6 ms·

Stamps.com is so scammy. You sign up for a free trial, then get enrolled without asking you into their payment plan. Then when you go to cancel, you can't. You

Stamps.com is so scammy. You sign up for a free trial, then get enrolled without asking you into their payment plan. Then when you go to cancel, you can't. You have to call. But guess what? It has weird hours. When you finally do call during their hours it's a machine that you're talking to, not a person. Ok, so you have hours of when I can cancel...clearly not because you have shift hours, since I'm talking to a machine. So why do you have specified hours? Stamps.com billed me for 8 months before I noticed they were billing me. I only noticed it because I was doing my taxes. The billing size was just small enough to fly under my radar, but just big enough to hurt a bit. I feel that chose that pricing for that reason. Anyhow, I saw they were in this story, so I felt I would expand upon their "dark patterns."

mikeash 10y ago
I always assume that any "free trial" where they have my payment information is going to automatically roll over into a paid subscription, and avoid the whole thing unless I already want to pay for the service.
- ipsin 10y ago
  This is kind of like "overdraft protection" used to be before they cracked down on it (somewhat). If you're savvy or have had it happen before, you know to avoid it, but otherwise it's a financial landmine ("profit center") waiting to be stepped on.
Bartweiss 10y ago
I have yet to work out whether "limited hours for an automated system" is a dark pattern, or sheer stupidity. The most horrifying variant I've seen recently was a government website that kept 9am-5pm hours. No human interaction or real-time events anywhere, but logins were locked after business hours. I'm guessing they didn't want to arrange special downtime periods for changes, and the only alternative they could think of was 16 hours/day of scheduled downtime. It's a bad day when registered mail would be easier than using the automated system.
- sliverstorm 10y ago
  In the case of the website, could also be security, or enforced work-life balance...?
- crd4tn4jky 10y ago
  Whenever I see a page like that, I imagine there is a guy in a low-rise building in Sacramento. Every day he arrives at work at 9 am, switches on the computer in the corner of his office, and then he switches it off when he goes home. After 20 years he will retire with a pension and move to South Lake Tahoe.
  - someone7x 10y ago
    This is how I came to understand the concept of crab mentality. In Sacramento, landing a "state job" is kinda like winning the lottery because you know you're set for life. What's not to like about a job with no perceived accountability or risk and a perceived loot table that just gets better with time. The inevitable flip side are all the "losers" of the lottery who have to suffer the vagaries of market forces. What's not to dislike about someone else lucking their way into having all those wonderful things? There's a strange love/hate relationship with civil service in Sacramento, at least from my own experiences.
- neves 10y ago
  I work in a gov financial institution, after working hours we have a lot of batch processing to do. Our servers are overworked and there are legal problems about operations date. Sometimes there are some sense behind the madness!
- schoen 10y ago
  B&H Photo Video famously won't accept online orders on Shabbat (in the time zone of the business in New York). Not just not fulfil the orders then, but not allow users to place them, either. I don't know how they decided to use only the time zone of the company and not the time zone of the person placing the order, and indeed where they see the desecration(s) of the sabbath as occurring if they didn't enforce this policy. Interestingly, their web site is still online at that time; it's only the online ordering feature that gets disabled.
benologist 10y ago
I lost a bank card last week and in the 3 day wait I found $15/month just being casually stolen for no services rendered. One of the so-called subscriptions could only be cancelled on a specific tablet, second service I've seen impose that as a requirement this year. If you're an HNer and you perpetuate this rubbish please stop and grow some ethics.
empath75 10y ago
It really should be against the law to offer a paid subscription that you can sign up for online that you can't cancel online.
- ccvannorman 10y ago
  How can I vote for this? Is there such a bill we can pay --er..encourage congresspeople to endorse?
  - Digit-Al 10y ago
    Ha ha. I'm English, so I've never been entirely sure how American lobbying works, but ever since I learned of it I've thought it could be an idea to set up a website (lobby.com) where people could propose laws and people could pledge donations to get laws enacted that they like the look of. If a particular law gets enough pledges to reach a particular financial threshold then the money is deducted from the accounts and a lobbying process is started to get the law enacted. Anyone else think this could work? [edit: forgot a word]
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- runeks 10y ago
  Or how about a more general law, saying whichever medium you used to subscribe must also be available for cancellation? That way we also cover the inverse: tricking old people into signing up for someone via phone, and requiring cancellation online (if that is allowed, I'm not sure).
- schoen 10y ago
  When this topic has come up here before, people have mentioned jurisdictions in Europe that do have such a legal rule.

mikeash 10y ago

I always assume that any "free trial" where they have my payment information is going to automatically roll over into a paid subscription, and avoid the whole thing unless I already want to pay for the service.

ipsin 10y ago
This is kind of like "overdraft protection" used to be before they cracked down on it (somewhat). If you're savvy or have had it happen before, you know to avoid it, but otherwise it's a financial landmine ("profit center") waiting to be stepped on.

Bartweiss 10y ago

I have yet to work out whether "limited hours for an automated system" is a dark pattern, or sheer stupidity. The most horrifying variant I've seen recently was a government website that kept 9am-5pm hours. No human interaction or real-time events anywhere, but logins were locked after business hours. I'm guessing they didn't want to arrange special downtime periods for changes, and the only alternative they could think of was 16 hours/day of scheduled downtime. It's a bad day when registered mail would be easier than using the automated system.

sliverstorm 10y ago
In the case of the website, could also be security, or enforced work-life balance...?
crd4tn4jky 10y ago
Whenever I see a page like that, I imagine there is a guy in a low-rise building in Sacramento. Every day he arrives at work at 9 am, switches on the computer in the corner of his office, and then he switches it off when he goes home. After 20 years he will retire with a pension and move to South Lake Tahoe.
- someone7x 10y ago
  This is how I came to understand the concept of crab mentality. In Sacramento, landing a "state job" is kinda like winning the lottery because you know you're set for life. What's not to like about a job with no perceived accountability or risk and a perceived loot table that just gets better with time. The inevitable flip side are all the "losers" of the lottery who have to suffer the vagaries of market forces. What's not to dislike about someone else lucking their way into having all those wonderful things? There's a strange love/hate relationship with civil service in Sacramento, at least from my own experiences.
neves 10y ago
I work in a gov financial institution, after working hours we have a lot of batch processing to do. Our servers are overworked and there are legal problems about operations date. Sometimes there are some sense behind the madness!
schoen 10y ago
B&H Photo Video famously won't accept online orders on Shabbat (in the time zone of the business in New York). Not just not fulfil the orders then, but not allow users to place them, either. I don't know how they decided to use only the time zone of the company and not the time zone of the person placing the order, and indeed where they see the desecration(s) of the sabbath as occurring if they didn't enforce this policy. Interestingly, their web site is still online at that time; it's only the online ordering feature that gets disabled.

benologist 10y ago

I lost a bank card last week and in the 3 day wait I found $15/month just being casually stolen for no services rendered. One of the so-called subscriptions could only be cancelled on a specific tablet, second service I've seen impose that as a requirement this year. If you're an HNer and you perpetuate this rubbish please stop and grow some ethics.

empath75 10y ago

It really should be against the law to offer a paid subscription that you can sign up for online that you can't cancel online.

ccvannorman 10y ago
How can I vote for this? Is there such a bill we can pay --er..encourage congresspeople to endorse?
- Digit-Al 10y ago
  Ha ha. I'm English, so I've never been entirely sure how American lobbying works, but ever since I learned of it I've thought it could be an idea to set up a website (lobby.com) where people could propose laws and people could pledge donations to get laws enacted that they like the look of. If a particular law gets enough pledges to reach a particular financial threshold then the money is deducted from the accounts and a lobbying process is started to get the law enacted. Anyone else think this could work? [edit: forgot a word]
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
runeks 10y ago
Or how about a more general law, saying whichever medium you used to subscribe must also be available for cancellation? That way we also cover the inverse: tricking old people into signing up for someone via phone, and requiring cancellation online (if that is allowed, I'm not sure).
schoen 10y ago
When this topic has come up here before, people have mentioned jurisdictions in Europe that do have such a legal rule.