Tied Selling
Categories: Ethics/Morals, Banking
The results of a very closely played sales contest? An esoteric form of S&M? Nope. It’s a marketing ploy that involves forcing a customer to buy one thing in order to get another.
You want to tickets to Hamilton. However, the only way to buy them is to purchase a season ticket to your local theater, guaranteeing that you'll have to get tickets for their all-mime production of Long Day's Journey Into Night and the Children's Extra-Loud Improv Christmas Extravaganza!
That’s the general form of tied selling. To get one thing you want, you have to buy something else that you might otherwise not care much about.
For financial products, the practice can be illegal. In Canada especially, the term is associated almost exclusively with illegal actions disallowed under the country’s Bank Act. So it would be illegal there for a bank to say, "Sure, you can have a mortgage...after you move all your money into one of our bank accounts."
