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How companies use dark patterns to keep you subscribed

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Re: How companies use dark patterns to keep you subscribed

#171

Post by npteljes »

JohnFen wrote: post #170
npteljes wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with it? One-time payments don't make sense for a lot of transactions. Apartment rent is the most obvious example, but any other continuous service that is in use is hard to imagine without subscriptions.

You are right, of course, that there are many sorts of transactions that "subscriptions" make sense for. However, subscriptions (particularly relatively inexpensive subscriptions) are dangerous and people get into trouble with them all the time. The current fashion in our industry is to make everything a subscription even when it doesn't make sense for the product (a large portion of SaaS is exactly this). They do th…

I kind of agree. I think subscriptions are working for businesses because people don't like payment. And so in case of one time payment, they don't like it every single time. That's a lot of friction, and a lot of effort on the business part to convince people to come over that friction. Subscription is however, also a one-time friction, but the payment is then recurrent. That's not bad in itself, even though it's much easier for the business.

What I'd like to fix about subscriptions is exactly the same part you emphasized as being dangerous. People for example can't enlist all of their subscriptions. And also cannot really do anything about them from their own side, they have to go through the business entity. These both tilt the field to the businesses, quite a lot. Payment processors (and regulations) however could stop this. I really liked Paypal's solution, where they offer a page where they list all of the entities the user has enabled subscriptions for. So that is immediately a list of all the subscriptions. And on the same page, the user can cancel any of them in an instant. After which, if the business tries to take money from the account, Paypal denies it, because there's no active allowance anymore. Easy as pie and puts back the control in the hands of the money's rightful owner, the user.

Re: How companies use dark patterns to keep you subscribed

#172

Post by hayst4ck »

Vespasian wrote: post #138
hayst4ck wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I'm saying, one company took the stance that they want to be a regulator, while the other took the stance that they want minimal regulation. People prefer the regulated environment. Everyone wants the benefit of regulations (people can't do the thing thing I don't like) but many don't want to pay the cost of regulations (I can't do the things those other people don't like).

I'm usually fine with regulation (and what it costs) that benefit the consumers but I'm not fine with apple (or any private company) being the arbitrator. Apple is only beholden to it's shareholder and I have 0 influence on their behavior. Not directed at you, but I don't get how people can complain about unaccountable politicians and then turn towards even less accountable boards of directors instead.

I agree in theory that a company should not be the arbiter, but the reality is that the company is less dysfunctional than the government and less beholden to political powers.

If we had a government that would regulate away dark patterns and generally do things in the interest of us, that would be great. We don't have that.

I think I have more influence over apple than I have over the us government. I think apple works on behalf of me more than the us government does. I've made that calculation differently than you, so we've come to different conclusions.

Re: How companies use dark patterns to keep you subscribed

#173

Post by JohnFen »

npteljes wrote: post #171
JohnFen wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right, of course, that there are many sorts of transactions that "subscriptions" make sense for. However, subscriptions (particularly relatively inexpensive subscriptions) are dangerous and people get into trouble with them all the time. The current fashion in our industry is to make everything a subscription even when it doesn't make sense for the product (a large portion of SaaS is exactly this). They do th…

I kind of agree. I think subscriptions are working for businesses because people don't like payment. And so in case of one time payment, they don't like it every single time. That's a lot of friction, and a lot of effort on the business part to convince people to come over that friction. Subscription is however, also a one-time friction, but the payment is then recurrent. That's not bad in itself, even though it's mu…

Although then it raises the problem of the payment processor (such as PayPal) having more information about you, I do like that solution. And, of course, your payment processor already knows what you're paying to who anyway, so perhaps there's no additional leakage of data with it.

I was completely unaware that PayPal did this. I have a PayPal account. I think I'll investigate.

Re: How companies use dark patterns to keep you subscribed

#174

Post by bell-cot »

brewdad wrote: post #147
bell-cot wrote: post #29

Daydream: Sign up for $Service using the name of a near-death relative. When you want to cancel, "$Subscriber is deceased" is a pretty heavy trump card.

"We're going to need 3 certified copies of the death certificate in order to close the account. These must be original copies and will not be returned."

"Okay. That I know, the $Jurisdiction Probate Court closed out her estate a while back now. Feel free to petition that Court to re-open the estate. I was neither her attorney, nor did I handle her will, so I have no legal standing in the matter regardless. But I could tell you which cemetery to send the the bill collectors to."

Re: How companies use dark patterns to keep you subscribed

#175

Post by febed »

joshlemer wrote: post #165

I find that Audible is quite rude in one respect when cancelling a subscription. The way an Audible subscription works is that when you're subscribed, you get 1 credit for a free audiobook every month. If you don't use it, you keep accumulating them. If you have a few months where you don't buy anything, you can accumulate a lot of credits. But if you cancel your subscription, you lose all your credits, which you pai…

You also have the option to pause your subscription. I use it whenever I’m accumulating too many credits, to catch up on my listening. If you didn’t like a title you can refund it after the pause.

Re: How companies use dark patterns to keep you subscribed

#176

Post by febed »

dyingkneepad wrote: post #30

As much as I think a website like this is beautiful, I always get highly annoyed when browsing stuff like this. There's a giant scrollable area with no text at the beginning, so I thought I had to click the little mac-like titlebar window buttons. When text finally appears, I have to wait for the animations before I can read. If I decide to scroll fast I lose text. My laptop fan keeps running all the time, which high…

I agree, ironic that it’s taking about bad web design when it has hard to read fonts and a Mario like character jumping around.

Re: How companies use dark patterns to keep you subscribed

#177

Post by parksoha »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #25
parksoha wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the company is forcing you to put reminders instead of just letting you cancel right away, that's a dark pattern. I do not know about Linkedin, but I've seen plenty doing this, like Amazon.

I assume they all let you cancel. If the subscription is free, and they do not let you keep the benefits if you cancel, then I would still not describe that as a dark pattern.

Amazon does not let you cancel and keep it for the month. As soon as you cancel it, your subscription ends.

Re: How companies use dark patterns to keep you subscribed

#178

Post by lotsofpulp »

parksoha wrote: post #177
lotsofpulp wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume they all let you cancel. If the subscription is free, and they do not let you keep the benefits if you cancel, then I would still not describe that as a dark pattern.

Amazon does not let you cancel and keep it for the month. As soon as you cancel it, your subscription ends.

I agree that is a dark pattern.

Re: How companies use dark patterns to keep you subscribed

#179

Post by xboxnolifes »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #36
graypegg wrote: post #3

I heard someone say a while back that “cancelled customers are just potential future customers”. Anyone that’s had an easy cancellation process will remember that flexibility if they ever need that service again. No idea why no large subscription service seems to understand that. Make me go thru annoying hoops and you’ve lost me for good!

I mean, just thinking through it logically, it _must_ be harder getting someone to sign back up for a service they quit right? I mean, they tried it and then they left it because ostensibly they didn’t think it provided value. How does that equation change?

I subscribe and unsubscribe from Netflix a couple times per year when there is something I want to watch most easily available on Netflix. If unsubscribing from Netflix was an hour endeavor, I would never re-subscribe and instead go through the extra effort of finding a good torrent.

Re: How companies use dark patterns to keep you subscribed

#180

Post by anticensor »

bell-cot wrote: post #29

Daydream: Sign up for $Service using the name of a near-death relative. When you want to cancel, "$Subscriber is deceased" is a pretty heavy trump card.

"Once you send us the death certificate, we will transfer it to their youngest heir."
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