What drip pricing actually is
Drip pricing is advertising a price that nobody can actually pay, because a mandatory fee gets added later. In 2022 the federal government amended the Competition Act to name it directly. Advertising a price that is not attainable because of extra fixed charges the buyer must pay now counts as a misleading representation on its face. The Competition Bureau does not have to prove anyone was fooled.
The key words are mandatory and fixed. A booking fee, a service fee or a processing fee that everyone has to pay is the kind of charge the rule is aimed at. Government charges, such as GST, HST and PST, are the exception. You can add sales tax at checkout without breaking this rule.
The Cineplex case
Cineplex is the case everyone points to. Starting in June 2022, it added a $1.50 “online booking fee” to each movie ticket bought online. The ticket prices it advertised did not include that fee. In September 2024 the Competition Tribunal found this was drip pricing and ordered a penalty of about $39 million.
Cineplex appealed. On January 21, 2026, the Federal Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal. Cineplex had argued that you could avoid the fee by buying at the box office. The court did not accept that, and agreed the fee was mandatory for anyone buying online. Cineplex said it would ask the Supreme Court of Canada to hear the case, but for now the ruling stands. The Bureau’s message afterwards was blunt: businesses should not advertise prices that are not attainable.
What the courts said this fall
Two decisions this fall went the other way, and they are just as useful, because they show where the line is.
In a proposed class action against Ticketmaster, the Federal Court refused to let the case go ahead. Ticketmaster charges an order processing fee, but it showed that fee right beside the ticket price, at the same time, in plain sight. The judge said drip pricing has two parts: something is hidden, and it comes later. Neither was true here. Importantly, the court said the law does not require one single all-in number. Listing the fees separately is fine, as long as they are all there when the price is first shown.
In Ontario, a court also refused to certify a class action against Sirius XM Canada under the province’s consumer protection law. Its prices carried an asterisk and “plus fees + taxes,” and the full price was disclosed. The court felt even an inexperienced shopper could follow that. Lawyers who write about these cases are careful to call that a narrow decision, and it came under Ontario’s consumer law, not the federal drip pricing rule. I would not build a pricing page around an asterisk.
Other cases are still working their way through, including a class action over a fuel surcharge added late in Canada Post’s online checkout, so this area is still settling.
If you sell anything on your website
You do not have to be Cineplex for this to apply. It covers any business advertising prices to Canadians, including a small online shop, a booking page for a tour or a class, or an event with ticket fees. Here is how I would read the rules in plain terms:
- Show every mandatory fee with the price, the first time the price appears. Not on the cart page, and not at the final step.
- Separate lines are fine. “$40 + $3 booking fee” shown together is very different from $40 now and $3 at checkout.
- Do not hide fees below the fold or behind a click. If someone has to scroll or open something to find out what they will actually pay, that is the problem the courts describe.
- Do not call a fee optional when it is not. Cineplex tried the “buy at the box office” argument and lost.
- Be accurate about what a fee is for. Do not suggest a fee is a government charge unless it really is one.
- Remember the provinces. Provincial consumer protection laws add their own rules on top. My guide to the legal disclosures for selling online covers those.
The simplest test is to look at your own site the way a customer would. If the number they see first is not the number they pay, apart from tax, fix it.
When you are the one buying hosting
Web hosting is a good place to practise reading prices carefully, because the headline number is rarely what you pay. A few things to watch for:
- The introductory price usually needs a long prepay. A low monthly price often means paying one to three years up front.
- The renewal price is the real price. From year two on, you pay the regular rate, which can be double or more.
- Extra fees can show up at checkout. Setup fees, domain fees and add-ons that are ticked for you by default are the things to look for.
To be fair, an introductory price that renews higher is not drip pricing in the legal sense, as long as the terms are clearly shown. But the lesson is the same either way: work out what you will actually pay over two or three years before you sign up. I go through what to check in how to choose a Canadian web host.
Honest pricing is not just about staying out of trouble. A customer who sees the real price up front, and pays exactly that, is a customer who trusts you. That is worth far more than a lower-looking number.