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Why can a scam company raise $40 Million Series C + $76 Million Series B?

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Re: Why can a scam company raise $40 Million Series C + $76 Million Series B?

#141

Post by Nodex »

sgustard wrote: post #22

Their "how it works" page explains this, with far fewer than "2500 words", though it could be clearer. http://www.justfab.com/how-justfab-works.htm They have 2 million likes on Facebook. Were all these users scammed? The "monthly subscription" has recently been a hot e-commerce category. Other sites with a similar model are shoedazzle.com, fabkids.com, musthave.popsugar.com and so on. See: http://www.quora.com/E-Comm…

2 million likes were probably bought or click jacked :) - likes don't mean a thing anymore with the advent of click jacking

Re: Why can a scam company raise $40 Million Series C + $76 Million Series B?

#142

Post by belorn »

jdh wrote: post #42
karterk wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP - but I did take a look at that page, and I do find it misleading. The "checkout as a regular member" is in a small font on the sidebar, while the main CTA is big, bold and defaults to the VIP program. The part where you're told about the monthly fee is in the last sentence of the sidebar. I had to practically hunt it to find it - for most people shopping online this will be oblivious. By giving the screen…

I don't accept the word "misleading" -- I do not believe the page in any way misleads. It does not try to position it as anything other than a subscription, and the language is plain english. Could they put the subscription details in bold? Could they use a larger font than all the other text? Sure. It's a tradeoff, for sure, and every retailer has to optimize their site to perform. Could they pop up three boxes afte…

The frontpage talks about buying and what price of shoes are. In plain English, this is a sale, not a subscription.

In plain English, they could had enticed people to join a subscription, which in turn would give them special deals.

That would had been plain English, but they opted for the words "buy", "all styles is ...." and so on. Typical example of misleading.

Re: Why can a scam company raise $40 Million Series C + $76 Million Series B?

#143

Post by bane »

foobarbazqux wrote: post #62
karterk wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not try to position it as anything other than a subscription, and the language is plain english. Yup, plain english which is pretty loaded in the favor of subscription. Point me to one heading which says "VIP subscription costs only 39 USD per month". every retailer has to optimize their site to perform This is not the same thing. The typical shopping site constitutes of 1 time purchases. When I google for a…

> We can argue over the fine details, but you can't convince me that this is not shady. He's not trying to convince you, he's trying to convince himself.

He looks pretty convinced here.

http://www.matrixpartners.com/team/josh-hannah/

Re: Why can a scam company raise $40 Million Series C + $76 Million Series B?

#145

Post by bausson »

avalaunch wrote: post #69
jdh wrote: post #23

I'm the Series A investor in this company. We in fact have done plenty of due diligence, and you will be pleased to know it is not a scam company. In fact, the company has very high customer satisfaction ratings, including an NPS that is in the ballpark of Amazon, and a very high customer retention rate. More than half of the people who subscribe to the service are still subscribers after two years, which is unusuall…

The other commenters are being too nice in their replies. You're full of shit. JustFab is a shoe of the month club masquerading as a normal online shoe store. The VIP Membership Program is the essence of JustFab's business model and yet it's missing entirely from the home page of their site. It looks like any other shoe store. And yet you think it's clear that the user is being signed up for a shoe of the month membe…

Seeing the comments, I wonder if the only person he was trying to convince was himself.

From what I see in his comment, it looks quite like a rationalization attempt.

Re: Why can a scam company raise $40 Million Series C + $76 Million Series B?

#146

Post by cabalamat »

annnnd wrote: post #128
enraged_camel wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The screenshot you provided is a prime example of a "dark pattern" where the process is designed to trick the user. http://darkpatterns.org/

Actually, this scam deserves to be there... Has anyone mailed it to them yet?

I have.

Re: Why can a scam company raise $40 Million Series C + $76 Million Series B?

#147

Post by bane »

Thanks for the post. My wife shops online a lot and has a new sites checkout process almost in muscle memory. After looking at the site and the screenshots here I can say that she would absolutely fall for this scam and we'd end up dealing with the hassle of cancelling things and reversing charges and all that.

Total and outright scam. I bet in a class action, the plaintiff could even make a decent RICO case out of it and triple the damages.

Re: Why can a scam company raise $40 Million Series C + $76 Million Series B?

#148

Post by gabemart »

jdh wrote: post #23

I'm the Series A investor in this company. We in fact have done plenty of due diligence, and you will be pleased to know it is not a scam company. In fact, the company has very high customer satisfaction ratings, including an NPS that is in the ballpark of Amazon, and a very high customer retention rate. More than half of the people who subscribe to the service are still subscribers after two years, which is unusuall…

>Seems pretty clear to me.

I consider myself a fairly savvy internet user, and, even knowing it was there, it took me a good 20 seconds or so to find the part about a monthly charge in the image you posted.

The user attention is focused on the "continue checkout" box. It looks very similar to a part of the checkout flow at most other online retailers. Nothing in that box indicates a monthly charge. Nothing in that box even indicates that there's a choice between VIP and non-VIP. This information is relegated to the sidebar. In most websites, the sidebar contains non-critical supplementary information. Titling the sidebar with "VIP membership program" suggests to the user that the sidebar contains information on an opt-in (rather than opt-out) program that they can safely ignore if they just want to buy a pair of shoes.

It looks to me exactly like a dark pattern designed to trick the user into signing up for the monthly service without realizing what they are doing.

Re: Why can a scam company raise $40 Million Series C + $76 Million Series B?

#149

Post by annnnd »

agsamek wrote: post #53
wenxun wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is their previous checkout page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4592827

Thanks. For me - they are and were good enough. In particular you can get your shoes for past credits. This is far from scam.

> In particular you can get your shoes for past credits.

Still a scam. OP's girlfriend (and probably many others) didn't know about this deal and didn't (knowingly) consent to it.

Re: Why can a scam company raise $40 Million Series C + $76 Million Series B?

#150

Post by pjbrow »

harrybr wrote: post #95
jdh wrote: post #23

I'm the Series A investor in this company. We in fact have done plenty of due diligence, and you will be pleased to know it is not a scam company. In fact, the company has very high customer satisfaction ratings, including an NPS that is in the ballpark of Amazon, and a very high customer retention rate. More than half of the people who subscribe to the service are still subscribers after two years, which is unusuall…

Hi Josh, it's good of you to step up and have this discussion. It seems that justfab is using a Conversion Rate Optimisation trick that you're either not aware of or that you're deliberately downplaying. Put simply, the UI is set to have VIP membership activation default to ON. Those people who are not paying attention will not read the information in the right hand side bar, will check out and will mistakenly purcha…

Very well said. I agree entirely - there should be a concrete change as a result of this thread. It's impossible for a reasonable person to read the opinions of the well informed people here and continue to think that everything's A-ok. This is an opportunity to prove your ethical bona fides, jdh.
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