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How companies use dark patterns to keep you subscribed
- pelagicAustral 4y agoNo shit! As an anecdote just yesterday I fell for the premium meme on LinkedIn... I could just not stand the idea of not knowing who visited my profile! (how weak of me), they literally charged me 20 bucks (half price) for a month of premium, I bet I will completely forget to cancel the sub next month and I will end up paying 40 dollars for a few more months until I finally decide its been enough... Also, fell for Spotify's 3 months free COME BACK!! meme... oh God... I need rehab
- taude 4y agoI typically add calendar reminders the moment I find myself signing up for something. Current reminders: Cancel Peacock by n-Date; Don't renew Tidal by foo; Downgrade YouTube premium on n;
- Damogran6 4y agoDear Lord, Youtube. Annoying Ad plays Saaay, we can make those ads go away, for just a little money. It's like paying the mob to make sure nothing happens to your store (by the mob)
- dp-hackernews 4y agoOn all Linux PC's I use uBlockOrigin (I never use windows thankfully!) and never see any ads, ever... It may be due to a combination of uBlockOrigin & uMatrix - I've not tested to know. Either way, I just never see ads, ever. I only use NewPipe to watch YouTube on mobile. Then there's the Kodi YouTube add-on - I never see any ads there either...
- nottorp 3y agouBlock Origin works fine on Firefox and Chrome on desktops on any OS so it's easy to have an usable YouTube viewing experience there. Unfortunately that doesn't go for the mobile platforms where it's basically unusable. I wonder if the rules limiting advertising on TV (in the areas that have rules) shouldn't apply to them as well...
- Tommstein 3y agoWhat are you talking about, I use uBlock Origin in Firefox on Android and it works perfectly everywhere including YouTube.
- taude 4y agoI've used uBlockOrigin in the past for YouTube ads, and it works well on a laptop. What's nice about Premium, if you use it on an iPad, is it lets you download videos, and let's you also play them in the background, etc. I did this a lot for listening to Sleep casts and such.... I'm at a point, though, where I only want to consume YouTube content from a computer, when I'm trying to solve a problem, and not passively consume it like I was for awhile. Also, so much of the content I have has "built in" ads, and it's annoying enough that it degrades from the content for me.
- goosedragons 4y agoWhat's annoying about premium is a lot of the features are things that were free that they made not be. You USED to be able to play videos in the background on an iPad no problem then they decided that was a paid feature for some reason. Fortunately on Android you can easily do it with Firefox and an extension.
- justsomehnguy 4y agoHmm. I have an idea. Lets make a service what would remind you about the need to cancel subscriptions. A cloud based, AI-driven service would scan your email[*] and messages[*][**] to automatically add reminders based on the purchase receipts. And of course you can always add your own reminders![**] [*] not available on the free tier, for more options check the current plans at https://dontforgettocancel.com/plans https://dontforgettocancel.com/plans [**] installation of a companion app is mandatory, refusal would be met with account termination[****] [***] free tier forever! [****] https://dontforgettocancel.com https://dontforgettocancel.com retain the rights to your money under any circumstances. It's our money, anyways. Privacy Policy: to perform the advanced matching your emails, messages, photos sitting on the toilet could be sent to 3rd-party to enhance and enrich your experience.
- rchaud 4y agoAs the saga of Unroll.me[0] tells us, services like these will inevitably turn on their customers when they need to squeeze out more money than what they're charging you. Unroll.me may have been free, but as we've seen with modern SaaS, there will always be an upsell around the corner: https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/17/21027159/unroll-me-email-privacy-ftc-settlement https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/17/21027159/unroll-me-email...
- taude 3y agoFunny. I remember using unroll.me back in the day.
- chr-s 4y agoI use the "snooze" feature in gmail for this. When I get an email confirming a subscription, I snooze it for 29 days or however long so I get the same email in my inbox before expiration which reminds me to unsubscribe.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoAre any of those dark patterns? They all seem very transparent. Set a reminder to cancel the subscription.
- pelagicAustral 4y agoYou're probably right... I suppose at the very least I could label them as "predatory". But yeah, still more a personal problem there, duly noted.
- parksoha 4y agoIf the company is forcing you to put reminders instead of just letting you cancel right away, that's a dark pattern. I do not know about Linkedin, but I've seen plenty doing this, like Amazon.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoI assume they all let you cancel. If the subscription is free, and they do not let you keep the benefits if you cancel, then I would still not describe that as a dark pattern.
- parksoha 4y agoAmazon does not let you cancel and keep it for the month. As soon as you cancel it, your subscription ends.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoI agree that is a dark pattern.
- burnished 4y agoEase of entry and exit should be roughly equivalent. Another perspective that makes it clearer; any attempt to trick or subvert the will of another is a dark pattern. Transparency here is a distraction, plenty of tricks still work great even when people can see them coming. Focus on the intent and the result however and it becomes clear.
- codetrotter 4y ago> I bet I will completely forget to cancel the sub next month and I will end up paying 40 dollars for a few more months until I finally decide its been enough... Usually if you cancel now you will still get to enjoy the rest of the period you paid for, without having to risk auto renewal. With these kinds of things in general I mean.
- hutzlibu 4y agoYes, that's how it usually works, even though all the dark patterns try to imply otherwise. ("Cancel now and loose everything") It gets even better, you can get even rewarded, if you cancel early. With midjourney there was a free trial (2 weeks) but only if you subscribed and registered payment. I did this and then tried to cancel immmediately. "Oh no, please don't go, we give you 2 more weeks of free trial" Ok I don't go now and take it. Got it. Ok, now I cancel. Worked and still 1 month of free trial.
- throwaway049 4y agoGuess they know I'm a miser since they let me have a month of premium free of charge. I don't see much value in knowing who looked at my profile - if they don't follow up with a message then I wasn't the person they were looking for
- dclowd9901 4y agoIt used to be that if you worked for LinkedIn, you got a premium subscription for life. That’s how I got mine. Could go that route.
- uthinter 4y ago[dead]
- graypegg 4y agoI heard someone say a while back that “cancelled customers are just potential future customers”. Anyone that’s had an easy cancellation process will remember that flexibility if they ever need that service again. No idea why no large subscription service seems to understand that. Make me go thru annoying hoops and you’ve lost me for good!
- taude 4y agoAgree, I've been finding myself pausing some of the Streaming services in the late spring thru fall, when I typically don't have time to watch tv with the nice weather outside. But I've been one-click re-enabling every October or November.
- ouid 4y agoWell, exploiting brand loyalty is also a dark pattern. The better your brand, the more you can sell it for.
- madeofpalk 4y agoPresumably people have brand loyalty because they think they're recieving a good product they like. That's not a dark pattern, that's good! Or maybe I'm being too idealistic as to what drives "brand loyalty".
- npteljes 4y agoIf the "better" really corresponds to the "more", that's not exploiting brand loyalty. That's just when a brand is an honest signal of the branded product or service. Exploiting the loyalty is when they cheapen the product or service, but keep the pretense of the brand. Singer sewing machines and Pyrex glass cookware come to mind as prime examples, but I'm sure there's many, where someone buys the company for the brand, and then drives it to the bottom for quick profit.
- dclowd9901 4y agoI mean, just thinking through it logically, it _must_ be harder getting someone to sign back up for a service they quit right? I mean, they tried it and then they left it because ostensibly they didn’t think it provided value. How does that equation change?
- scottmcleod 4y agoYeah just look at BBB reviews for subscription companies...
- mikestew 4y agoOr better yet, don't. One has no reason to take the Better Business Bureau seriously. There was no reason 30 years ago when I, as a business owner, signed up for it, no reason now. "Ooooh, you'll report me to the BBB, those three senior citizens that actually look at that might not do business with me!" Plus, I looked up Amazon: A-. What was I supposed to see here?
- lesuorac 4y agoI mean, if a company doesn't take the BBB seriously why would they take you seriously? I think Amazon typically has a good reputation for consumers. You'd have better luck looking up Comcast [1] and if you compare that page to Amazon's you'll certainly understand that you may encounter some difficulties and perhaps choose a different provider (lol) for your service. [1]: https://www.bbb.org/us/pa/philadelphia/profile/cable-tv/comcast-corporation-0241-80003221/complaints https://www.bbb.org/us/pa/philadelphia/profile/cable-tv/comc...
- lotsofpulp 4y agoIs there anyone under the age of 50 who even knows what BBB is, much less cares about it?
- realjohng 4y agoCanceling AOL back I’m the day was impossible. It took a phone call and they would bully you to not cancel. Thanks for the post- these tactics should be called out.
- pelagicAustral 4y agoCancelling my Times (UK) sub was almost impossible. They also make you call them, and then if you have enough will power you can get past the flurry of "N months free service", "half-price for the next year", and whatever else they can throw at you to make you reconsider your unquestionably hesitant stance.
- WWWWH 4y agoThat's a good reminder though. I subscribe and don't want to cancel but I would like a discount. Let's see how I get on.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jasmer 4y agoWe need more regs about this, it's ridiculous. It's so bad that I'm completely afraid to get out my credit card for whatever reason. Thanks for putting this together but interfering with scrolling, although maybe less impactful, is probably more annoying.
- jezzamon 4y agoCalifornia has some decent regulation on this. And there's an ongoing bill at a federal level, I believe!
- npteljes 4y agoI agree that the language needs to be clearer. People who want to sell are too happy to muddy waters around transactions. In the digital world, it's even muddier, for example, on Steam, as much as I love the service, I sure as hell don't "Purchase" when I click the Purchase button and pay. License maybe? Even then, the license is attached to my account, not my person.
- jasmer 4y agoAdobe uses the word 'save' instead of 'purchase'. I don't see how that is legal.
- eli 4y ago"Deceptive patterns" is now the preferred term for what used to be called "dark patterns" It's both more descriptive and avoids equating "dark" to "bad". I've also heard "hostile patterns" as an umbrella term that covers deceptive patterns as well as careless UX problems like a design that isn't accessible.
- Damogran6 4y agoSo...I get the reasoning, but yet another in a large string of things where I wouldn't have conflated something with race....until you brought it up, and now I do...I don't know if I should feel guilty at the inherent privilege or if people are just taking it to an extreme, or if it's just language being language.
- mikestew 4y agoI hesitate to drift this far off-topic, but I feel it important to point out that within my lifetime (as one approaching retirement age) the word "dark" was the root of a word to describe black people in the U. S., and it wasn't complimentary. Hell, go look up the lyrics for "Old Kentucky Home" that gets sung every year at the Kentucky Derby (though I'm confident the lyrics have changed; or maybe not). That said, I don't make the association, either. But I'm willing to make the change, if not for basic politeness, then to use words that are more descriptive.
- dqft 4y agoNo need, just call them low IQ patterns and no one would be confused.
- eli 4y agoI don't think you or OP or anyone else here is trying to offend. Nor do I think most people hearing the term would find it offensive. But like I said: the alternative is both more descriptive and avoids the issue. This feels like an easy one.
- catiopatio 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- JohnFen 4y agoSigning up for subscriptions is rarely a good idea.
- npteljes 4y agoWhat's wrong with it? One-time payments don't make sense for a lot of transactions. Apartment rent is the most obvious example, but any other continuous service that is in use is hard to imagine without subscriptions.
- JohnFen 4y agoYou are right, of course, that there are many sorts of transactions that "subscriptions" make sense for. However, subscriptions (particularly relatively inexpensive subscriptions) are dangerous and people get into trouble with them all the time. The current fashion in our industry is to make everything a subscription even when it doesn't make sense for the product (a large portion of SaaS is exactly this). They do that because people don't tend to do well with them, and so it helps to maximize the company's revenue. Combine that with making it hard to cancel subscriptions and there's a real reason to be cautious about them. Fixed recurring expenses are famously dangerous things, and should be avoided when at all possible.
- npteljes 4y agoI kind of agree. I think subscriptions are working for businesses because people don't like payment. And so in case of one time payment, they don't like it every single time. That's a lot of friction, and a lot of effort on the business part to convince people to come over that friction. Subscription is however, also a one-time friction, but the payment is then recurrent. That's not bad in itself, even though it's much easier for the business. What I'd like to fix about subscriptions is exactly the same part you emphasized as being dangerous. People for example can't enlist all of their subscriptions. And also cannot really do anything about them from their own side, they have to go through the business entity. These both tilt the field to the businesses, quite a lot. Payment processors (and regulations) however could stop this. I really liked Paypal's solution, where they offer a page where they list all of the entities the user has enabled subscriptions for. So that is immediately a list of all the subscriptions. And on the same page, the user can cancel any of them in an instant. After which, if the business tries to take money from the account, Paypal denies it, because there's no active allowance anymore. Easy as pie and puts back the control in the hands of the money's rightful owner, the user.
- raymondgh 4y agoGiven that the author points out Vimeo as being the worst offender in their sample, I wonder if having a lot of dark patterns is a signal that the core value proposition of the business isn't strong enough to stand alone. 2nd thought is that every dark pattern that makes it harder to cancel or easier to sign up is a bullet point on a resume of a growth hacker somewhere.
- zaguios 4y agoI disagree about the point regarding "turn off auto-renew". This actually makes way more sense to me than "cancel". When I read "cancel" I am always worried that I may lose my current access that I paid for. When I know I am simply disabling auto renew I know that I will still have the remaining access that I paid for. These companies do a lot of dark patterns, but you stressing things such as this and others really discredits your otherwise valid argument.
- brewdad 4y ago> I am always worried that I may lose my current access that I paid for. That would be illegal. They must either give you the service you paid for or refund your money on a prorated basis. I have seen free trials where cancelling early ends the trial but no money had changed hands so it's acceptable.
- zaguios 4y agoThat's exactly my point, this makes the dark pattern calling the action "cancel" instead of disabling auto-renew? In general when I see the word cancel on the web it typically gets rid of something instantly.
- chasing 4y agoYou know which services I don't have problems cancelling? Ones I subscribe to via Apple's in-app payments. I get that it sucks to have Apple scrape a percentage of my payments for themselves, but if you're a company I don't fully trust and/or want to have total control over my subscription without a bunch of hassle, Apple's IAPs are the way to go. Mostly this is great with the big streaming services. Want Disney+ or Paramount+ for a month to watch a show? Sign up. Immediately cancel within Apple's App Store app. Simple. And if I have a complaint, Apple has generally favored me. For example, I recently signed up for a streaming service and their app simply wouldn't work. No idea why. Pinged Apple for a refund. Got it immediately. No hassle.
- nerdjon 4y ago100% this. Going even further I always get emails when yearly subscriptions are charging in a few days and those emails even include how to cancel the subscription if I no longer wish to use it. I know people love to complain about the App Store, and there are some valid complaints. But companies being forced to use this mechanism for subscriptions is a huge benefit for consumers. Also frankly, it's a huge benefit for the developers also. There are a number of apps that I would never subscribe too if I had to use their own custom solution thanks to how many bad behaviors I have seen. But since it is part of Apple's system I don't worry about subscribing. Edit to add: I really hope that if Apple does end up being forced to open this up and allow apps to do their own subscriptions. That for many consumers like me, as a developer your choice is 70% of the money or none. I am not moving to your subscription service and will find alternatives.
- guestbest 4y agoApple and Google now only take 15% from mobile app developers with annual revenue under $1 million from the App Store. It means a lot to people like me since they also host and handle payment processing for a net 30-45 contract.
- scarface74 4y agoA company is “forced” to use Apple for subscriptions. It’s been years since either Netflix or Spotify has even allowed in app subscriptions. I’m not going to subscribe to some unknown indy outside of the app store and guess what happens when someone changes credit cards or they expire? I’m going to update my Apple payment information. I may or may not update my other subscriptions or I may just decide it’s not worth it and let it lapse.
- mikestew 4y agoNot that corporations need me to carry their water, but I believe the popular subscription whipping boy, the New York Times, might be unfairly characterized now. After yet another one of these "subscriptions are evil" articles, I decided I wasn't going to support such shenanigans anymore, plus I don't read the NYT like I used to, so I'd sit on hold for as long as it takes. But it looks like it's now a few button clicks, and a few "are you sure?"s, all online. And it's advertised that you can do it online. "Wanna cancel by certified letter? Perhaps a phone call? No? How about online?" (I'm obviously paraphrasing). Now, I cannot confirm that the completion of the process works, as I decided to keep the subscription if I can cancel online. But I'll give the NYT the benefit of the doubt and assume the last button to click doesn't say "Call customer retention at 800-555-1212 to complete the process". EDIT: no, I do not live in CA, nor has the NYT ever had reason to suspect that I do.
- miguelmato 4y agoTo California residents they have to provide the ability to cancel online. Some people change their billing address to be able to do it online without the infamous calling
- mikestew 4y agoNone of that is relevant if the NYT allows anyone regardless of location to cancel online, which was my point.
- fckgw 4y agoDo you happen to live in California? The state requires that residents are able to either cancel subscriptions online or at least via the same method they used to sign up. Would be curious to see if they are changing their cancel methods depending on your billing address. I know SiriusXM does this.
- bell-cot 4y agoDaydream: Sign up for $Service using the name of a near-death relative. When you want to cancel, "$Subscriber is deceased" is a pretty heavy trump card.
- brewdad 4y ago"We're going to need 3 certified copies of the death certificate in order to close the account. These must be original copies and will not be returned."
- bell-cot 4y ago"Okay. That I know, the $Jurisdiction Probate Court closed out her estate a while back now. Feel free to petition that Court to re-open the estate. I was neither her attorney, nor did I handle her will, so I have no legal standing in the matter regardless. But I could tell you which cemetery to send the the bill collectors to."
- anticensor 4y ago"Once you send us the death certificate, we will transfer it to their youngest heir."
- dyingkneepad 4y agoAs much as I think a website like this is beautiful, I always get highly annoyed when browsing stuff like this. There's a giant scrollable area with no text at the beginning, so I thought I had to click the little mac-like titlebar window buttons. When text finally appears, I have to wait for the animations before I can read. If I decide to scroll fast I lose text. My laptop fan keeps running all the time, which highly annoys me. People, please stop making websites like these. Keep the beautiful graphics but please kill all animation, make the site static.
- dclowd9901 4y agoPolitely disagree. Keep these sites because they’re cool and I think they really flex the muscle of the medium, but for people who just want some straightforward long form journalism, have a “simple” style sheet.
- manuelmoreale 4y agoI agree but make them usable on mobile. Scrolling this article on a phone was an atrocious experience.
- febed 4y agoI agree, ironic that it’s taking about bad web design when it has hard to read fonts and a Mario like character jumping around.
- rchaud 4y agoThis is what passes for "interactivity" in this day and age. Scrolly-telling web design from NYTimes interactive style guide 2012.
- ocimbote 4y agoIt's good some knowledge has been gathered as documentation (if not evidence), but these practices are even considered best practices internally, they're essential constituents to a subscription model. Even before the Internet, if you care to look.
- madeofpalk 4y agoIt may be "best practice" to send cancelling customers to a retentions department to haggle with them to try and prevent them from leaving, but it's still a dark pattern.
- ssharp 4y agoI use Spectrum for home internet and they ran a deal for a while where you could as like 15 streaming channels for $15. It wasn't a bad deal to get a few channels for live sports + local news. Eventually, they started adding in more in "fees" for the TV package than the TV package itself costs. There's no way to cancel online, so I had to call in. I have to give my name and contact information to at least 3 people and wait on hold in between each time I'm passed between different departments / levels of support. By the time I get the person on the phone who can actually cancel my TV service, I've been on the phone for 30 minutes. That's when she told me "you still have 20 days left on this month's plan, if you cancel today, you'll lose access immediately or you can call us back in 20 days to cancel and still enjoy the service". I'd never heard that one before. I'd assume I'd either 1) get a pro-rated refund if access is cut off today or 2) get access for the time I've already paid for. At that point, it wasn't worth squabbling over $15 or 20 days of access, so I just canceled.
- ezfe 4y agoI switched from Spectrum to T-Mobile 5G and while I still have Spectrum on a $5/month holding plan I'm very much looking forward to cancelling after having a little more time with T-Mobile. It's been solid so far though
- garbagecoder 4y agoI got sportspass.io and have never looked back.
- revicon 4y agoThis is why I don't subscribe to Sirius XM even though it's built into both of my car stereos. They have no way of cancelling online and there's no way I'm playing phone tag with a company to stop them charging my credit card, I'll put it off and forget about it. Every time a Sirius XM sales person calls me I tell them the same thing. Maybe if more people made this a deal breaker for them companies would change.
- brewdad 4y agoI refuse to play their game of $5/mo for new subscribers then it jumps to $20/mo after the trial period. Sure, I could call and threaten to cancel and get another $5/mo period but I'd much rather just pay $10/mo and never have to play those games at all.
- madsbuch 4y agoI actually had a very comfortable time cancelling Amazon prime in Portugal. I guess this is again one of the areas where the evil regulations of the EU overlords make life easier for the average Joe. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_22_4186 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_22_...
- shever73 4y agoThe last time I cancelled Prime from Ireland, I still encountered dark patterns. Lots of attempts to get you to reconsider, buttons being labeled "Lose my Prime Benefits" instead of "Cancel", cancellation links being a lighter colour and not clearly identifiable as buttons that kind of thing.
- liendolucas 4y agoAnother way to forcefully cancel a subscription is simply registering with a card to which you can manually add or recharge credit, the day that you do not put money in it (or remove from it), the subscription should be automatically cancelled as they can't debit that amount from you (yeah, it doesn't work if you're subscribed to several services. Or maybe it could if you meticulously add/remove credit the exact days that they charge you provided different days for each service, but that's just too much overhead). If I recall correctly for example with Revolut it is even possible to generate virtual cards, which is great for security reasons as well. For people that run their own mail servers no need to use any useful or real email addresses when signing up, simply use netflix@yourdomain.com, amazon@yourdomain.com, etc. Again you have 100% control over those email addresses and make sure that all trash/spam/undesired mail goes exactly where is supposed to go.
- ruph123 4y agoHow is this legal? This always seemed like a weird "hack" to me. Just because your payment method does not work anymore, this does not cancel your buying contract. If they wanted to, couldn't they just sue you?
- liendolucas 4y agoWell, to be honest I actually haven't thought about it that much (about the legal consequences). But hey if you start looking for the cancellation of your subscription and you run into this rabbit hole, can't you just simply justify that is not your fault that company X is deliberately using an anti-pattern to keep you hooked and you wasted too much time looking for it and finally gave up? Edit: Has anyone used this technique and got into legal troubles?
- FalconSensei 4y agoBut I think technically the contract is being renewed, since it's on a monthly basis (except of course, if it's a yearly commitment like Adobe, but you are paying monthly).
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- anjel 4y agoIf your credit card provider doesn't offer "virtual credit card number services" as ammunition against these and sooo many other billing and subscription dark patterns, then you're carrying the wrong credit card product. It's the simple, comprehensive antidote to all these tales of woe (and data breaches no less.) I can't imagine doing business online without it.
- hermannj314 4y agoDoes not paying for a service remove the legal liability to owe for the service? If you credit card is bad because you cancel the virtual card, can't they keep billing you anyway, and also add bad credit card fees on top of it? It is definitely a crime to intentionally write a bad check, is it a crime to supply a virtual credit card number that you know you will invalidate in the future to prevent being billed? That seems equally fraudulent. I guess I don't see how a virtual credit card prevents debt collection and need to appear in a small claims court down the road. I am a child of the 80s and 90s, I learned that you play the silly games of big corporations not because they are fair, but because they have very huge legal teams that can and will destroy your life.
- anjel 4y agoI use it at the end of the subscription period as a means of easy cancellation. So I struggle to see that as a form of non payment. Once the service provider fails to collect the renewal fee, they cancel the subscription, effortlessly, of course.
- harrymit907 4y agoAdd ProtonVPN to the list too. They have auto renew as the default and there is no cancel option anywhere. And if you try to remove the payment method it does not allow you to do so as your auto renewal is still active. The only way to cancel auto renew is to write an email to support.
- unethical_ban 4y agoI've migrated my email services to them so I plan to be there a while, but that is unfortunate to hear.
- mihaaly 4y agoMay the 4th be with you in avoiding the dark side.
- ubermonkey 4y ago[flagged]
- amatecha 4y agoThanks, this reminded me to cancel a subscription to service I only meant to sign up for for one month. Accidentally ended up 3 months. I had to click through 6 different screens to cancel.
- tgtweak 4y agoAlternatively, "how to improve your subscription revenue retention". These dark patterns are outlawed by the card networks (visa and mastercard both have lengthy policy around this) but seems those rules are very seldom enforced, especially for the big players.
- ubermonkey 4y ago[flagged]
- ranting-moth 4y agoThe the first sign of a canceling struggle with customer service, I tell them that I'm revoking their permission to charge my card and I'll be filing a chargeback if they do. Never had a negative response.
- junglistguy 4y agodamn, this site is trash.
- catiopatio 4y agoI know we’re technically not supposed to focus on the site design, but it really is horrifically unusable.
- Entinel 4y ago> Or maybe there’s a warning that the item is low in stock. Those are dark patterns. I don't agree this is a dark pattern. I understand why they say it is but as long as those items are actually in low stock I think this is fine.
- npteljes 4y agoI agree. This one, and the one where they indicate how hot an item is, are not dark patterns by themselves. They are signals that proved to increase sales. But that doesn't have to mean that they are also dishonest.
- j7ake 4y agoAdobe keeps me subscribed because there is a small window in which you can cancel without paying a hefty penalty. And I miss that small window every time.
- brvsft 4y ago> Products that confusingly label “cancel” or “unsubscribe” > Some websites that are subscription-based hide the cancellation flow under a new name: “auto-renew” or “edit plan.” With Daily Harvest, Express VPN and Vimeo, there isn’t a button or area that says “cancel.” Instead a user has to look for “auto-renew” and turn off “auto-renew” payments, which effectively cancels the subscription. This kind of naming is confusing, adding unnecessary friction to the cancellation process. This particular case doesn't seem like a dark pattern to me, although it depends on how difficult they make it to find the feature. However, as far as the button label, there is no "cancel" button because seeing a button explicitly labeled "cancel" will make some users think that they are exiting the dialog rather than performing the action they desire. This would be poor UX, and I see nothing nefarious about not naming the button "cancel" exactly as stated in the blurb I quoted.
- npteljes 4y agoI disagree. To be fair to the user, they need to clearly indicate the way out. Additionally, the avoidance of a clear language (like auto-renew instead of subscription) is a dark pattern in itself.
- birdyrooster 4y agoThe OP missed the one where they add new categories of email subscriptions so that even if you keep removing the old subscriptions, you are automatically opted into new categories of email subscription. I have an account where the email subscription category list to unsubscribe from increases every month and there are dozens of categories.
- jowdones 4y agoTerrible, terrible interface in the linked website. I've no idea how much to scroll to get "next" paragraph of content. Gave up after a few attemps, I don't care what he's trying to say, that UI deserves to die.
- sandruso 4y agoMy recent story on linkedin. I subscribed for premium as I was eligible for free month. I did use one-time card as I wanted to unsubscribe before end. Of course I forgot to that. It tried to charge the card but it failed. When I tried to cancel the subscription it said I have attached invalid card. Okay I will remove card and cancel subscription. Oh, no so fast. I couldn't remove card because I had "active" subscription. It was circular deadlock. Finally I found way to unsubscribe on their plan picking page after few minutes of frustration. I hope this is QA issue and not intentional.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- LesZedCB 4y agoi bet we'll see more instances of companies like replika use chatbots to emotionally manipulate users into staying and paying.
- npteljes 4y agoPayment processors (banks, credit card companies) need to give people tools to approve transactions one by one, and a standard interface for recurring payment. Would take care of subscription abuse in an instant.
- joshlemer 4y agoI find that Audible is quite rude in one respect when cancelling a subscription. The way an Audible subscription works is that when you're subscribed, you get 1 credit for a free audiobook every month. If you don't use it, you keep accumulating them. If you have a few months where you don't buy anything, you can accumulate a lot of credits. But if you cancel your subscription, you lose all your credits, which you paid for! Yes, you can spend all your credits before cancelling, but I don't know right now which 5 audiobooks I want to buy, and I don't want to waste them on things I won't download, so I don't cancel right now.
- febed 4y agoYou also have the option to pause your subscription. I use it whenever I’m accumulating too many credits, to catch up on my listening. If you didn’t like a title you can refund it after the pause.
- marzipanWhale 4y agoNitpick alert: > In the EU, regulators like the Norwegian Consumer Council have been focusing on dark patterns and their harms since 2018 [...] Norway is not in the EU.