Drip Pricing
Etymology
A term of art from economics and consumer-protection regulation, studied by agencies like the UK’s Office of Fair Trading and the US Federal Trade Commission in the 2010s. The "drip" captures the method — charges leaking out in stages rather than shown up front. Its close relatives, "junk fees" and "resort fees," name the same tactic by its outputs.
noun · /DRIP PRY-sing/
Advertising a low headline price, then revealing mandatory fees one at a time as the customer moves through checkout.
What it names
A handle for a specific manipulation of how we shop: quoting a number that isn’t the real number, and drip-feeding the rest once you’re already committed.
Example
The concert ticket was thirty dollars until drip pricing added a service fee, a facility fee, and a processing fee at the final screen.
Related idea
It exploits the sunk cost fallacy: by the time the fees appear, you’ve invested enough effort in the purchase that abandoning it feels wasteful.