Purpose – Supplementary fees such as restocking fees, nonrefundable shipping and handling fees, and cancellation fees have become prevalent in the USA, and customers as well as the popular media have raised serious concerns about them. This paper aims to test whether such fees could benefit...

In our 1990 paper we demonstrated that a law prohibiting bait and switch may have the surprising consequence of hurting the consumers it was designed to protect. Wilkie, Mela, and Gundlach (1998) postulate that this may be false if upselling is equally effective when the bait brand is available...