee or specific pricing strategies. It governs where the number appears, not how big it is. The complaint that works is that you were shown a different number.
Sixty days from the statement the charge first appears on — not from the purchase, and not from when you noticed. That is true of both the credit card route and the debit card route, though they are otherwise different regimes. Chapter 17.
Not for you individually; it does not resolve individual complaints. It does bring cases, and those cases have produced refunds — $10 million from StubHub, $48 million from Invitation Homes, $100 million from Vonage — but to groups of consumers, later. File anyway, and pursue the card route in parallel.
Both. Every purchase includes the PDF and an editable DOCX, so the letters can be filled in and sent rather than retyped.
Email sales@viralbydesign.co within 7 days of purchase for a full refund. No forms, no explanation required.
Open it, read Chapter 4, and find out in thirty seconds whether the federal rule covers the thing you just bought — because for most readers it does not, and knowing that is what stops the wasted week. If it is not what you expected, email sales@viralbydesign.co within 7 days of purchase and you get a full refund. No forms, no explanation required.
In one of them you can point at a federal regulation, quote its section number, and say the seller was required to show you a different number. In the other you point at your state's law, if it has one, or fall back on the general ban on deception — which only the government can enforce — plus whatever your card issuer will do for you. Three amounts of leverage, and thirty seconds to find out which is yours.
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