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Tell HN: Udacity dark pattern to cancel a subscription

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Re: Tell HN: Udacity dark pattern to cancel a subscription

#71

Post by mlsmith »

DavideNL wrote: post #62

ProtonVPN has another dark pattern i found out this month; If you cancel your subscription it will be canceled with immediate effect, and the remainder of the month will be given back to you as "credits", which you're supposed to spend on some of their services at some point. The only way to stop the subscription and not loose money/value is to cancel it exactly on the last day of your subscription. So... of course p…

I ran into the same issue. It was a sad moment for me because I backed them during their crowd sourcing days but ended up cancelling both their VPN and "Plus" mail service. What solidified my decision was after cancelling the mail service I was no longer able to export all of my email. I ended up having to temporarily reactivate the subscription so that I could export to mbox.

Re: Tell HN: Udacity dark pattern to cancel a subscription

#72

Post by Bancakes »

rchaud wrote: post #70
Bancakes wrote: post #60

I just have a "virtual" debit card to my name which stays empty until I purchase something online. So when these scam sites charge me, they fail. Haha.

Can that impact your credit rating? Or have some other adverse effect that's not immediately apparent?

I don't use credit cards. But yours is a fair concern, maybe it impacts some hidden rating. I have had my account banned from a third party steam game seller no questions asked; no trouble.

Re: Tell HN: Udacity dark pattern to cancel a subscription

#74

Post by muttled »

carbocation wrote: post #15

This sounds like the kind of dark pattern that the FTC has announced it will crack down on: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2021/10/ftc-r...

Will this apply to gyms that make it incredibly easy to join but require hoops to leave?

Re: Tell HN: Udacity dark pattern to cancel a subscription

#75

Post by y42 »

Experienced the exact same thing. I simply hadn't time to fulfill the course, so I asked to cancel it. The agent offered me another month, but make it sound like "for free". I recognized I had to pay for the extra month and complained about it. Which means: Chat, here I come again. I finally got out of the contract and needles to say: I won't come back. The overall learning experience wasn't that good at all. Not for that price.

Re: Tell HN: Udacity dark pattern to cancel a subscription

#76

Post by [deleted] »

kjerzyk wrote: post #65

I remember Udacity was doing some 'get 1 month free' deal about a year ago. Most of the online learning platforms had that deal (in different forms - weekend, week, month). And even though most of their courses say 4-5 months to complete, if you really want to study, you can easily complete them in a month. And so I did. Few months after that users got a lovely popup saying they can't complete the last unit (or last…

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: Udacity dark pattern to cancel a subscription

#77

Post by Aeolun »

dylan604 wrote: post #35
Aeolun wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a form of victim blaming. Companies shouldn’t do this shit, and shouldn’t legally be allowed to do this shit.

I'm not sure I'd agree with that in this case. Knowing you are getting screwed and choosing not to do anything about it seems to be a bit different than someone that is unaware or someone attempting to stop it but just can't beat the company at their game. Blaming the latter I'd agree that would fall under victim blaming, but I don't agree with that label for the former.

Maybe? Fact is you shouldn’t be getting screwed in the first place.

If you are in a position to find out you are getting screwed, it’s not suddenly your fault if it continues. The root cause is still that the company did it in the first place.

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