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Yeah, I mean, he got a refund and didn't even have to return anything. How dark is that pattern? Having said that, Amazon's product mixing is causing a lot of

by jsight 8y ago

Yeah, I mean, he got a refund and didn't even have to return anything. How dark is that pattern? Having said that, Amazon's product mixing is causing a lot of problems and trust issues for a lot of product types. I really hope they fix it.

mrtksn 8y ago
Me not getting a refund would have been a fraud. I would have filed a chargeback against that fraudulent purchase. A dark pattern is not about taking someone's money an running away but it's about impacting their decision making by designing processes or interactions that exploit common behaviour. An example of a well known dark pattern is adding things to the shopping cart just before check out. Another one is starting a subscription with a click of a button but requiring documents to be faxed for the cancellation. On my specific case with Amazon, the dark pattern is to make it hard for me to spot a fraudulent item and not making the standard refund process available therefore increasing the chances of purchase and decreasing the chances of refund by making it a hassle. Well, maybe it was not intentional, maybe it was a screw-up but that's again a lot of maybes.
- jsight 8y ago
  Go do some digging on Amazon and look at all of the obviously fake SD cards out there. Then ask yourself, is this helping Amazon's business? This is a problem, and they treat it as such, they simply haven't found a suitable solution beyond simply making refunds with almost no questions asked. Unfortunately for their business, this actually enables a different kind of fraud that is also a real problem for them. That is vastly different from dark patterns about trying to inflate review scores or encouraging subscriptions to unwanted services. They do those things too, and pretty effectively.
  - mrtksn 8y ago
    Any sources on your claim that they are actively trying to solve that problem and that they are failing at it?
    - jsight 8y ago
      https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-28/amazon-gets-real-about-fakes https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-28/amazon-ge... among others. I don't think they can really solve it without a complete top-to-bottom shift in how they track and inventory products internally. Most of the fixes that I've seen proposed just lead to the vendors and merchants gaming the system in different ways.
      - mrtksn 8y ago
        Of course they will say that they are cracking down on fakes.

by jsight 8y ago

mrtksn 8y ago

Me not getting a refund would have been a fraud. I would have filed a chargeback against that fraudulent purchase. A dark pattern is not about taking someone's money an running away but it's about impacting their decision making by designing processes or interactions that exploit common behaviour. An example of a well known dark pattern is adding things to the shopping cart just before check out. Another one is starting a subscription with a click of a button but requiring documents to be faxed for the cancellation. On my specific case with Amazon, the dark pattern is to make it hard for me to spot a fraudulent item and not making the standard refund process available therefore increasing the chances of purchase and decreasing the chances of refund by making it a hassle. Well, maybe it was not intentional, maybe it was a screw-up but that's again a lot of maybes.

jsight 8y ago
Go do some digging on Amazon and look at all of the obviously fake SD cards out there. Then ask yourself, is this helping Amazon's business? This is a problem, and they treat it as such, they simply haven't found a suitable solution beyond simply making refunds with almost no questions asked. Unfortunately for their business, this actually enables a different kind of fraud that is also a real problem for them. That is vastly different from dark patterns about trying to inflate review scores or encouraging subscriptions to unwanted services. They do those things too, and pretty effectively.
- mrtksn 8y ago
  Any sources on your claim that they are actively trying to solve that problem and that they are failing at it?
  - jsight 8y ago
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-28/amazon-gets-real-about-fakes https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-28/amazon-ge... among others. I don't think they can really solve it without a complete top-to-bottom shift in how they track and inventory products internally. Most of the fixes that I've seen proposed just lead to the vendors and merchants gaming the system in different ways.
    - mrtksn 8y ago
      Of course they will say that they are cracking down on fakes.