I'm pretty sure most of these patterns were thought up by the brain geniuses on this very site.
Thought up or implemented are not always the same.
Tell HN: Udacity dark pattern to cancel a subscription
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Re: Tell HN: Udacity dark pattern to cancel a subscription
#12Shout out to California and… the App Store? for disallowing this kinda shit
Re: Tell HN: Udacity dark pattern to cancel a subscription
#13Blue Apron at one point had a similar cancellation flow. For a year I'd login and cancel the next week's shipment -- one time I missed that, and got a surprise delivery -- and that caused me to fully bounce. They got one more sale out of me, good for them.
Re: Tell HN: Udacity dark pattern to cancel a subscription
#14I'm pretty sure most of these patterns were thought up by the brain geniuses on this very site.
It has worked plenty on me. Am I really going to make a phone call over $10 month? For months and months, no, I will not.
I mean, you could be lighting a cigar with that $10, so you're losing out on something. It's much more than $10/month => $120/year. It's the principle of the matter that a shitty company's best way to make money is to make it hard for the people that tried it out to leave. You are just proving their business model works. You (royal you, but you personally as well) are part of the problem.
Re: Tell HN: Udacity dark pattern to cancel a subscription
#15This 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...
Re: Tell HN: Udacity dark pattern to cancel a subscription
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Change your address to an address in California
Use a fictional general delivery address from a hand picked California post office. If you have not spoken with a postmaster, a received mail piece would bounce, but no one is going to send you mail there if you’re using the address just to leverage California consumer protection capabilities. https://faq.usps.com/s/article/What-is-General-Delivery
Using General Delivery is also great if you're on the road and need to receive mail
Re: Tell HN: Udacity dark pattern to cancel a subscription
#17So I sign up and cancel courses whenever they have free trials to check them out. You can get around this pattern because they categorize the 'reason' you have to give them when you cancel. If it's an objectionable reason they take you to an agent, if it's a financial reason they sometimes offer you a discount to stay on (50% off per month) or you can cancel, and if it's a non-objectionable reason like the course content not being what you want they let you cancel straight away.
Edit: I use virtual cards to sign up under gmail+udacity1@gmail.com addresses to try multiple courses at a time so I have cancelled a lot.
Re: Tell HN: Udacity dark pattern to cancel a subscription
#18This is really sad, but I run a competing service so in my greedy business mindset I'm glad their doing it and getting called out. On Qvault.io I've done my best to make cancelling easy. I've lived the horror stories of dark patterns trying to cancel stuff. My vasa gym was the worst, I had to pay a fee to cancel.
Re: Tell HN: Udacity dark pattern to cancel a subscription
#19Have been through this pattern twice with Udacity.
The first time I ended up not cancelling when the agent offering me a 50% discount on my subscription and the second time I just needed to keep replying "I want to cancel my subscription" to every response
Re: Tell HN: Udacity dark pattern to cancel a subscription
#20I'm pretty sure most of these patterns were thought up by the brain geniuses on this very site.
It has worked plenty on me. Am I really going to make a phone call over $10 month? For months and months, no, I will not.
I'm the opposite, once you make it difficult for me to cancel a service, my resolve to be rid of you increases 10 fold. It overwhelms any discomfort making a call would put me through.