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Tell HN: Pluralsight and the dark-pattern of auto-renewals

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Re: Tell HN: Pluralsight and the dark-pattern of auto-renewals

#101

Post by TeMPOraL »

Scooty wrote: post #17

The other day I was stopped on the sidewalk by someone who told me they worked for a large environmental non profit that helps save endangered species. He asked if I would subscribe to help. I offered to make a donation and was told they I can't do a one time donation and they "really need subscribers". He even told me I could just cancel after the first payment. Taking advantage of someone being forgetful is sleazy.

Amnesty International got a couple hundred bucks from me this way over the past 6 years. At less than 5 dollars per month, I just couldn't get myself motivated to figure out how to cancel their weird pull-based recurring payment model[0]. The combination of a process with unclear way of cancelling, them not doing a bad job at being a charity, and me having no patience to deal with their "subscriber retentions" people means they still get the money, and I keep wondering whether shooting them with a GDPR "please delete all my data" request would be a simpler way to cancel.

--

[0] - I'm bitter about this wrt. banks in Poland. I should be able to view all recurring payments that pull money from my account in a single place in a web interface, and cancel them from there. Alas, the banks are happy to send out my money, but offer no way for me to see a list of recurring payments.

Re: Tell HN: Pluralsight and the dark-pattern of auto-renewals

#102

Post by hjk05 »

If you buy a subscription you have that subscription until you cancel it. It wasn’t “renewed”, they just charged you the yearly cost. Imagine if your gym membership was forced to ask you every month if you still want the subscription and would have to cancel it if you didn’t respond.

That said, if you want to now cancel it get in touch with their costumer service they’ll likely help you.

Re: Tell HN: Pluralsight and the dark-pattern of auto-renewals

#103

Post by thiagora »

We're working on a search engine for online courses (classpert) and the subscription model was always a big question mark for us. We try our best to show advantages of the subscription but for the end user, we're not so sure it's the best model (and we doubt providers really believe that either). Personally, Udemy model (pay per course) works better for the general case, and I would only subscribe to specific content made by specific, top-notch people.

Re: Tell HN: Pluralsight and the dark-pattern of auto-renewals

#104

Post by gridlockd »

mort96 wrote: post #100
gridlockd wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In one of my frequent bouts of negligence, I bought something that I didn't intend to buy and now I want to return it for a full refund for which you shall bear the cost. If you don't give it to me I will issue a fraudulent chargeback and leave negative reviews." Who is screwing over who here?

That's extremely misleading and you know it. Nobody starts a fucking _trial_ with the expectation that if they forget about it, they get charged a ton of money periodically until they notice. That's not just "buying something in a frequent bout of negligence".

You can call me "Nobody", then. I have bailed on countless "free trials" after being prompted to enter my credit card details. It's quite common.

As far as Adobe goes, what part of "7 days free, then US$20.99/mo" do you find hard to understand?

Re: Tell HN: Pluralsight and the dark-pattern of auto-renewals

#105

Post by mooreds »

paulgb wrote: post #80
taneq wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every charity I've been stopped by in the past decade has done this. Donate $20 cash right now? Nope, we can't do that... but we can sign you up for monthly ongoing payments of $200, or even just $25 if that's all you can spare.

Even when I make a one-time donation online to some charities, a lot of them seem to spend that donation sending me mailers asking me to donate again. I wish I could donate with a "don't add me to your list" option.

You can do that with a money order. Of course you can't do that online.

I chatted once with a friend in the non profit space about a service that let people donate online anonymously to charities. She didn't think the idea was a good one because, just like for businesses, there's a lot of value in knowing who your donors (customers in the business scenario) are for non profits. They get additional income from selling lists, they want to reach out and build a relationship (especially recurring donations).

It makes sense to me from an organizational standpoint, but I too wish there was an easy way to do one off donations.

As a counterpoint, I read somewhere that Bill Gates advice about donating was to focus on one to three charities and really get involved and knowledgeable about the space, rather than drop $20 on 10 random charities. It helps both the charities you pick (focus, more money, longer term commitment) and the ones you don't (they don't spend money trying to get you to donate further when you aren't really committed).

Re: Tell HN: Pluralsight and the dark-pattern of auto-renewals

#106

Post by aosaigh »

gridlockd wrote: post #83

> This is a serious dark-pattern and I'm surprised companies still employ it. It's so short-sighted. It's not short-sighted at all. Literally every adult should be aware that subscriptions generally auto-renew, unless advertised otherwise. It's been like that since the dawn of time. From a business perspective, it makes little sense not to do auto-renewals. Of all the subscriptions that I've ever had, those that didn…

I've mentioned this a few times, but the issue isn't with auto-renewals existing, it's with how these auto-renewals are applied and the policy around them.

Re: Tell HN: Pluralsight and the dark-pattern of auto-renewals

#107

Post by bryik »

gridlockd wrote: post #88
bryik wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adobe hit me with an unintended annual renewal out of a trial . I just wanted to try Adobe Premiere Pro on a school project...well, final exams happened and I forgot to cancel the subscription. Then I moved to a different country, started a new job, and continued to forget about Adobe. A month later I see the credit card bills and try to cancel. Somehow I have an annual contract that carries an early termination pena…

What did you think was going to happen after you entered your payment details for your "free trial"? Did you not read the terms at all ? It says clearly that it'll cost a monthly fee after the test period. Here's what you don't want to hear: You were acting negligent and irresponsible. You paid the price. Worst of all, you didn't seem to learn anything from it . You're here complaining that companies shouldn't take y…

It's not about the monthly fee, it's about the fee to cancel the subscription. Automatically transitioning someone from a free trial to a yearly membership with a penalty for early termination is insane.

I mean, why stop at 1 year? Why not move free trial users to a 100 year contract with a $10,000 early termination fee? A certain percentage of users won't read the fine print--easy money!

Re: Tell HN: Pluralsight and the dark-pattern of auto-renewals

#108

Post by em-bee »

amrrs wrote: post #98
em-bee wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how did the meetup.com experience look like? unlike all the other examples, you normally never want to pay for meetup.com if it is not a longterm subscription. it makes no sense otherwise, unless you have some weird corner case of needing to manage a large group for a short time, but then dissolve it afterwards.

Because My meetup page moved to a Pro network. I contacted Meetup support and told them this and then they issued a credit note. It was hassle-less but the auto-renewal thing frightened me.

so they upgraded your account without warning? that would not be nice indeed.

Re: Tell HN: Pluralsight and the dark-pattern of auto-renewals

#109

Post by jbarberu »

jordanmorgan10 wrote: post #38

Disclaimer: I've done about 4 videos for Pluralsight. I have to agree - if you make it hard to cancel your service I think you're losing money. We're kinda seeing this a lot on iOS, where subscriptions and the process of carrying those over after a limited free trial are very, very shady. It's a shame, because you want those dollars earned - and if I decide your product isn't right for me and you make it hard to leav…

You've also transformed me to a walking & talking warning sign telling others to stay away :)
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