Epic Ripoff… Don’t Get Taken When Buying Your Pass

Many of us in Park City are rushing to buy our Epic Passes.  Unfortunately, many people are paying more than they have to — and yes you can blame this on Vail.  An Epic Local pass is $569.  As you can see below, we’ve added two passes to our shopping cart.  Can you spot the ripoff (you may have to click the image for a bigger version)?

You may think we are complaining over $2 of Additional Products added to the shopping cart. Nope, that actually goes to Mountain Trails. Look above that. $1,178 divided by 2 passes is $589 per pass. Isn’t it supposed to be $569? If you click the small plus sign, you will see Vail has automatically added $20 of pass insurance to each pass without asking or telling you explicitly.

Then if you click to remove one, it hides the box again. You may think you have removed both, but you have to do it again for the second pass.

Everything about this process is designed to grab an extra $20 per pass. This isn’t to say that no one wants pass insurance, because someone might. However, that choice should be made willingly and not by tricking people into buying it.

Imagine if you went to Cole Sport and bought a sweater for $100 and when you checked out they put a pair of gloves in the bag and charged you an extra $20 for them without mentioning it. You wouldn’t stand for it.

This sort of practice isn’t what you would expect from a good company. As our community goes forward in lock-step with Vail we have to remember these sort of practices. If they are willing to do that to their customers, what will they do to you as a vendor, partner, city, or county?

Now our eyes are wide open.