5 ms·

> Your company needs a CRM, so you sign a year-long contract for, say, 50 seats on your chosen SaaS CRM. Then — yikes! After six months, half your team is laid

> Your company needs a CRM, so you sign a year-long contract for, say, 50 seats on your chosen SaaS CRM. Then — yikes! After six months, half your team is laid off. Will the CRM let you adjust and pay for 25 seats for the remainder of their contract? > That’s a big NO. Unused seats? Still gotta pay for ‘em. (It’s called “SaaS waste” for a reason.) You committed to paying for 50 seats for a year. The CRM may have made decisions based on that commitment, such as hiring people, or themselves committing to bigger plans with their providers. Why should they get screwed because you choked? Don't commit to long fixed periods if there is any doubt you won't make it.

hermes8329 5y ago
Saas has obscene markups
- ZephyrBlu 5y ago
  It has "obscene markups" based on costs, but that is not how SaaS is priced. It's priced on value.
awillen 5y ago
In general I don't think it's fair to describe anything as a dark pattern this is clearly communicated in a contract. Same with "Here’s a similar problem with a different scenario: You sign a one-year contract with a SaaS provider. You start paying immediately. The process to get API access, build integrations, set up the software, and onboard and train your team takes three months. In those three months, you still paid for a service you couldn’t use yet. In fact, you had to pay to set it up! You had to pay upfront to get the functionality you needed." Do I generally think that's a bad policy? Sure (depending on whether there are significant resources required on the software company's side for you to build your integration). If you're told this is going to be the case and agree to it, is it a dark pattern? Clearly not.
- CPLX 5y ago
  That’s not really a fair way to evaluate contracts for fairness and ethical conduct. Not only does the contract have the obligation to be clear (and let’s be blunt the people that do this are often not trying to be clear about what they are doing) it also needs to meet basic standards of reasonableness. Specifically, to the extent that a contract diverges sharply from the general understanding each party has about how the world works, the more the drafting party has an obligation to clearly call out the terms in a manner commensurate with the importance of the contract term. Legal documents aren’t software code, it’s a classic mental error developers make when discussing them. They are evaluated by humans. For example, it would not be reasonable to have a single sentence buried in the middle of a 20 page SaaS contract that obligated you to purchase cat food, or signed away the rights to your apartment. Wouldn’t matter how plainly worded the sentence was and if it was duly signed. You’d still have to convince a judge that was a reasonable thing to do. Good luck with that. And regardless of legality it’s obviously not ethical it’s a trick, intended to be deceptive. Obviously there’s subtlety to this and the exact details matter. But that’s my point. You can’t just fall back on the idea that anything you get someone to agree to isn’t a dark pattern. The whole point of dark patterns as a concept is that you’re tricking people into agreeing to unreasonable things.
  - awillen 5y ago
    What you're talking about is just clearly not the same point that I made. I said: "In general I don't think it's fair to describe anything as a dark pattern this is clearly communicated in a contract." You said: "or example, it would not be reasonable to have a single sentence buried in the middle of a 20 page SaaS contract that obligated you to purchase cat food," I specified that it has to be clearly communicated. You responded with an example of something that very obviously is not clearly communicated. The examples that OP gave are generally things that are clearly communicated. When you sign up for a SaaS service and agree to pay for a set number of seats for a set duration, it's clearly communicated - after all, it's an absolutely basic part of the agreement and one that always has to be actively discussed between the parties (the SaaS vendor must tell you that you're billed on a per-seat basis, and you must tell them how many seats you need). What you're describing is all true in theory but not applicable at all to my post or the examples of OP that I cited.
- mitchdoogle 5y ago
  This is like arguing nothing is unethical as long as it's legal.
  - Griffinsauce 5y ago
    Sure but the amount of seats is close to the most basic of specifications for a contract. Its not unethical to say "tough cookies" here - it's literally the entire purpose of the contract to make this agreement. You weren't tricked or forced, you just made a bad judgement or have bad luck.
  - blitzar 5y ago
    I bought a bunch of Bananas and they sat in my kitchen bowl for 2 weeks. I ate probably half of them in that time, but after a couple of weeks, as expected they are off. I demand Bananas compensate me for my losses. Typical banana dark patterns.
  - awillen 5y ago
    Come on now, you have to know that's a gross exaggeration. It's arguing that no deal between two parties is unethical as long as both parties are clearly aware of all aspects of the deal and their consequences and neither party is coerced into agreeing to the deal.
ghusbands 5y ago
It helps to observe how symmetrical something is, to understand how equitable it is. In this case, if you want more seats, they'll happily give them to you and charge more, so it would seem fair that they should also be happy to reduce the number of seats and charge you less or refund you. If they only accept increases and not decreases, it's not particularly equitable.

hermes8329 5y ago

Saas has obscene markups

ZephyrBlu 5y ago
It has "obscene markups" based on costs, but that is not how SaaS is priced. It's priced on value.

awillen 5y ago

In general I don't think it's fair to describe anything as a dark pattern this is clearly communicated in a contract. Same with "Here’s a similar problem with a different scenario: You sign a one-year contract with a SaaS provider. You start paying immediately. The process to get API access, build integrations, set up the software, and onboard and train your team takes three months. In those three months, you still paid for a service you couldn’t use yet. In fact, you had to pay to set it up! You had to pay upfront to get the functionality you needed." Do I generally think that's a bad policy? Sure (depending on whether there are significant resources required on the software company's side for you to build your integration). If you're told this is going to be the case and agree to it, is it a dark pattern? Clearly not.

CPLX 5y ago
That’s not really a fair way to evaluate contracts for fairness and ethical conduct. Not only does the contract have the obligation to be clear (and let’s be blunt the people that do this are often not trying to be clear about what they are doing) it also needs to meet basic standards of reasonableness. Specifically, to the extent that a contract diverges sharply from the general understanding each party has about how the world works, the more the drafting party has an obligation to clearly call out the terms in a manner commensurate with the importance of the contract term. Legal documents aren’t software code, it’s a classic mental error developers make when discussing them. They are evaluated by humans. For example, it would not be reasonable to have a single sentence buried in the middle of a 20 page SaaS contract that obligated you to purchase cat food, or signed away the rights to your apartment. Wouldn’t matter how plainly worded the sentence was and if it was duly signed. You’d still have to convince a judge that was a reasonable thing to do. Good luck with that. And regardless of legality it’s obviously not ethical it’s a trick, intended to be deceptive. Obviously there’s subtlety to this and the exact details matter. But that’s my point. You can’t just fall back on the idea that anything you get someone to agree to isn’t a dark pattern. The whole point of dark patterns as a concept is that you’re tricking people into agreeing to unreasonable things.
- awillen 5y ago
  What you're talking about is just clearly not the same point that I made. I said: "In general I don't think it's fair to describe anything as a dark pattern this is clearly communicated in a contract." You said: "or example, it would not be reasonable to have a single sentence buried in the middle of a 20 page SaaS contract that obligated you to purchase cat food," I specified that it has to be clearly communicated. You responded with an example of something that very obviously is not clearly communicated. The examples that OP gave are generally things that are clearly communicated. When you sign up for a SaaS service and agree to pay for a set number of seats for a set duration, it's clearly communicated - after all, it's an absolutely basic part of the agreement and one that always has to be actively discussed between the parties (the SaaS vendor must tell you that you're billed on a per-seat basis, and you must tell them how many seats you need). What you're describing is all true in theory but not applicable at all to my post or the examples of OP that I cited.
mitchdoogle 5y ago
This is like arguing nothing is unethical as long as it's legal.
- Griffinsauce 5y ago
  Sure but the amount of seats is close to the most basic of specifications for a contract. Its not unethical to say "tough cookies" here - it's literally the entire purpose of the contract to make this agreement. You weren't tricked or forced, you just made a bad judgement or have bad luck.
- blitzar 5y ago
  I bought a bunch of Bananas and they sat in my kitchen bowl for 2 weeks. I ate probably half of them in that time, but after a couple of weeks, as expected they are off. I demand Bananas compensate me for my losses. Typical banana dark patterns.
- awillen 5y ago
  Come on now, you have to know that's a gross exaggeration. It's arguing that no deal between two parties is unethical as long as both parties are clearly aware of all aspects of the deal and their consequences and neither party is coerced into agreeing to the deal.

ghusbands 5y ago

It helps to observe how symmetrical something is, to understand how equitable it is. In this case, if you want more seats, they'll happily give them to you and charge more, so it would seem fair that they should also be happy to reduce the number of seats and charge you less or refund you. If they only accept increases and not decreases, it's not particularly equitable.