Drip pricing

The technique works on the order of disclosure rather than on concealment. Every fee appears before payment; each appears after the decision it would have changed. Comparison happens on the first screen, and the first screen is the one carrying the lowest number.

The UK Department for Business and Trade sampled 525 online providers in September 2023 and found at least one dripped fee at 46% of them, modelling the consumer cost at between £0.6bn and £3.5bn a year in additional online spend.

In the UAE two instruments reach it before any argument about fairness. Cabinet Decision No. 66 of 2023 requires the total price in dirhams to be disclosed before purchase, and Article 27(1) of Cabinet Decision No. 52 of 2017 requires published prices for a taxable supply to be inclusive of VAT — so a shelf price excluding tax is a tax question first.

Assuming the fee is fine because it is disclosed somewhere

Disclosure is judged where the decision is made, not where the lawyer put it. A charge revealed at step four of five is disclosed to a buyer who has already chosen, and a price advertised excluding VAT is non-compliant in the UAE however clearly the exclusion is labelled.

Dark pattern

An interface arranged so that the outcome the business wants is cheaper for the user to reach than the outcome the user came for.

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Conversion rate

The share of a defined population that completed a defined action — meaningless until both the population and the action are stated.

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AOV

Revenue divided by the number of orders that produced it — the simplest lever on unit economics and the most volatile.

All forty-five termsWhat this is regulated by in the UAE

Is this one right in your own numbers?

The definitions are the easy part. Whether the figure on your dashboard was computed this way is a different question, and usually the more expensive one.