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Ask HN: Is “contact us for pricing” a dark pattern?

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Re: Ask HN: Is “contact us for pricing” a dark pattern?

#21

Post by qeternity »

I see a lot of answers about how it enables companies to charge more. That’s true, but it also enables companies to charge less. It’s all about price discrimination, and it’s not a bad thing.

Without this you either end up with one of two scenarios. Scenario 1: companies price extremely high on paper and then negotiate down afterwards, as happens in the US health insurance markets, and it’s a nightmare. Or scenario 2 the producer ends up pricing for their profit maximizing volume, which at constant price means customers who realize greater utility are subsidized by those who realize the least utility.

Consider a very real example: AWS charges outrageous markups on bandwidth. This is because many organizations realize far greater value from the AWS ecosystem and are willing to pay. This prices out people who are more price sensitive, and means they end up using a competitor, even if Amazon would happily sell them bandwidth at a lower price. They simply can’t without canibalizing their fatter customers.

I’ve negotiated services for startups at a fraction of the cost of what larger companies are paying (on the order of 90% less) because of this dark pattern.

Re: Ask HN: Is “contact us for pricing” a dark pattern?

#22

Post by ouid »

ChrisLomont wrote: post #14
ouid wrote: post #10

Absolutely. Try to imagine how much different the world would be if, for instance, job listings were required to post their compensation exactly.

I've gotten multiple jobs in life where I was able to negotiate a much larger salary then they had intended to pay due to being of more worth to them once they interviewed me. So that would be done away with? No thanks. I'm happy that people have varying skillsets and that employers can pay more or less for a posting based on the person they choose.

I think you're guilty of falling prey to the "decoy effect" here. The labor market is a carnival, and they're selling tokens to you. You can buy 25 tokens for 10 dollars or 15 tokens for 5 dollars. The latter strategy is locally optimal, and you are using that as an argument for it's global optimality. That's exactly the point of the con though. Companies DO NOT want to bid on labor, so they'll use whatever trick they can to avoid having to do it.

Re: Ask HN: Is “contact us for pricing” a dark pattern?

#23

Post by is_true »

yoz-y wrote: post #11

I don't remember where, but once I read an article saying something like "If Space-X can have price calculator right on their side, so can your shitty SaaS solution."

That's really shortsighted. A SaaS company could meet an amount of new requirements that I'm sure SpaceX can't.

Re: Ask HN: Is “contact us for pricing” a dark pattern?

#24

Post by is_true »

It depends, I live in a country with a lot of regulations and inflation. I would've to change prices every week. I do it because I have a platform that allows me to, but not everyone has as much data.

On the other hand, we offer a custom plan that has a contact us for pricing button. Because in that plan we are gonna do whatever we can to add as much value as possible for your business. Mostly integrations and updates on legacy systems.

Re: Ask HN: Is “contact us for pricing” a dark pattern?

#25

Post by AtlasBarfed »

Not only are they trying to obscure pricing (the ideal pricing scheme for any good for the seller is to maximize what EACH customer is willing to pay), they are trying to increase your "sunken cost fallacy" switching cost by engaging in a long drawn out sales process.

Re: Ask HN: Is “contact us for pricing” a dark pattern?

#26

Post by flax »

tylerrobinson wrote: post #19

Wow! A lot of fast replies here without much substance. "A dark pattern is "a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things, such as buying overpriced insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills"."[0] By this definition, no, it's not a dark pattern. It may be a pricing strategy that you don't like, but not a dark pattern. It's an invitation to start a full discuss…

By that definition it _is_ a dark pattern. The thing people are being tricked into doing is divulging contact info/interest even if they're not going to buy at the eventually revealed price.

Re: Ask HN: Is “contact us for pricing” a dark pattern?

#27

Post by horsawlarway »

tylerrobinson wrote: post #19

Wow! A lot of fast replies here without much substance. "A dark pattern is "a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things, such as buying overpriced insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills"."[0] By this definition, no, it's not a dark pattern. It may be a pricing strategy that you don't like, but not a dark pattern. It's an invitation to start a full discuss…

I mostly agree with you, but I think there are forms of this that I would definitely consider dark patterns -

The one that immediately jumps to mind is "Add this item to your cart to see the price".

There's no good intention there, just manipulation. The statistics show a user is more likely to buy an item after adding it to their cart, and this forces them to do that before revealing pertinent information to the user.

---

Basically - If it's not a solution that can be customized to the user/customer, I find hiding the price is almost always a dark pattern.

If it is a solution that can be customized, it may or may not be a dark pattern, but I still tend to avoid companies that do this - it often means they want additional information from me, or that they're hoping additional sales and marketing information will make me less price sensitive before showing me the final price.

Re: Ask HN: Is “contact us for pricing” a dark pattern?

#28

Post by toomuchtodo »

horsawlarway wrote: post #27
tylerrobinson wrote: post #19

Wow! A lot of fast replies here without much substance. "A dark pattern is "a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things, such as buying overpriced insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills"."[0] By this definition, no, it's not a dark pattern. It may be a pricing strategy that you don't like, but not a dark pattern. It's an invitation to start a full discuss…

I mostly agree with you, but I think there are forms of this that I would definitely consider dark patterns - The one that immediately jumps to mind is "Add this item to your cart to see the price". There's no good intention there, just manipulation. The statistics show a user is more likely to buy an item after adding it to their cart, and this forces them to do that before revealing pertinent information to the use…

Showing a price after an item is in the cart can be a contract hack around pricing contracts with manufacturers or distributors, where you’re not able to directly advertise your “best” price.

Re: Ask HN: Is “contact us for pricing” a dark pattern?

#29

Post by neltnerb »

tylerrobinson wrote: post #19

Wow! A lot of fast replies here without much substance. "A dark pattern is "a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things, such as buying overpriced insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills"."[0] By this definition, no, it's not a dark pattern. It may be a pricing strategy that you don't like, but not a dark pattern. It's an invitation to start a full discuss…

I almost only see this for very expensive non-commodity products. I think in these industries the vendors at least believe that they are more likely to make a sale if they do it person-to-person over the phone. I don't know if they're right or not, when I see that my first step is to look for other vendors.

But I think that they simply believe that they are more likely to make a sale if they screen for only people interested enough to submit a request for a quote. That's not really a dark pattern, yeah. It's not a trick, they just don't want to sell stuff that way.

Vici-Valco is the most confusing one to me for this, but I believe for them it's to create a barrier to keep small time orders out. Basically, I don't think that they make much money on me ordering ten compression fittings so if they make it too easy to find prices and order stuff without human intervention they'd spend proportionally more time on small clients? It's odd, I mean, they do have a catalog and the catalog has prices. It's just super hard to order online or find pricing otherwise.

Re: Ask HN: Is “contact us for pricing” a dark pattern?

#30

Post by humbledrone »

horsawlarway wrote: post #27
tylerrobinson wrote: post #19

Wow! A lot of fast replies here without much substance. "A dark pattern is "a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things, such as buying overpriced insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills"."[0] By this definition, no, it's not a dark pattern. It may be a pricing strategy that you don't like, but not a dark pattern. It's an invitation to start a full discuss…

I mostly agree with you, but I think there are forms of this that I would definitely consider dark patterns - The one that immediately jumps to mind is "Add this item to your cart to see the price". There's no good intention there, just manipulation. The statistics show a user is more likely to buy an item after adding it to their cart, and this forces them to do that before revealing pertinent information to the use…

While the "add to cart to see price" pattern may be dark, it's worth noting that the retail seller that makes you do this is probably not the party who's responsible for the pattern. It turns out that some manufacturers make the retailer agree to not advertise a price lower than MSRP. But, though they cannot /advertise/ a price below MSRP, they can /sell/ at a price below MSRP. I guess it's generally accepted that showing you a different price after you've added the item to your cart doesn't technically count as "advertising" the lower price.

https://www.consumerreports.org/online-shopping/why-do-i-hav...

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