I’d have less of a problem with this if they went about it the way Amazon sells ads on their Kindle e-readers:

- You can buy the device for $X, and it’s marked as being sold “with special offers” (a euphemism for ads that would be more explicit in an ideal world)

- You can buy the device for $X + $Y, and it’s marked as being sold “without special offers”

- You can buy the device for $X “with special offers” today, but you can spend $Y once you have the device to “disable special offers”

This case is pretty terrible because Samsung isn’t giving buyers the ability to pay them the $10 directly to disable ads while not being up-front about whether or not ads will be served.

This is true, I expect to be shafted unwillingly and the manufacturers will face no accountability or be required to show any transparency for a long time. Consumers need information symmetry guarantees.

Do Amazon tablets and phones still show adverts on the lock screen? They seemed to sell a lot of them despite this being a "feature" of them back when they first launched.

On google flights, if you click into the individual flight segments in the search results, it shows the legroom alongside other features like WiFi.

Isn't sorting by class effectively that?

>There are very few airlines that offer more legroom and even then it's not comfortable.

American tried. American failed. Nobody was willing to pay more.

https://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/04/business/american-air-to-...

> There are very few airlines that offer more legroom

United Premium, United Premium Plus, Delta Premium Select, American Airlines Premium Economy, Lufthansa Premium Economy, Alaska Airlines Premium Class, Air France Premium Economy, Air China Premium Economy...

When I fly I definitely pay more to avoid certain airlines. For instance, when flying to the US, I avoid any US-based airline, as they all always have noticeably worse service and seats, and will pay maybe 10-20% more to fly a EU or asian airline.

At least in the states. Most airlines I fly have an option for a premium seat that costs more and has more leg room.

I'm not sure I see the connection you're trying to draw between your first two sentences. Airlines are regulated, but their price and service are much less regulated now than they were about 40 years ago. Their prices are much lower, as perhaps expected, and their service is much worse, as perhaps less expected than easily predicted if you're a realist rather than an optimist. The vast majority of airlines nickel-and-dime customers on domestic flights, making virtually everything they can from baggage to legroom to boarding time into for-pay options, because they learned that no matter what customers say, they shop on base price. Since deregulation, various airlines have tried to offer better seating, service, etc., as all-inclusive and more expensive tickets, and time after time, customers just click on the cheapest thing they find on Priceline.

tl;dr: when it comes to crappy airline service, the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our regulators, but ourselves.

United had economy plus which was exactly the same plane with more legroom. It was nice the one time I got it (my boss wouldn't pay, but I got an upgrade... otherwise I rarely take flights longer than an hour so it isn't worth $20 or whatever the difference was)