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I got tricked into a very dark-patterned coffee subscription company called Amora Coffee. I got one of their coupon with a Hello Fresh box. Which, by associati

by soneca 7y ago

I got tricked into a very dark-patterned coffee subscription company called Amora Coffee. I got one of their coupon with a Hello Fresh box. Which, by association, at the time increased my trust in this Amora Coffee company. And now, after being scammed, only ruined my trust in the Hello Fresh company. Never bought it again, never will, and will tell everyone who asks not to buy. I will try to list all the dark patterns that I remember but you can google "Amora Coffee scam". First, they present themselves as a regular e-commerce selling coffee. They offer a coupon for a free first purchase. The site seems legit enough and they only ask you to pay $1 for delivery fee. It seems a great deal, even if the coffee is not that good, worth trying it. You even think that they must have a really good product to offer a free full-sized sample. Their conversion rate must be phenomenal at this step. But in that step alone there are two parts of the scam already. You realize them only after you paid. In the receipt, if you took the time to read it and pay attention (how often do people really read the receipt of what they just purchased?), you learn that you just signed up to a subscription!! You are not just buying one bag, you are paying a subscription and, unless you cancel, you will be charged full price soon enough. The $1 dollar fee is that they need your credit card to be able to charge you the recurrent fee before you know it is a scam (you will know soon enough). They probably charge $1 just to avoid trouble with the credit card companies (they will have a first legitime, undisputed payment after all). The subscription itself is another step of the scam. You pay every two weeks, not every month as it's the common practice. Also, they claim that to not be charged, you have to cancel the next delivery before it has shipped. In practice, it all means that you have to cancel the subscription (that you never knew you had signed up to) in a week, which is even before the first "free" delivery has arrived. So, I was savvy enough to get the scam in time by reading the receipt and googling "Amora Coffee scam". So, I just would cancel immediately. How do you cancel? You have to go to their site, log in into your account and cancel there. Ok, the scammers have not given up stealing my money just yet. To my surprise, the email I used to make the first purchase is not my username to log into their site. I have yet to create an account. To do that I have to input my email and a numerical code that is hidden in the receipt that I got. It is there, but you have to find it with no help at all. Did I just jumped all the obstacles that the thieves were putting in front of me? No! The "create your account" form just didn't work!! Looking on online reviews you notice that that form is not working for over an year!! It is impossible to cancel your subscription. So I find a email, send a very straightforward message telling them to cancel. So I have not being charged. Apparently I avoided the scam. Still, they got that first $1 of mine from the initial purchase. Probably what they bribed Hello Fresh with to steal from their customers.

Digit-Al 7y ago
Here in the UK we have a Direct Debit Guarantee [1] which makes scams like that very difficult. It gives very strong protection to the payer including the ability to cancel a DD just by contacting your bank and claim a refund for incorrect payment from your bank as long as you have a convincing reason. [1] https://gocardless.com/direct-debit/guarantee/ https://gocardless.com/direct-debit/guarantee/
- ghusbands 7y ago
  Card payments are not Direct Debit, which the Direct Debit Guarantee covers. Direct Debit is a different payment method that uses your bank account number and sort code. From the page you linked: "...making Direct Debit the UK’s safest payment method".
judge2020 7y ago
The $1 fee is generally standard to see if your card is legitimate.
- leetbulb 7y ago
  Generally it's a pre-auth on the card to see if it's legitimate and it will fall off after some time. If they actually capture it, their devs are either being lazy or they really want that $1.
  - soneca 7y ago
    The fee was stated as the "delivery fee", it was not a check, but a payment
- hakfoo 7y ago
  Most modern payment gateway APIs will offer a 'verify' command. This will tell you if the card is viable (not closed) and you can usually pass additional fraud-scoring data (address and CVV verification) to further sanity check. Some APIs will use this to provide you extra metadata (i. e. the card issuer or type) which could theoretically be useful for fraud checking or customizing an offer (I'm imagining a cross-promoted "Pay with your Citibank debit card for 2% off") These typically don't even register on your statement. The next step up from there is the "authorize only" that some of the other commenters mentioned. You can do a $1 authorization, but if you're going that way, you may as well authorize for the full amount, because the APIs typically let you convert that directly to a live charge if it was successful; it also helps avoid customers gaming your trial process by giving you a prepaid card with just $1 on it. In some cases, they'll implement the "verify" process as something like "Authorize-only for 1 cent, then immediately cancel it" for technical reasons. The entire payments ecosystem is a layer cake of abstractions that don't quite match each other perfectly.

by soneca 7y ago

Digit-Al 7y ago

Here in the UK we have a Direct Debit Guarantee [1] which makes scams like that very difficult. It gives very strong protection to the payer including the ability to cancel a DD just by contacting your bank and claim a refund for incorrect payment from your bank as long as you have a convincing reason. [1] https://gocardless.com/direct-debit/guarantee/ https://gocardless.com/direct-debit/guarantee/

ghusbands 7y ago
Card payments are not Direct Debit, which the Direct Debit Guarantee covers. Direct Debit is a different payment method that uses your bank account number and sort code. From the page you linked: "...making Direct Debit the UK’s safest payment method".

judge2020 7y ago

The $1 fee is generally standard to see if your card is legitimate.

leetbulb 7y ago
Generally it's a pre-auth on the card to see if it's legitimate and it will fall off after some time. If they actually capture it, their devs are either being lazy or they really want that $1.
- soneca 7y ago
  The fee was stated as the "delivery fee", it was not a check, but a payment
hakfoo 7y ago
Most modern payment gateway APIs will offer a 'verify' command. This will tell you if the card is viable (not closed) and you can usually pass additional fraud-scoring data (address and CVV verification) to further sanity check. Some APIs will use this to provide you extra metadata (i. e. the card issuer or type) which could theoretically be useful for fraud checking or customizing an offer (I'm imagining a cross-promoted "Pay with your Citibank debit card for 2% off") These typically don't even register on your statement. The next step up from there is the "authorize only" that some of the other commenters mentioned. You can do a $1 authorization, but if you're going that way, you may as well authorize for the full amount, because the APIs typically let you convert that directly to a live charge if it was successful; it also helps avoid customers gaming your trial process by giving you a prepaid card with just $1 on it. In some cases, they'll implement the "verify" process as something like "Authorize-only for 1 cent, then immediately cancel it" for technical reasons. The entire payments ecosystem is a layer cake of abstractions that don't quite match each other perfectly.