Ask HN: End of days – are subscription dark patterns simply becoming fraud? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: End of days – are subscription dark patterns simply becoming fraud?

9 pointslifeisstillgood8 comments

So this is a Wells Fargo style question. Well Fargo has paid billions in fines after internally pressuring workers to achieve account sign ups. So the workers falsely claimed people had said yes to accounts and completed sign up forms, getting bonuses / not getting fired. Oddly there was not a huge amount of financial loss but boy it cut through as a scandal.

So anyway, I am "sniffing the air". The guardian newspaper opens my account online but to cancel I need to call between 9 and 5. That's kind of run of the mill dark pattern. My wife is currently arguing with Hello Fresh because an account we cancelled has been reopened and deliveries sent and charges made - a second time - first after a door to door salesman came round and was told no. And again with no obvious cause.

Am I being paranoid - or are all the subscription services now simply outright lying to keep the taps turned on for a few more months?

My seven year old daughters opinion "if the company does not make mummy happy then the company won't make any money anyway". Smart kid.

I've dealt with this quite a lot in the last couple years and what I do now is not engage with the supplier on their terms. I live in the UK though which has reasonably strong consumer protection laws so companies can't just take money from you without your permission. Also I don't think it's a coincidence that most of the companies I've had problems with weren't operating out of the UK.

My thinking is that I've signed up for something via a form on the web then I should be able to cancel the same way. If I've supplied a credit card to pay for the service via web then I should be able to remove that payment method via the web as well.

So if they say I have to cancel by calling them on the phone I won't do that anymore. I will instead just send an email to their customer service address informing them (rather than requesting) of my cancellation. I also specifically tell them that I withdraw my consent for them to charge my card (I don't actually know if this does anything). If they respond by telling me to contact them via phone I just tell them no.

I additionally sometimes cancel the card they have on file so they will be unable to charge me. If I have a direct debit in place (this is a UK thing) I just log into my online banking and cancel the direct debit.

I did recently have a case where my card was billed again because I didn't cancel the card and they justified it by saying their terms and conditions contain a 30 days notice to cancel (this was a b2b SaaS). I responded by reiterating that they didn't have my consent to charge the card they had on file and I then filed a chargeback with the bank and got the £400 back.

Planet fitness is the absolute worst offender in my mind. I had a membership once at a location and did not close it before moving out of state. Fair to assume I could just cancel over the phone, but this is not something they would do. Apparently the contract says cancellations have to be in person at the branch you opened your membership at. Even after explaining I was multiple states away and could not do this they refused to close my account and continued to bill me. I asked my bank to deny all future payments to them, and this worked for a month or two before payments started getting pulled again. this went on for over a year until I eventually went back to visit friends and was able to close the membership in person. I can't imagine this is legal, but I guess it's probably worked out well enough for them to be worth it. I've heard the same story from a few people since this all happened.

Why it wouldn't be legal? It was in the contract.

Food boxes are horrible. I've dealt with GoodFood and HelloFresh. They both forced me to put a hold for 3 months and then contact them again. They wouldn't cancel it for me. It wasn't until my credit card got compromised and I refused to answer them about updating my details that it was properly cancelled.

I ran into almost the same thing with Pretty Litter. When I tried to renew that the credit card wouldn't add after I got a new one and removed the compromised card. But they wanted to call me to put my card back on. Couldn't do it through their website. I declined that too and never looked back.

At least in the Netherlands, and as far as I know the whole EU you have a right to cancel the same way as you sign up.

My last personal experience was also a dark pattern. Tried cancelling a newspaper, was informed that I was to late for the recurring year subscription, did I want to cancel after this subscription? So I asked about the legal right of to the notice period of a month, and yes sure that was also possible. Would I like to use my credit for another subscription? No I want my money back, oh yeah that's possible.

This should be way easier...

> The guardian newspaper opens my account online but to cancel I need to call between 9 and 5. That's kind of run of the mill dark pattern.

That's not a dark pattern?

> A dark pattern is "a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things, such as buying overpriced insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills".

.

> Am I being paranoid - or are all the subscription services now simply outright lying to keep the taps turned on for a few more months?

Just because of your experience with a few, does not mean all of them are like that.

The New York Times notoriously did something like that a few years ago.

They'd have a teaser offer for a few weeks that you "couldn't refuse" but then when you wanted to cancel you'd have to talk to a customer retention agent who would give you a hard sell ("if you stop reading the New York Times you'd be uninformed and you might vote Republican or something...") and try to get you to take the teaser offer again for a few weeks, figuring sooner or later you'd just give up and let the subscription revert to full price.

> the substantial effect of subverting or impairing a consumer's choice to opt-out

> In October 2021, the Federal Trade Commission issued an enforcement policy statement, announcing a crackdown on businesses using dark patterns that "trick or trap consumers into subscription services."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pattern

And -

Roach motel

> You get into a situation very easily, but then you find it is hard to get out of it (e.g. a premium subscription).

https://www.deceptive.design/types

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