Service Fees Are Annoying…But Not Bad Faith

A recent case out of the District of Connecticut, Singer v. Priceline Group, Inc., No. 15-cv-1090 (VAB), tackles an issue familiar to all who travel: service fees. The plaintiff, on behalf of a class, sued Priceline over the fact that service fees were added on to the price that he bid to pay for a hotel room. We’ve all been beset by service fees tacked onto the prices quoted for various travel-related items, from hotel rooms to flights, and to be honest I feel like I, to some extent, have just grown used to and resigned to them. The court seems to feel the same way about them here. The service fees weren’t a breach of contract, since Priceline’s Terms of Use explicitly stated that service fees might be charged above the quoted price, nor were they a breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing because, again, Priceline was upfront about the fact that Singer might owe more money in service fees from the hotel. Priceline never made any representation that it wouldn’t provide Singer with quotes that might require further service fees and so did not act in bad faith when it did so in a way that the court found was open and reasonable.

I might wish that more places would just tell me the end price without the extra fees, but, for now, I think the widespread acceptance of these fees in the course of transactions indicates they’re here to stay for the time being.