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I analyzed SaaS billing dark patterns

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Re: I analyzed SaaS billing dark patterns

#71

Post by netizen-936824 »

kevincox wrote: post #63
indus wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dont you think users with malintent abuse the platform irrespective of whether a card is on file or not?

Credit cards act as a "cost" of sorts. Credit cards are a limited resource, it is not free to acquire more credit cards. By requiring a valid credit card you are basically relying upon the verification that credit card issuers do to prevent unlimited abuse.

Its not free to acquire credit cards? In what country?

I constantly get free offers on the mails, plus there are services to generate temporary card numbers for throwaway

Re: I analyzed SaaS billing dark patterns

#72

Post by encoderer »

indus wrote: post #49
encoderer wrote: post #27

Of all the nasty things somebody can do with billing, I'm surprised the author leads with card-upfront trials. "Free trials should not require a credit card." This is opinion presented as fact. This is not a dark pattern. Totally unrestricted free trials are wonderful, you've invested a ton in your product and you want a prospective customer to experience everything. But there are legions of abusers and bad actors of…

Dont you think users with malintent abuse the platform irrespective of whether a card is on file or not?

Malintent exists on a spectrum and in my experience operating SaaS, a credit card is indeed a good filter for users who have no intention of ever paying you.

Re: I analyzed SaaS billing dark patterns

#73

Post by encoderer »

atgarone wrote: post #35
encoderer wrote: post #27

Of all the nasty things somebody can do with billing, I'm surprised the author leads with card-upfront trials. "Free trials should not require a credit card." This is opinion presented as fact. This is not a dark pattern. Totally unrestricted free trials are wonderful, you've invested a ton in your product and you want a prospective customer to experience everything. But there are legions of abusers and bad actors of…

I'm sure that when you're analyzing SaaS transactions for a year (full time), you see a lot more data than we more-select-few-who-can-discern do.

This is HN. It’s quite common that the people commenting have deep experience in the industry.

Re: I analyzed SaaS billing dark patterns

#74

Post by metabeard »

elias94 wrote: post #11

I forgot the AWS password once for an account with only one S3 bucket. I did the recovery procedure but they wanted to verify my identity using my document. I send them my ID, which was with a different address from my account information. They didn't accept my ID and I wasn't able to stop the service and the recurring payment. Fortunately I registered my payment with a prepaid credit card, so was easy to empty the c…

You'd love https://privacy.com/

Re: I analyzed SaaS billing dark patterns

#75

Post by micromacrofoot »

indus wrote: post #49
encoderer wrote: post #27

Of all the nasty things somebody can do with billing, I'm surprised the author leads with card-upfront trials. "Free trials should not require a credit card." This is opinion presented as fact. This is not a dark pattern. Totally unrestricted free trials are wonderful, you've invested a ton in your product and you want a prospective customer to experience everything. But there are legions of abusers and bad actors of…

Dont you think users with malintent abuse the platform irrespective of whether a card is on file or not?

in my experience it’s an order of magnitude less frequent when a credit card is required

Re: I analyzed SaaS billing dark patterns

#76

Post by micromacrofoot »

netizen-936824 wrote: post #71
kevincox wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit cards act as a "cost" of sorts. Credit cards are a limited resource, it is not free to acquire more credit cards. By requiring a valid credit card you are basically relying upon the verification that credit card issuers do to prevent unlimited abuse.

Its not free to acquire credit cards? In what country? I constantly get free offers on the mails, plus there are services to generate temporary card numbers for throwaway

bad actors are usually looking for low friction, it’s like running away from a bear… you don’t need to be the fastest person, you just don’t want to be the slowest

Re: I analyzed SaaS billing dark patterns

#77

Post by jscheel »

I'm quite a bit leery of this article, even though some of it is pretty accurate. There are some glaring problems with it, and I would advise you not to take it as gospel truth. First, requiring a credit card for free trials is often necessary to weed out bad actors. Second, the author spends an awful lot of time complaining about being held to the terms of a contract that you willfully signed. I get that renegotiating a contract is nice to do for your customers, but it's a contract for a reason. Usually, when you signed up for that annual plan that you suddenly want out of, you were given a discounted rate by going annual. I notice that the author never mentions this when suggesting that companies are bad for holding up the terms of a contract. Finally keep in mind that this article is a marketing piece written by a saas product for rolling up saas payments.

Re: I analyzed SaaS billing dark patterns

#78

Post by perl4ever »

dinobones wrote: post #55
atgarone wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure that when you're analyzing SaaS transactions for a year (full time), you see a lot more data than we more-select-few-who-can-discern do.

You forget this is HN, where software engineers will go off on tangent talking about how "they could have designed the airplane rotor to not crash" or something equally ridiculous. Everyone here is an expert at everything, because they wrote a blog once, or since Paul Graham is perceived to be an expert on everything, they can be too.

As you know, Bob, they let anybody on here regardless of occupation or knowledge of Phil Graham. So some random commenter could perfectly well be an aerospace engineer. Or someone that's never been employed in their whole life.

Re: I analyzed SaaS billing dark patterns

#79

Post by awillen »

schnebbau wrote: post #28

> Your company needs a CRM, so you sign a year-long contract for, say, 50 seats on your chosen SaaS CRM. Then — yikes! After six months, half your team is laid off. Will the CRM let you adjust and pay for 25 seats for the remainder of their contract? > That’s a big NO. Unused seats? Still gotta pay for ‘em. (It’s called “SaaS waste” for a reason.) You committed to paying for 50 seats for a year. The CRM may have made…

In general I don't think it's fair to describe anything as a dark pattern this is clearly communicated in a contract.

Same with "Here’s a similar problem with a different scenario: You sign a one-year contract with a SaaS provider. You start paying immediately. The process to get API access, build integrations, set up the software, and onboard and train your team takes three months.

In those three months, you still paid for a service you couldn’t use yet. In fact, you had to pay to set it up! You had to pay upfront to get the functionality you needed."

Do I generally think that's a bad policy? Sure (depending on whether there are significant resources required on the software company's side for you to build your integration).

If you're told this is going to be the case and agree to it, is it a dark pattern? Clearly not.

Re: I analyzed SaaS billing dark patterns

#80

Post by petercooper »

I really appreciate how Slack handles things by scaling down your payment month by month based on how many users are actually using the service. I wish more SaaS providers, especially big ones with the capacity to develop the feature, would do this rather than lean on people or companies forgetting to remove seats.
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