Tell HN: Udacity dark pattern to cancel a subscription | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: Udacity dark pattern to cancel a subscription

165 pointsgt565k69 comments

I expected better from Udacity, but apparently it's not enough to click the "cancel" button on your subscription. You have to chat to an agent that has to convince you Comcast style why you shouldn't cancel.

Funny enough, they'd put a "cancel" button and then a popup shows up telling you to chat to an agent.

Granted chatting with the "agent" took about 5 mins, but it's still kind of a sh!tty pattern.

If I can enroll online by clicking through and filling out my info, I should be able to cancel just as easily, not be coerced into chatting with an "agent".

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Somewhat of a tangent, but I recently left a company. While working there, they automatically associate your ID so that you can dogfood the product of the org I worked for (in hindsight I should've had them use a new secondary account, oh well).

Well, it turns out for employees they have it set up to create a new monthly subscription at $0.00/mo.

When an employee leaves, they don't notify them that on the next billing period the rate will go to full cost ($19.99/mo).

A few days before that bill date, I happened to be checking my personal account since that's what I'd linked it to. Lo' and behold, I find out my subscription is being auto-renewed for that price with zero notification. I then went through the public process to cancel the thing, and it was multiple steps (I think 3 separate cancel pages and each one was set up so the cancel button is the non-primary or whatever the term is so you'll subconsciously press the opposite button).

What a pain.

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?

Cancellation dark patterns are endemic at this point. Case in point: I recently cancelled Dropbox Pro subscription. I didn’t record the entire process so what follows is my rough impression. I had to go through screens after screens of urging me not to leave. On the penultimate screen, at a glance I had no idea if I have successfully cancelled, there were something like two big primary buttons luring me back, I had to read very carefully before I noticed a secondary or unstyled button tucked in a corner that’s actually the cancellation button. Honestly felt like fishing out the real download link on one of those scammy file hosting sites.

Management decisions like this policy are indicative of a sick company. This is your canary in a coalmine scenario. Get out before it becomes too toxic to survive.

Where are the companies that don't pull this shit? It's more like a pickaxe and railcar than a canary. Most companies use dark patterns because they're profitable and not illegal. People doing profitable work get bonuses - this is what sales teams are for. People won't do ethically ugly shit unless you pay them enough commission to hide the stink, or if you're good enough at bullshitting the bullshitters.

Half the shit being done in crypto would count as fraud if the assets weren't digital. NFT is literally pump and dump, and people are being blatant about it.

Customer retention - harassing and cajoling and exhausting people into paying more - is not standard global business practice. It won't go away unless it's made illegal.

Appealing to the people doing the dirty work is silly. They're not in it to be good nice citizens of humanity. They're peddling shinola to the great unwashed, getting their nut.

Before we fix the ones that only whine insistently when you cancel, let's get a handle on the Hotel a California, every human has an account, "you can never leave" companies.

Legislate strict privacy rights requiring ephemeral storage, continuous consent, and fast, lethal penalties. If your company can't protect customer data like its fucking Fort Knox your company has no business handling private information.

There are sufficient existing enforcement and watchdog groups, they simply need legislation and executive direction.

Refine nuanced interactions, setting limits on "retention" activities, and establish a framework of legally prohibited dark patterns by setting clear boundaries around what constitutes acceptable sales, data, and account management behavior.

Nuke offenders from orbit, as frequently and fast as possible.

Anything less and the circus will continue. Shitty little clowns will keep getting out of the car, mugging audience members, and it's just a matter of time before the lion tamer takes center ring.

It's way past time for laws that account for the fact that the world is digital. Analog metaphors don't cut it.

> Where are the companies that don't pull this shit?

Netflix? Amazon?

I'll add ESPN plus and Fubo to the list of easy to cancel.

Fubo is my favorite because when you cancel they send an email to notify you of a "better option" - Pause the membership so that they can continue to bill in 3 months.

I recently cancelled my Netflix account.

Cancelling was easy enough. However about one week later, I got a churn email in the style of "Hey Ywain, here are 3 good reasons for you to ~~give us your money~~ subscribe again".

I was pretty sure my account was set to not receive any kind of promotional emails, so I clicked the "Unsubscribe" link. The link asks you to login, and immediately after login it redirects you to the one-click page to resume your subscription rather than the communications settings page.

Even after manually navigating to the communications settings page, I was able to verify that my account was, in fact, set to not receive any kind of emails at all from Netflix, so there's nothing more I can unsubscribe from.

Very disappointed in Netflix, and won't be resubscribing any time soon.

Re. Amazon, the process to unsubscribe from Prime is a textbook dark pattern which requires 3 or 4 clicks on pages with 3 buttons where 2 out of the 3 will stop the unsubscribe flow and the third button being of course the less obvious one.

Mark it spam. This is becoming a mantra for me. Companies don’t respect marketing consent preferences, or just don’t provide an option. If you didn’t ask for an email about a specific transaction, it’s spam.

When you mark an email spam you should not get another non transactional communication from them, ever

I recently found out that at some point after I started paying for it, Terrastruct became free for personal use.

Surprised, I went to check my subscription, and it turns out they had just stopped charging me somewhere spring of 2021… I’m still baffled by the fact that any company I was voluntarily paying would just freely stop charging me.

Amazon makes you jump through something like 5-10 app pages to cancel Prime. Almost felt like breaking up with a particularly desperate partner.

And then they try to sign you back up with every new purchase

Shout out to Code&Quill. I had a notebook subscription. Canceled it the other day.

Manage subscription > Cancel.

No confirmation[1]. No incentive. No survey. No guilt. No ultra light grey buttons. Just click. "Your subscription has been canceled".

[1] Which isn't a huge issue, I feel, it takes about 30 seconds to re-establish.

Apple Arcade and Google Stadia didn't do this. Subscribed and then unsubbed from both over the holiday period.

I'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.

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.

These companies are using human psychology in immoral ways to victimize people. Whether a person fights back (which isn’t free) or not, they are already being victimized. Some of us do fight back, but not enough to cut into the profitability of these actions. To claim one of these victims is “part of the problem” because they lack the time or capacity to defend themselves is shameful; especially since making such a statement serves to normalize the companies’ immoral actions.

If you think I'm trying to normalize this practice, then you've clearly got some wires crossed. You're riding your emotions a little hard on this one me thinks. The person that started this thread has since admittedly accepted their share of the blame.

I clearly stated it was a shitty company for doing these things. There are things in life that are difficult and shitty to have to deal with, but not dealing with them is just sticking one's head in the sand. We've all been guilty of it, at least I know I have and am on other things. It doesn't make it wrong to call me out on it. By actively not doing anything about the only thing I can control (myself), I am allowing them to prey on my $10/month.

Disclaiming something doesn’t negate other actions. Everyone acknowledges there are things we can do as individuals to deal with the problem. Just because the original poster also acknowledges it doesn’t negate you claiming he is “part of the problem.” That is the essence of victim blaming, and that is what serves to normalize the aforementioned immoral behavior.

We'll just have to agree to disagree, as I just don't feel this is victim blaming. There's a difference of saying that it is the person's fault for this happening to them, and recognizing that a shitty company is preying upon people because they allow themselves to continue to be preyed upon. It is possible to be a willing victim, at that point, the victim blaming shield is no longer applicable.

You feel differently, and that's your right. I just choose to not coddle those that choose to be the victim. They've moved into the enabling role.

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.

Eh, I freely accept my share of the blame in being exploited. It just isn't worth prioritizing fixing though. I have to find an hour or two to deal with it.

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.

I used to be like the parent poster, but yours is the position I evolved to, also.

And, I make sure to leave a negative review or call attention to the shittiness of the company involved somehow, much as the OP as done.

It is annoying, and possibly not the most effective use of my time, but I have come to see it as a kind of civic responsibility.

This is the right approach! If everyone decides to stay silent it will only make more companies adopt this.

The shit needs to be called out!

It is not so much discomfort (although I do hate phone calls), but rather an unwillingness to give up somewhere between a half hour and 2 hours of prime daytime hours waiting on hold.

Blue Apron used this pattern. For over a year, every week I went to Google, typed in a search term that would give me a paid ad from Blue Apron, I clicked through it and made sure my next 4 weeks of meals were skipped. (Along the way, I learned there was a cancel fully online page, but it was not linked in the nav, furthering my resolve to keep doing this.)

Eventually a new CEO took over and the cancel online page appeared in the nav whereupon I canceled that way and wrote them a quick note of thanks for putting it in the nav.

Worst part was: we genuinely enjoyed the service for over a year and many of their recipes have become part of our regular menu at home. We stopped only when the recipes got somewhat repetitive and then the convenience wasn’t quite worth it. I liked and recommend it (now), but this attempt to goose the retention numbers really sat poorly with me.

Thought up or implemented are not always the same.

These patterns may also be very nasty for the one that ends up trying to convince you to stay.

It's not unusual to have compensation for a team or a business unit based off signups. That's a ride on Easy Street when a company's surfing on a wave of marketing, word of mouth and general growth.

When maturing, that ride becomes harder. Some orgs work cancellations into a negative part of compensation, while the bonus for the initial sign-up has already been paid out to the last incumbent in the role/team, or perhaps the now business head when they did your job.

Negative compensation models. Companies that end up running such models are no longer learning organisations. I hope Udacity isn't one. If they are, just remember the person trying to persuade you to stay is not sitting in a particularly nice place

Today I tried to cancel uber pass. The instruction on their website: To cancel your Uber Pass in your app: 1. Tap the profile icon in the bottom menu bar to access your account view. 2. Tap ""Uber Pass"" to open your Uber Pass hub. 3. In the hub, scroll down to find the 'Auto-Renew' toggle and turn it to ""off.""

But there is absolutely no "Auto-Renew" toggle in their browser dashboard or android app.

I have to remove all payment methods and see if it works.

Shout out to California and… the App Store? for disallowing this kinda shit

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 people end up missing the reminder and get stuck with another month.

Vicious.

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.

So 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.

Have 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

There is a very simple way to deal with the agent. Just don't answer any questions. Open the conversation, and then respond with "I want to cancel my subscription", no matter what they ask. If they ask if you want some other service instead, don't say "no", say that you want to cancel your subscription.

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 few units) that were required to get the certificate because they were on a free subscription. Why offer it to users, ask them to invest their time and then do something like that...

You are not based in California I presume? Maybe try the change-of-address trick next time. It is a terrible practice though, I agree

What's the change-of-address trick?

If you are in California they have to give you easy cancellation option

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

This 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.

I had an experience with BritBox a few years ago where I signed up for a trial with a Revolut card on an account that had zero or very little balance. (I only did this once, so I wasn't abusing multiple trials.) When the trial expired, they decided to overdraft me (it showed up as a "delayed transaction" in Revolut, which was completely invisible to me beforehand, only a $0 authorization charge was shown). And when I went on the website, there was only an option to "restart your subscription", no option to cancel it and prevent future charges. Since I didn't want to risk being charged again to try to restart it first and then cancel, I ended up contacting support to cancel. At least they didn't try to convince me to stay though.

Blue 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.

So funny startup story that is tangentially related...

For a while, we didn't have an unsubscribe button at all!

Not because we were malicious or intentionally adding a dark pattern, but because critical stuff was breaking literally every day and we didn't really have the bandwidth. It was fine because we had few customers, and on the rare occasion one of them churned, they just shot us a quick email and we immediately canceled the subscription for them.

Well on the day we actually had time to breathe, we decided to finally buckled down and add the unsubscribe functionality. Turns out, it was as simple as flipping a switch in Stripe. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I tried to delete my Spotify account a while back. Was beyond tired of their constant UI changes and decided that silence was better than constant frustration. I wanted not just to cancel, but delete the account.

Ending the subscription was relatively smooth, only some sad violin music and a questionnaire about why I wanted to close it, but man oh man did I have to go through an obstacle course to actually terminate the accounts. Emails had to be exchanged where I repeatedly confirmed that yes, this was actually something I wanted to do, and yes, I knew I could cancel the subscription instead.

I get a kick out of cancellation of internations social networking site cancel threats:

You still owe €32.85 for your Albatross Membership subscription. Your payment has been overdue since 05 Feb 2020 and we have sent multiple emails to notify you.

Since your Albatross Membership subscription is a legal contract, it can only be terminated by following the proper cancellation procedure. Withholding your payment for a service you subscribed to is not equivalent to cancelling your contract.

If your balance remains unpaid, we’re legally required to follow a debt collection process and additional administrative fees may apply.

I don't like doing this, but I've been in your position multiple times. One was my mobile phone plan, I wanted to transfer to another provider, since they had a cheaper contract, so I just let my current contract expire. Turns out, if you don't explicitly cancel, they'll just keep billing you.

So I started receiving billing letters, where the amount just kept going up. It stopped after about 6 months. Never really heard anything about it after that, pretty sure I can't go back to that provider, not that I would want to.

Hahaha for real? My trick to get rid of junk subscriptions is to cancel my card from time to time and resubscribe to things I miss. Can’t remember seeing this before!

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.

Coursera has a nasty spin on this.

Ending your subscription is easy, there are no hidden buttons or instructions to call. However, if you have been inactive on the course for some time (a few weeks), your progress is rolled back to Week 1, even if you did the weekly quizzes and assignments on time.

The Economist uses the same pattern.

It's nice if you're aware of it and willing to use it for discounts (faking that you want to unsubscribe, knowing that you'll get a better deal during the attempt), but if you actually want to cancel the service it's awful.

"Stanford’s Digital Civil Society Lab (DCSL) Tip Line where individuals can submit their sightings of dark patterns online."

How is the effect different from agent retention script - 'Before you cancel..', 'Are you sure?', 'Why not I waive 1 month off for you if you stay?'

How did we come to a conclusion that any online process should be 'easy'?

Could use a CaaS product (credit cards as a service), basically a custom card for each subscription you use, so you can cancel it... There's often legal and contractual issues with this though...

privacy.com

I really wish there was a non-US alternative to this.

Wise let’s you do this with virtual cards - not on a per subscription basis - but you can wipe them all then get a new one.

That's good to know, didn't know Wise had virtual cards.

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.

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