(Ottawa) The Competition Tribunal hears oral arguments for a second day on Thursday in a case that could decide whether Cineplex can continue to charge its customers additional fees for purchasing movie tickets online.
This is the first time the court has heard a case involving trickle-down billing since the Competition law explicitly recognized, in June 2022, that incomplete price disclosure constituted a “deceptive commercial practice”.
“Drip pricing,” also known as “hidden fees,” is a deceptive practice in which customers are lured into a purchase without the full and final cost of the item being fully disclosed.
The $1.50 fee charged by Cineplex for online ticket purchases falls into this category, says the Office of the Competition Commissioner, which referred the matter to the Competition Tribunal.
The commissioner’s lawyers argued Wednesday that patrons had no choice but to pay those fees and that purchasing tickets in person at the theater was not a reasonable alternative.
Cineplex has raked in almost $40 million from these fees since they first appeared in mid-2022.
The Competition Tribunal heard arguments on whether these fees were sufficiently visible on Cineplex’s website and whether it was reasonable to expect moviegoers to scroll down to see the full price of their ticket.
The Competition Commissioner claims that this pricing is misleading, because the consumer does not see the total price of a cinema ticket on the very first page of the online site.
Cineplex argues in its written arguments submitted to the court that customers can avoid these fees altogether if they buy their ticket at the theater, as half of all its customers do.
The movie theater giant also says the full ticket price, including online booking fees, is displayed “prominently” and immediately to the left of the “Continue” button that customers must click to purchase their tickets .
Cineplex lawyer Robert Russell argued Thursday that what the commissioner is calling into question is not whether the customer sees the final price, but rather when they see it.
“There is no misrepresentation. There is no omission, he argued. The scrolling problem, the so-called “hiding” problems, it all depends on when you see the final price, he argued.
The competition commissioner cited an expert opinion that Cineplex’s pricing practices meet the definition of information blackout – when companies obscure or make it laborious to find product information from customers .