The price you see should be the price you pay
Since June 2022 it has been illegal in Canada to advertise a price you cannot actually buy at. Here is what that changed, and why we rank every seller on the delivered total instead of the sticker.
Most shopping comparisons are a small lie of omission. A charger is listed at $49.00 by one seller and $51.23 by another, so you pick the $49.00 one, and at checkout $5.99 of shipping arrives and you have paid $54.99 — more than the offer you turned down.
Nothing about that is unusual. It is also, in Canada, against the law.
What changed in June 2022
Amendments to the Competition Act came into force on 23 June 2022 and added drip pricing to both the civil and criminal prohibitions on false or misleading representations, at sections 74.01 and 52.
The Competition Bureau describes drip pricing as offering a price that is not actually attainable because of obligatory fees added later or buried in fine print. The Act now deems that misleading in itself. You do not have to prove anyone was fooled; advertising a price that cannot be paid is the offence.
There is one exception, and it is narrower than people assume. Charges are only excused if they are imposed by an Act of Parliament or of a provincial legislature. Sales tax qualifies. A booking fee does not. A service charge does not.
Neither does shipping. Delivery is a charge the seller sets, not one the government imposes, so a mandatory delivery cost belongs in the advertised price. That single distinction is why our offer tables lead with the delivered figure.
The penalties are not nominal either. For a corporation the Tribunal can now order the greater of $10 million or three times the benefit derived from the conduct — and where that benefit cannot reasonably be determined, up to 3% of annual worldwide gross revenues.
What we do about it
Every offer on FirstBy is ranked on what we call the landed cost: the item price plus the delivery you are obliged to pay to receive it. Not the sticker.
That ordering routinely disagrees with the sticker ordering, which is the entire point. On the charger above, the seller with the lowest headline price is the most expensive to receive. If we ranked on the sticker we would send you to the wrong seller while appearing to save you money.
You will see both numbers. The delivered total leads, the breakdown sits underneath it, and where a cheaper-looking offer ends up costing more we say so in the table rather than leaving you to do the arithmetic.
What to watch for elsewhere
- A price that changes at the final step. If a mandatory fee appears only at checkout, that is the pattern the amendment targets.
- "Free shipping over $X" where X moves. A threshold is fine. A threshold that quietly excludes your item is not.
- Fees described as taxes. Only charges actually imposed by legislation get the exemption. A "regulatory recovery fee" set by the seller is not a tax.
None of this requires you to become a lawyer. It requires the price to be honest, which is a lower bar than the industry has historically cleared.
Sources: [Competition Bureau Canada — Drip pricing](https://competition-bureau.canada.ca/en/deceptive-marketing-practices/drip-pricing); [Guide to the 2022 amendments to the Competition Act](https://competition-bureau.canada.ca/en/guide-2022-amendments-competition-act); [Government of Canada — Important amendments to the Competition Act come into effect](https://www.canada.ca/en/competition-bureau/news/2022/06/important-amendments-to-the-competition-act-come-into-effect.html).