Update: In addition to the states below, fee transparency laws have gone into effect in CO, CT, and TN.
On July 1, 2024 we rolled out Fee Transparency Law Pricing. These new laws being enacted by states and perhaps at the Federal level as well mandate that advertised prices (including websites and emails) include processing fees. As of July 1 these are required in New York, California and Maryland. We will add other states as they roll online.
We have updated pricing in most places including Registration, Tickets, Memberships and Email. There are literally dozens of places where we show prices on races and in emails – if you see missing places please let us know at info@runsignup.com.
Our first approach is to show and all inclusive price with a tooltip:
Here is an example in a smaller text area (Event Info page), that also shows the price cross out (which also calculates the price plus processing fee):
This pricing also shows in the registration path with features like cross out pricing automated:
Complex pricing items like age based pricing are also automatically calculated:
We also are supporting fee transparency in email with our custom tags for pricing. For example, the price increase tag shows prices correctly:
Several additional notes:
Check Your Static Content. Many events have their own websites, or have put pricing information as text on their websites hosted by RunSignup. This has to be updated as well. For example, this race has a static content page on their website showing pricing without processing fees. Their state (Maryland) has a $10,000 fine for an offense like this (another reason to use the dynamic pricing in RunSignup):
The Full Price Must be Shown. We have gotten a lot of calls to say, just put $35 plus $3.10 processing fee instead of $38.10. This does not meet the requirements of the laws.
Charging Participants for Processing Fees. We still recommend this for most cases. In early observations of feedback from NY (where this was rolled out earlier), there was not a drop in registrations with showing the bundled price, and there was not a material expansion of participant questions.
Display Options. We will be introducing some display option capability for our Event Tiles in the coming months. This will allow for customization of the helper text as well as a smaller font underneath the large font single price that will explain something like “includes $35 plus $3.10 processing fee”. We obviously can not fit that in all places where pricing is shown.
Summary
Much like the roll out of Sales Tax several years ago, RunSignup is taking a proactive approach following the law and trying to make things as easy as possible for our customers. It is also a reminder that having an integrated website and email with our event registration / ticketing system that has dynamic event based content is becoming even more important.