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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?

#71

Post by ouid »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #51
ouid wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

No, he's not. That's what gets lost in the shuffle in discussions like this. He is saying it works for him and like it or not, that's what the vast majority of people care about. What's In It For Me?

No, that's a mischaracterization of my argument. The decoy here is the lower salary that was the supposedly "market rate" salary for the work he does. That price wasn't advertised publicly in a central market for job listings, so it's an unrelated third option that is dominated by his current strategy that drives him to believe that his current strategy is globally optimal, despite tremendous evidence to the contrary. He would make more money if he could sort job listings by offered salary.

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

#72

Post by paulie_a »

It's not a dark pattern but Ive already clicked away to research other products.

You don't show the price because you want me to talk to a salesperson that has to justify the price. I don't want to talk to a sales person. I want a demo account if it's a service and a number for a technical person to answer questions

Save the pitch for someone who gives a damn

The sales person is an impediment to the sales process

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

#73

Post by sloaken »

For your situation I agree. And when I run into that, I just pass them by and go on to another vendor.

There are only a few reasons where I could see 'contact us for pricing' being appropriate:

1 Volatility caused by unknown market or price war, where competitor keeps causing price stability issues.

2 Complex purchase - too many confusing options - so we have to have a sales person walk you through it. 'So you want a web page and you need a specific person to do it ...'

3 Contractual - in rare instances a vendor can purchase excess product, at a steep discount. But are not allowed to advertise the price.

All other options make me think of a used car salesman trying to figure out how much they can do you for.

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

#75

Post by skmurphy »

ozim wrote: post #53
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 hate it because it is used as a tool to find out "how much we can make that sucker pay" which is adversarial approach instead of partnership. So in the end it is device to sell me overpriced service. There are pricing pages that have price x, price y and "enterprise contact us". So maybe vendor that has only "contact us" is selling only to F500 and I am not a customer for them.

If a product is used in very complex environments and has a rich set of options then a conversation is needed to be able to offer a quote. If no price is quoted on the website it's probably safe to assume minimum pricing is above $10,000. I don't think this is a dark pattern.

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

#76

Post by jenkstom »

It's annoying to the person who needs to get details and pricing and who would love to buy the product but right now is just trying to find out if a project is feasible.

It's insulting in that they could just give me the information but they won't because they think I am too stupid to understand it "the way they intend it" (i.e., in a way that doesn't solve my problem or does so using mostly marketing buzzwords that cause endless technical implementation issues and waste so very much time).

The buzzword I've learned to dislike the most is "RESTful!". It means that your API is written by developers who don't my industry at all. And no, it doesn't matter what industry. RESTful means you've started with a set of premises that don't work in the real work except under very limited circumstances (like distributing media files).

It's self-destructive in that any normal people aren't interested in a sales pitch. They just want information. If you aren't going to provide that then you're at the bottom of the list and we're probably going with a competitor of yours unless you somehow find out that I need a similar product and you start calling upper management. That's the worst-case scenario... now we aren't implementing technology that fits into our use case and architecture, we're dealing with a push from senior management to use technology that doesn't work. We know that a sales call means your product sucks. Hard.

At face value no, this isn't a dark pattern. But experience tells me otherwise. If your product is "contact us for a quote!" then I already know it won't work and is overpriced because you have to work so very hard to "sell" it. Could I be wrong? Yes. Have I been wrong? No. In 30 years of doing this.

Wow... I guess I had a lot to say on this subject. I feel so much better now. ;-)

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

#77

Post by XCSme »

I have a "contact us" for the agency plan of userTrack.net as the pricing depends on what do you intend to use the product for and how many clients do you want to offer access to.

I do clearly state pricing for the normal plans, otherwise that would just push away most of the customers.

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

#78

Post by ambivalents »

DevX101 wrote: post #32

Rule of thumb: Assume any SAAS company with a "Contact us for pricing" will cost at least $20k per year. If your price point is much less than this you should probably just have users self-service with a credit card.

Where did you get that number? I think it really varies. One of the products I manage is a lower price point but the implementation and use cases are complex and different for each customer. It does not make sense to enable self-service implementation for our software.
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