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Advertised against billed: a fifth of rows charge more

Of the priced rows behind this site, nearly a fifth bill above what they advertise. The median gap is modest and the reason is usually not a fee at all.

Neil Sanders5 min read
962 priced rows on this roster29 carry a fee that cannot be declined182 bill above what they advertise, for any reasonMedian gap $40 a month. Largest, $233.These are two different counts and the larger is not a fee count.

Every figure this site publishes exists in two versions: what the seller leads with, and what the desk worked out a buyer is actually charged. This page counts how often those two diverge across the whole corpus, and by how much — which is the question underneath every individual review, and the one the arithmetic in what a GLP-1 actually costs answers one seller at a time.

How often the two disagree

Of 962 priced rows, 182 have a billed figure above the advertised one. That is 19% of the market this site tracks, and it is not a small tail.

The median divergence is $40 a month. The largest is $233. Summed across every affected row and multiplied by twelve, the corpus-wide gap comes to $123,740 a year — a number that describes this dataset rather than anybody’s bill, and which is printed here only to give the median a sense of scale.

Why it matters more than the size suggests

$40 a month is not a large number on its own. What makes it matter is that it is invisible at the point of comparison: two sellers side by side, one advertising an honest monthly rate and one advertising a four-week cycle, look like they differ by nothing when they differ by eight percent. We work through the commonest version of that in the headline is not the bill and the dose version of it in nobody says what happens at a higher dose.

It compounds with the other thing this market does badly. A gap of $40 on a figure that also rises with the dose is two unknowns on one line, and the published price answers neither.

What to do with it

Treat any advertised figure as a question rather than an answer, and ask two things before paying: what the billing interval is, and what else is charged. Those two questions resolve most of the 182 rows counted above, and both have to be answered in writing to be worth anything.

The site’s own arithmetic on all of this is in what a GLP-1 actually costs, and the question of whether the resulting number is worth paying is in is a GLP-1 worth what it costs.

Frequently asked

How often does the billed figure exceed the advertised one?
Across the priced rows behind this site, close to a fifth of them. The median divergence is modest; the largest runs to several hundred dollars a month.
Are those all hidden fees?
No, and conflating them would overstate the problem. Only a small minority carry a charge the buyer cannot decline. The rest are billing cycles shorter than a month, prepay averages, and term rates advertised where monthly ones are implied.
What should a buyer ask?
What the billing interval is, and what else is charged. Those two questions resolve most of the divergence, and both need answering in writing.

Sources

    Where to get it

    Price the injectable sellers

    The desk lists every seller that publishes an injectable figure, with the advertised price struck against the one a buyer is billed.

    Open the price desk

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