Concert Tickets and Vacation Rentals Get Hit by FTC’s War on Junk Fees

As one Eras ends, another era dawns…

The Federal Trade Commission announced new rules Tuesday on junk fees — i.e., extra charges that companies hide from you until you’re already on your way to the checkout — specifically for live-event ticket sales and short-term vacation rentals. Don’t get too excited at the idea of cheaper Taylor Swift tickets: The rules just force sellers to present all the extra fees they plan to tack on upfront. 

Is the War Over Now?

The Biden-era war on junk fees arguably began with the Taylor Swift Eras tour. When tickets went on sale back in 2022, outrage quickly followed as Ticketmaster’s website crashed under the strain of Swiftie demand and scalpers made huge profits off the tickets they bought in bulk. The debacle drew lawmaker scrutiny on a number of fronts, and in June 2023, Ticketmaster agreed to offer consumers upfront comprehensive pricing rather than cold-punching them at the checkout window.

Now, just after the Eras tour has finally finished, we see some knock-on effects from the Biden administration’s war on junk fees:

• The new rules will apply to short-term lodging of all kinds, and specifically namecheck Airbnb and VRBO as being subject to them. So next time you see a beautiful log cabin on Airbnb, any suspiciously exorbitant cleaning fee should be right there in the price tag — once the rules take effect in April, anyway.
• This set of rules is likely to be FTC Chair Lina Khan’s swan song, as President-elect Trump has said he plans to replace Khan as chair with Republican Commissioner Andrew Ferguson. Ferguson was the only commissioner to reject the new junk fee regulations, but don’t take that as a sign of how he’ll run the FTC — Ferguson was explicit about the fact he only voted that way because he thinks the Biden Administration shouldn’t be making any rules. “The time for rule-making by the Biden-Harris FTC is over,” Ferguson said.

Plane and Simple: The FTC’s rules won’t apply to the airline industry, one of history’s great junk-fee innovators. A Senate report last month found that US airlines pull in billions from junk fees, and the committee that produced it is currently made up of five Democrats and four Republicans, so a fairly even bipartisan split. The momentum isn’t guaranteed to carry through to next year, however, when control of the chamber shifts to Republicans. Trump didn’t mention junk fees on the campaign trail and his picks for administration leadership roles hint at broad deregulation and abolition of consumer guardrails. Mind you, there are probably no seat-selection fees on Trump Force One.