Community Pricing System for Hidden Fee Transparency
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Solution Overview
Problem
Service providers, especially travel service providers, often obscure additional fees and surcharges, making it difficult for customers to compare the overall cost of services across different providers.
Innovation Solution
A system and method to extract and estimate fees and surcharges from service providers based on prior interactions, using data from electronic publications, billings, and employee expense reports, allowing for a true comparison of service costs.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If service providers list only basic negotiated service fees, then service providers can protect high margin revenues, but customers cannot compare the overall cost of services across different providers
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the total service cost into multiple components: base service fee, additional fees, and surcharges. By breaking down the pricing structure into distinct segments and displaying each separately, the system enables customers to see the complete cost picture while providers can still protect margin information by showing only the base fee and estimating additional costs based on historical data.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary actions by gathering and analyzing historical fee and surcharge data from multiple providers before presenting pricing information to customers. This pre-processing of fee structures allows the system to provide accurate estimates of additional costs that will be charged, enabling true cost comparison across providers before the customer makes a decision.
2Reliability
If service providers hide fees and surcharges, then providers can protect high margin revenues, but customers cannot track the total cost of services
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary system that acts as a mediator between service providers and customers. This intermediary gathers fee information from providers, processes it through historical data analysis, and presents comprehensive cost information to customers. The intermediary enables total cost tracking for customers while allowing providers to maintain their revenue protection strategies by not directly disclosing all fee structures.
3Productivity
If service providers charge multiple fees and surcharges, then providers can increase revenue margins, but the total cost becomes difficult to compare across providers
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies parameter changes by transforming the complex pricing data from multiple providers into a standardized, comparable format. The system changes the presentation parameters to show base fees uniformly across all providers while using historical data to estimate and display additional fees and surcharges in a consistent manner, enabling easy comparison despite the underlying complexity of multiple fee structures.
Data Source
AI summary
One embodiment of the invention includes a method and system to obtain data for fees and surcharges charged by multiple providers for multiple services based on prior interactions with the service providers, and provide an estimate for fees and surcharges to be charged by one of the service providers for one of the services based on the prior interactions with the service providers. In one embodiment, the fee data is extracted from one of electronic publishing of fees, billings for services rendered, and employee expense reports. In one embodiment, the estimated fees and surcharges include restricted access to a first subset of data to a first predetermined group.