The roadmap was actually changed because of those customers, so presumably the end result should align better with what they really were looking for.
I would've done an opt-in though.
Opt-in would have been the minimum to my taste. Here is how I lived the experiment from here:
- the billing info was captured by making me believe the content was completely available (it's actually still advertised here http://publicbeta.co/library/)
- I wrote to Adii who asked back for my trust etc, I said: ok let's wait until this guy is able to bootstrap his stuff, let's give him a chance
- later, I received a mail which I didn't fully read ("Announcing our new launch", I just assumed that everything was going on as planned - I didn't receive "We change everything, are you ok with that?" as the subject or similar)
- then I got charged for something different from what my billing info was captured for
EDIT: I then realized what was happening by actually attending the MicroConf Europe where Adii made a presentation.
- I tried to cancel but could not find a link to cancel from inside the app
- I asked for a refund + cancellation by email and got it
Note that I'm in no way angry (personally) against Adii!
I'm just analyzing this from a customer perspective.
The problem is that trust is basically broken at step one, and then later one can only wonder if the long email then the charge without clear notice then the lack of link to cancel etc aren't just other tactics to keep the game going on.
I wouldn't recommend using these techniques to friends!
I'm pretty sure this is illegal and risky to do (at least in some countries) and could actually break the TOS of Recurly or payment gateways.
Again, nothing personal, I'm just sharing my experience in case someone wants to mimic the technique here.
Personally I wouldn't mind about leaving my CC details if I was told the entire truth afterwards and then had the opportunity to opt-in again. Any reason why you didn't take the "second opt-in" approach, Adii?
So this would still be a dark pattern even with an opt-in, since people will mentally start rationalising ("It's a good service for smart entrepreneurs like me to learn from each other") instead of assessing it from scratch ("It's an online startup community I pay to belong to. Is that worth $30 a month? Hacker News is free...").
It's a shame, because if the thing people had paid for had been delivered this would have probably been okay, but as it is, it seems pretty unethical.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot-in-the-door_technique [2] Can't find a good reference, but basically avoiding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance