Up Front

Upfront: Direct and transparent in a business dealings with the public. Such as, "we do good work, but we are expensive. We cannot tell you at this time how much your engine will cost to fix, but experience says that it might cost from $850 to several thousand dollars. There are other people who work on engines cheaper that we can refer you too, but you get what you pay for."

An example of what is not up front is a typical rental car agency that says "We can rent the car you want it will be $50 a day plus $20 a day for insurance if you want it." The customer agrees, buys the insurance and drives off the lot unaware there is a common exclusion on the insurance agreement that excludes damages caused by 'Acts of God.' The driver drives into a freak storm and the car is swept away by a flood. They are out $20,000 because the car was not covered. The rental agency was not up front about a very important detail in the rental contract. The customer’s expectation was that when you buy insurance, you have insurance, and it was very expensive insurance at that.

Being up front means you are not concealing something weather you are an experienced shopper or an inexperienced on, the good service is the same. Concealing information is a characteristic of a predatory business. This does not, however, mean concealing the actual cost of goods and services or revealing the markup on merchandise.