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> Users can be forced to navigate as many as 23 screens and take as many as 32 actions to cancel. I complain about dark patterns _a_lot_ but this one takes th

> Users can be forced to navigate as many as 23 screens and take as many as 32 actions to cancel. I complain about dark patterns _a_lot_ but this one takes the cake!

zeroonetwothree 2y ago
Still better than having to call
- oyashirochama 2y ago
  Fuck onstar to hell for their shit, you HAVE to call and theres no way to digitally cancel.
  - _Algernon_ 2y ago
    Unless I had to call to make the order in the first place I'd just chargeback at that point.
  - cogman10 2y ago
    Sirus wasn't bad, but it was still a call which is annoying. The worst I've experienced was equifax. I signed up for a free trial to see where my credit sat and what was up, then cancelled. It was a phone call, 30 minute wait, and SUPER weaselly behavior in the call center script. Something to the effect of Them: "Hey we want to give you this free gift", Me: "Will that gift keep my subscription active?" Them: "yes". Repeated several times as they tried just a bunch of avenues to not cancel my account. I literally had to say "No, I just want you to cancel my account" or "Are you going to cancel my account" like 20 times. It took over an hour.
- dec0dedab0de 2y ago
  Or go in person, like many gym memberships.
  - stogot 2y ago
    yes and have to do 2 months before end of plan, and they’ll still bill you for the next full month
    - gearhart 2y ago
      Worth noting that in the UK if you say « this is obviously predatory and isn’t going to hold up in small claims court » this requirement almost always disappears and they tell you that just this one time they’ll be nice and cancel from today.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - m463 2y ago
    I had to send a registered letter to hq.
  - ohgr 2y ago
    Was in my local gym trying to set up a membership and someone was in there screaming that it’d be easier to “burn the gym to fucking ashes” than cancel the sub. Turns out the cancellations person was only there on a Tuesday at 10AM or something useless. I walked out before I became another victim.
  - 3D0MR3991N 2y ago
    Just tell them you moved, that's why you're canceling, and you live nowhere near any of their other branches therefore it would be physically impossible for you to come in. This works for me, and I have no qualms lying to circumvent stupid tactics like these. I have turned into a LIAR when speaking to customer service for stuff like this because it just makes me more sympathetic as a customer, even though it's insane and unfair that one has to do this as a sort of social hack instead of the business just doing the right thing.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 2y ago
  There is common sense legislation that exists out there that is extremely simple: just require that you must allow users the exact same methodology and as easy to cancel as they did to sign up. Signed up with 3 clicks online? Need to be able to cancel with 3 clicks online. No exceptions.
gruez 2y ago
I'd take that with a grain of salt. I've went through the process to cancel an uber one trial recently, and I would say it's not anywhere near "23 screens". Maybe the user in question got unlucky and got hit with all the A/B trials, and they're being super generous with what counts as a "screen", but the process was relatively painless.
- cogman10 2y ago
  What was the process? In my mind it should be something like 3 or 4 screens/prompts max. Account (1) -> Cancel (2) -> Are you sure (3) -> Why did you cancel (4).
  - gruez 2y ago
    The complaint has some screenshots starting at page 15, which I think is representative of the cancellation process I went through. If you're being super generous (ie. start counting from you first launched the app, and also scrolling down as a "screen"), I can count 9-10 screens. I'm not sure how you can get 23.
    - cogman10 2y ago
      Annoying, but doable. The biggest issue is the "you can't cancel within 48 hours" screen which is BS.
  - scoofy 2y ago
    I’ve literally experienced (not with Uber, probably around 2010): 1: Account 2: Cancel 3: Call this number. 4: Call number. 5: Welcome to Customer Service press… … …press 9 to cancel. 6: We need to confirm who you are. Give birth date, etc. 7: Are you sure? 8: Agent gets on the line. 9: Why do you want to cancel? 10: We are offering you a discount to continue and not cancel, how about that? 11: Cancel 12: Are you sure again? (This time for real) 13: Cancelled, but we are offering you a BIGGER discou… this is when I hang up.
    - gruez 2y ago
bradly 2y ago
Both Uber and Lyft's pay-to-not-wait is about as dark as I've encountered recently. It makes it extremely hard to get an reliable wait time.
- NoTeslaThrow 2y ago
  Not to mention they don't refund you you when they fail to deliver the car on expected arrival.
  - cameldrv 2y ago
    This is my biggest aggravation. They consistently underreport estimated pickup times. Dropoff times are essentially universally significantly later than the estimate before booking. It's things like this that make agents potentially exciting. So much of enshittification is wrapping an essentially good service in a crappy and misleading UI to drive extra revenue. If you can replace the lying UI with a more honest one, and then do a fair and automatic comparison between Uber and Lyft, a lot of the annoyance goes away.
    - zippergz 2y ago
      This is the same thing the food delivery apps (including Uber Eats) do. I have screenshots showing the estimated delivery time pretty consistently jumping up anywhere between 20% and 50% from what it shows on the initial screen to what you get once you've placed the order. And then often they don't even make that time estimate.
      - Fade_Dance 2y ago
        An accurate estimate isn't really possible with the food delivery business model. Couriers will have 2-3 orders, so if you are order 1 or two, there is a new variable that enters the equation after you purchase the food. They obviously add other items on a similar route, but wait times and such are fairly random). Of course they could do 1 order to 1 driver but that would double the labor costs (sequential orders would be 2-3 deliveries per hour max per courier, vs 4ish when optimized).
redbell 2y ago
This isn’t just a dark pattern — it’s dark matter. The kind where it says 'cancel anytime,' but when you actually try, it throws up a screen like: 'Please proceed by faxing us from the moon.'
barbazoo 2y ago
Imagine being the developer having to build this, write tests for it. What a waste of time.

> Users can be forced to navigate as many as 23 screens and take as many as 32 actions to cancel. I complain about dark patterns _a_lot_ but this one takes the cake!

zeroonetwothree 2y ago

Still better than having to call

oyashirochama 2y ago
Fuck onstar to hell for their shit, you HAVE to call and theres no way to digitally cancel.
- _Algernon_ 2y ago
  Unless I had to call to make the order in the first place I'd just chargeback at that point.
- cogman10 2y ago
  Sirus wasn't bad, but it was still a call which is annoying. The worst I've experienced was equifax. I signed up for a free trial to see where my credit sat and what was up, then cancelled. It was a phone call, 30 minute wait, and SUPER weaselly behavior in the call center script. Something to the effect of Them: "Hey we want to give you this free gift", Me: "Will that gift keep my subscription active?" Them: "yes". Repeated several times as they tried just a bunch of avenues to not cancel my account. I literally had to say "No, I just want you to cancel my account" or "Are you going to cancel my account" like 20 times. It took over an hour.
dec0dedab0de 2y ago
Or go in person, like many gym memberships.
- stogot 2y ago
  yes and have to do 2 months before end of plan, and they’ll still bill you for the next full month
  - gearhart 2y ago
    Worth noting that in the UK if you say « this is obviously predatory and isn’t going to hold up in small claims court » this requirement almost always disappears and they tell you that just this one time they’ll be nice and cancel from today.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- m463 2y ago
  I had to send a registered letter to hq.
- ohgr 2y ago
  Was in my local gym trying to set up a membership and someone was in there screaming that it’d be easier to “burn the gym to fucking ashes” than cancel the sub. Turns out the cancellations person was only there on a Tuesday at 10AM or something useless. I walked out before I became another victim.
- 3D0MR3991N 2y ago
  Just tell them you moved, that's why you're canceling, and you live nowhere near any of their other branches therefore it would be physically impossible for you to come in. This works for me, and I have no qualms lying to circumvent stupid tactics like these. I have turned into a LIAR when speaking to customer service for stuff like this because it just makes me more sympathetic as a customer, even though it's insane and unfair that one has to do this as a sort of social hack instead of the business just doing the right thing.
SOLAR_FIELDS 2y ago
There is common sense legislation that exists out there that is extremely simple: just require that you must allow users the exact same methodology and as easy to cancel as they did to sign up. Signed up with 3 clicks online? Need to be able to cancel with 3 clicks online. No exceptions.

gruez 2y ago

I'd take that with a grain of salt. I've went through the process to cancel an uber one trial recently, and I would say it's not anywhere near "23 screens". Maybe the user in question got unlucky and got hit with all the A/B trials, and they're being super generous with what counts as a "screen", but the process was relatively painless.

cogman10 2y ago
What was the process? In my mind it should be something like 3 or 4 screens/prompts max. Account (1) -> Cancel (2) -> Are you sure (3) -> Why did you cancel (4).
- gruez 2y ago
  The complaint has some screenshots starting at page 15, which I think is representative of the cancellation process I went through. If you're being super generous (ie. start counting from you first launched the app, and also scrolling down as a "screen"), I can count 9-10 screens. I'm not sure how you can get 23.
  - cogman10 2y ago
    Annoying, but doable. The biggest issue is the "you can't cancel within 48 hours" screen which is BS.
- scoofy 2y ago
  I’ve literally experienced (not with Uber, probably around 2010): 1: Account 2: Cancel 3: Call this number. 4: Call number. 5: Welcome to Customer Service press… … …press 9 to cancel. 6: We need to confirm who you are. Give birth date, etc. 7: Are you sure? 8: Agent gets on the line. 9: Why do you want to cancel? 10: We are offering you a discount to continue and not cancel, how about that? 11: Cancel 12: Are you sure again? (This time for real) 13: Cancelled, but we are offering you a BIGGER discou… this is when I hang up.
  - gruez 2y ago

bradly 2y ago

Both Uber and Lyft's pay-to-not-wait is about as dark as I've encountered recently. It makes it extremely hard to get an reliable wait time.

NoTeslaThrow 2y ago
Not to mention they don't refund you you when they fail to deliver the car on expected arrival.
- cameldrv 2y ago
  This is my biggest aggravation. They consistently underreport estimated pickup times. Dropoff times are essentially universally significantly later than the estimate before booking. It's things like this that make agents potentially exciting. So much of enshittification is wrapping an essentially good service in a crappy and misleading UI to drive extra revenue. If you can replace the lying UI with a more honest one, and then do a fair and automatic comparison between Uber and Lyft, a lot of the annoyance goes away.
  - zippergz 2y ago
    This is the same thing the food delivery apps (including Uber Eats) do. I have screenshots showing the estimated delivery time pretty consistently jumping up anywhere between 20% and 50% from what it shows on the initial screen to what you get once you've placed the order. And then often they don't even make that time estimate.
    - Fade_Dance 2y ago
      An accurate estimate isn't really possible with the food delivery business model. Couriers will have 2-3 orders, so if you are order 1 or two, there is a new variable that enters the equation after you purchase the food. They obviously add other items on a similar route, but wait times and such are fairly random). Of course they could do 1 order to 1 driver but that would double the labor costs (sequential orders would be 2-3 deliveries per hour max per courier, vs 4ish when optimized).

redbell 2y ago

This isn’t just a dark pattern — it’s dark matter. The kind where it says 'cancel anytime,' but when you actually try, it throws up a screen like: 'Please proceed by faxing us from the moon.'

barbazoo 2y ago

Imagine being the developer having to build this, write tests for it. What a waste of time.