I go into a national fast food chain yesterday and order a combo. The price on the menu board for this combo is $7.69. After I tell him what I want, the cashier clearly says "medium or large?"

I say "medium". He rings it up and it shows $8.29 plus tax on the register. I point out that it says $7.69 on the sign. He tries to ring it up again and gets the same result. He can't explain the price difference so he calls over the manager.

I suggest to them "maybe $7.69 is the price of the small combo". Of course, that's what it was, and that's all I wanted. (Small comes with plenty of fries and unlimited drink refills).

I just thought this sort of upsell was pretty shady given that I was never given the option for small and I was never told that the medium was an upcharge from the menu board (which did not have the prices for the other size combos or any sort of notice that "combo prices are for small only.")

I ate in and heard several other customers order combos and all just went with the medium when only given the medium or large as choices.

An extra $0.60 per customer adds up when you are doing hundreds of thousands of transactions per day.