Some Dark Patterns Now Illegal in UK | Hacker News Reader

Some Dark Patterns Now Illegal in UK

90percentofeverything.com

653 pointsrobin_reala260 comments

Sounds like an excellent law to stop the horrid practices in so many online shops. Let's hope a form of this law spreads throughout Europe and the U.S.

This caught my eye, however:

Wow. Seems like it would make a ton of financial sense to go hunting for online shops located in the U.K. that are not complying with this law yet and take advantage of this, helping them learn "the hard way"?

It is a good idea, but in practice getting them to return your money before you return the goods might involve a small claims court.

This directive actually has a lot less "teeth" than you'd think from reading this article. It is good that it exists, but aside from class action style lawsuits, few companies will get hit by individual customers seeking refunds+goods.

Perhaps including the credit cart "dispute charges" process into this discussion would help?

That was my guess as to where enforcement takes place. But this is already a great way to "reeducate" terrible retailers since there are often expensive chargeback fees even if the vendor wins the dispute ($15-25 in the US)

Chargebacks are a significant risk as merchants, because if you start to rack up too many of them then it won't just be the individual chargeback fees for each of those transactions that you have to worry about. As I understand it, you can also wind up paying higher processing costs generally, or even being kicked by your payment services and/or not accepted by other services in the future if your track record gets bad enough.

Then again, even my tiny little start-up manages to advertise an honest recurring subscription fee, tax-inclusive, with no other charges added on top later. In our entire time trading, I think we've had exactly one person complain that they didn't realise it was a monthly fee when they signed up. I'm not sure how they managed to miss it -- we tell them right next to the price, in full size text, throughout the sign-up process. But even so, we just refunded their second payment and cancelled their ongoing subscription to avoid the argument, and that was the end of the matter. We never got as far as any sort of formal dispute/chargeback process via the customer's card company.

So I guess I don't have much sympathy if the kinds of big businesses mentioned in this article can't figure it out and wind up suffering for it under these new laws. These "dark patterns" are obviously deceptive and obviously unfair to consumers, and I'm glad the big businesses are going to have to play by the same rules as the rest of us in the future.

> Let's hope a form of this law spreads throughout Europe

Ummm... this is a EU wide law. The UK, as a member state of the EU, had to implement it into UK law (that's how EU laws work).

This is already the law of the land in all EU countries. Nearly all good consumer rights laws are done at the EU level.

You misread the quote. They said "Europe" not the EU. So presumably they were hoping it would spread to non-EU European countries also.

I find that it's increasingly the case that "Europe" gets used in place of EU in much the same way as people will say "America" when they mean the USA.

Then people are "increasingly" using it incorrectly. Europe is a continent, the EU is a political alliance. There are too many countries within Europe but not in the EU to use the terms synonymously. For example:

Albania, Andorra, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Norway, Russia, San Marino, Serbia, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, Vatican City

I think it is pretty interesting that I got heavily downvoted for pointing out that the person above me conflated Europe and the EU and then tried to correct someone else based on that misunderstanding. This place is turning into Reddit more and more day by day, people are using the down arrow as a "I disagree" button... Which is exactly why Reddit has gone right down the toilet.

Croatia is part of the EU.

I stand corrected. Seems might list is at least a year old (they joined in July 2013).

Yes, but a lot of those have strong bilateral ties to the EU. Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway are part of the EEA, which means that this becomes law there. Switzerland has a ton of bilateral agreements, so this law should be expected there as well. Monaco, Mentenegro and San Marino have Association Agreements as well. The EU's reach is a bit bigger than it looks like.

For what it's worth when talking about things like consumer regulations talking about the EU is often not the most descriptive term, I'm not 100% sure about this topic but I'm fairly sure this applies to the entirety of the EEA, which is the EU + Iceland + Norway + Liechtenstein.

> Then people are "increasingly" using it incorrectly. Europe is a continent, the EU is a political alliance.

Well, it's exactly the same as with America (the continent) and United States (a country). You can either argue that both calling EU Europe and USA America is wrong and we should stop, or accept that in both cases, people can figure things out from the context.

Yes, it's a common metonymy, but whether its use is valid or misleading for no good reason depends on the context in my opinion.

If somebody said "let's hope this law spreads throughout America", you wouldn't assume they meant just the US, would you?

Calling the United States "America" is often handy, but it's sort of a sloppy language all in all. Personally I rather avoid it if ambiguity is likely.

People are also often referring to the United Kingdom as "England" (disregarding the existence of Scotland and Wales) and while it's probably fine as a mental shortcut, it can make you misunderstood or get on somebody's nerves once in a while. And that's a fact of life, too.

Disclaimer: I'm European / EU citizen / Polish.

In "Let's hope marijuana legalization spreads throughout America", I would indeed assume they meant the U.S.

> People are also often referring to the United Kingdom as "England" (disregarding the existence of Scotland and Wales)

More to the point, when I use "England" instead of "United Kingdom" I disregard the separation and jurisdictional peculiarities of Scotland, Wales and England and refer to the whole as "England". As neither I nor the great majority of people in my social circles know how their government works precisely and what their national identity multitude is about, the linguistic separation seems mood anyway. That's not to say that it is actually unimportant, though.

That's what it's like from your point of view, sure, but I'm kind of taking the point of view of someone who values Scottish (or Welsh) national identity and for them being labeled as "England" even for the sake of convenience could be a bit of a slap (and again, not that it's your intention, obviously).

For what it's worth: roughly 10 years ago, when Poland was about to join the EU, Yes supporters used a slogan "Yes, I'm an European" [and thus I vote for entering the EU] in the pre-referendum campaign.

I would see this slogan (consciously playing on the Eastern complex, to be sure) as somewhat offensive in its coarseness. What was it really saying? 1000 years of European history and heritage doesn't matter and you are disqualified from being an European if you don't support joining the EU? :)

> I would see this slogan (consciously playing on the Eastern complex, to be sure) as somewhat offensive in its coarseness. What was it really saying? 1000 years of European history and heritage doesn't matter and you are disqualified from being an European if you don't support joining the EU? :)

I'd see the slogan in a more positive light: After all, we are all Europeans and we have enough common heritage to work together. That's what I associate with the EU, the wish to overcome our historic differences and build a political union that is up to our globalized world, something strong enough to defend the values we share. And also the dream to live in a more united world. For example, when I worked in Switzerland for half a year, there were all those little things that acutely showed me that I was a second class resident. In other EU countries I've got more of a feeling of having a right to be there, not being just tolerated or granted a favor.

Maybe as a German I'm also a little bit insensitive to national identities. Having a glaring historical example in everyone's mind of what certain kinds of nationalism and patriotism can lead to has sure driven that kind of "belonging somewhere" out of me. Foremost I see myself as a European and as member of certain online communities that don't exist geographically and only then as a German.

> If somebody said "let's hope this law spreads throughout America", you wouldn't assume they meant just the US, would you?

Yes I would. Irish person here. Native English speaker.

I agree.

Disclaimer: also European / EU / Polish citizen :).

>If somebody said "let's hope this law spreads throughout America", you wouldn't assume they meant just the US, would you?

That depends on whether the law is federal or not.

But devoid of context I would expect someone to use 'the Americas' if they're talking about both continents, not 'America'.

USA has always been called "America". Europe the continent has been Europe the continent far longer than the EU has existed. Both are incorrect, and thankfully "The Americas" has caught on to fix one of these wrong labels. Besides, the continent has always been called North America, not America. There is no other label of Europe the continent than "Europe", so it's a flat out wrong label of the EU at best, and at worst it's offensive to those not living in the Alliance.

Define 'always' ?

IIRC the USA hasn't really bee around all that long...

let's go with a practical definition like "within all living memory" which most people, I'm sure, presumed from context. very few people need their conversations to include the mental state of those dead for 200+ years simply to achieve some stringent ideal of correctness.

I have never understood calling Europe a continent. The division strikes me as political rather than geographic. And no, I can't be convinced otherwise.

it's exactly the same as with America (the continent)

Where is this continent called "America"? I've never heard of it. I've heard of "North America" and "South America", but those are separate continents.

I'm European and I conflate them all the time. You're getting downvoted because it's a pointless derailment, not just out of disagreement. You may also wish to read the guidelines, especially this one:

If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> "people are using the down arrow as a "I disagree" button.."

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 "I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness." - pg, 2382 days ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392347 "Downvoting has always been used to express disagreement." - pg, 2085 days ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691 "IIRC we first had this conversation about a month after launch. Downvotes have always been used to express disagreement. Or more precisely, a negative score has: users seem not to downvote something they disagree with if it already has a sufficiently negative score." - pg, 1898 days ago

(If you were not aware: pg is Paul Graham, the founder of YCombinator and Hacker News.)

FWIW I did not downvote you in this thread (I actually upvoted you.) I'm just informing you of the principle -- downvote for disagreement is totally cool on HN.

> FWIW I did not downvote you in this thread (I actually upvoted you.) I'm just informing you of the principle -- downvote for disagreement is totally cool on HN.

I disagree. From what I've come to expect from the voting behavior, downvotes are reserved for comments that are badly written (missing punctuation etc.), insulting or objectively false in an easily verifiable manner (like "Java does not include floating point numbers").

As far as I can overcome my personal bias I try to only upvote posts that contribute to the discussion or are greatly written and not those that only agree to my opinions. After all, having yet another echo chamber of the worldview of yet another community is way less useful than a greater diversity of ideas and ideologies. How else can we hone our arguments to make them convincing for anybody but us.

I realize I don't fall under the "older than a year" rule so let me quote the top voted comment on your first link:

> I have seen quite a few comments that were extremely insightful, and/or interesting that got downmodded due to an unpopular opinion. The reason this is unfortunate is not only that you tend to miss these (assuming that there is a higher probability that you read or think about comments that are rated higher, which I am surely not the only one that is guilty of) but also that it tends to promote groupthink . This is especially important on a forum like this where we are here to learn and share our thoughts, ideas and experiences for a very particular niche: Starting startups.

[...]

> So I think that the up and down arrows should not express agreement, but insightfullness or truth. Not opinion. That way I will be able to judge the validity of a comment in a field that I do not know well by its points. And hopefully learn something.

> "I disagree."

Sure, some people disagree. But the site founder has said it's OK and expected.

To be fair, I (and most people) don't downvote out of mere disagreement very often. I downvote comments that fail to add value -- because they're overly insulting, or wrong in ways that are not mere opinion, or so poorly expressed as to be useless.

So in that list you have three large countries that are famously not part of the general european political bloc, noted for usually being part of their own bloc. Then you have a bunch of countries that are so miniscule, that diplomatic relations are handled for them by diplomats assigned for other countries (Monaco? A couple of square kilometers. San Marino? Fewer people than my suburb). Then there's Turkey, which has a technical foothold on the continent, but has never been considered politically part of Europe. Then the Balkan states, most of which are trying to get into the EU (as is Turkey, to be fair). You're left with Norway and Switzerland, neither of which are in the EU, so there's some support there, but they do have strong bilateral links with the EU, such as with the Schengen Area.

I mean, you're so desperate to find counter-examples, you've even included an island nation (Iceland) that is nowhere near Europe, especially given your own definition that 'Europe' is specifically a continent. Iceland isn't even on the European continental shelf.

It's clear that there are multiple values for the term 'Europe', and that the socio-political one is a bit different to the is-it-on-a-connected-landmass one. Otherwise Ireland and the UK would not be part of Europe...

>I mean, you're so desperate to find counter-examples, you've even included an island nation (Iceland) that is nowhere near Europe, especially given your own definition that 'Europe' is specifically a continent. Iceland isn't even on the European continental shelf.

Plus Iceland is an EU candidate country and a member of the EEA (European Economic Area) so is a member of the EU's internal market.

I believe "America" is usually an abbreviated form of "United States of America" whereas "The Americas" is commonly used to refer to the American continents.

Edit: this is a little different than your case where Europe can refer to the European continent, but "America" pretty much never refers to the two American continents.

as people will say "America" when they mean the USA.

Name another country with "America" in its name.

(Replying as edit window is gone)

So the whole reactionary "USA isn't America" thing seems a bit overblown and misguided at best; see for example http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/a_fine_whine...

And while jingoism, imperialism and US-centrism are good things to oppose, calling USA "America" isn't really an example of them. For one thing, by calling USA "America", you implicitly separate USA the country from the rest of the countries in North America and South America, and make the default assumption that the whole world isn't America. Point the second, if US citizens shouldn't be calling themselves "Americans", then neither should anyone else; at least "America" is in the name of the country for USA. Point the third, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this, but I've always assumed a kind of racism to go along with over-labeling; cf lumping Japanese and Chinese into the category "Asians".

As a final point, if we're really wanting to be more inclusive and eliminate borders and imperialism, shouldn't we all be calling ourselves "Earthicans"?

EU directives sometimes also apply to non-member states. (EFTA, countries that are on track becoming EU-members)

European countries are largely far less fraud based economies and thus do not allow so many practices that are permitted in the USA.

Jeepers. I can think of several big US commercial sites that would turn unprofitable overnight.

The part about keeping the goods seems unbelievable. I've skimmed the act, but I can't find a reference to keeping the goods.

It's very easy to link to sections in acts, so I don't know why the author did not add references.

> You can get your money back and keep the goods

My guess is that's a journalistic misinterpretation of what canceling a transaction means. It's very common in the law that when a transaction is cancelled, not only do you have to return the product, if you've used it, the seller can make a reasonable deduction in your refund.

If the consequence indeed is as stated, it's not like customers would benefit much in the long term, as the newly introduced risk would render most online shopping totally uneconomical: what if someone successfully sues you for utilizing a "dark pattern", now all your customers can demand a refund "for free" -- without having to return the product? Lose all your past revenue AND your product stock overnight? That's unheard of as punishment in commercial law.

On the contrary, this appears to be exactly what Ms Burns suggests:

In my book I talked about “trading trolls” – people who would surf the web specifically looking for noncompliant sites so that they can place an order, get the stuff, report the site for noncompliance, get their money back, and keep the stuff. After all, if the site is breaking the law, they have no recourse there.

I think I know what is meant now.

The directive (http://ec.europa.eu/justice/consumer-marketing/rights-contra...):

(60) Since inertia selling, which consists of unsolicited supply of goods or provision of services to consumers, is prohibited by Directive 2005/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 May 2005 concerning unfair business-to-consumer commercial practices in the internal market (‘Unfair Commercial Practices Directive’) (2) but no contractual remedy is provided therein, it is necessary to introduce in this Directive the contractual remedy of exempting the consumer from the obligation to provide any consideration for such unsolicited supply or provision.

The way I read that is if you add an item to the customers cart automatically, then you have no legal claim to get paid for that item. The sale of the stuff you actually wanted is still valid.

> Lose all your past revenue AND your product stock overnight? That's unheard of as punishment in commercial law.

(a) Unrealist scare story: In nearly all businesses you won't have "all customers" returning things. (b) I approve of this general scare tactic to ensure businesses don't try to scam their customers.

This almost exists already, in a slightly different form - it's the same principle as the unsolicited goods laws codified in eg. the UK's Consumer Protection Regulations[1]; if I send stuff to someone without it being asked for, they legally own it and I can't insist on payment.

Same thing now applies to bundling unwanted extra crap in with a real order - it's just the extra stuff which may not be charged for.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Protection_(Distance_S...

> If goods are sent to a consumer without a contract asking for them, the "recipient may [...] use, deal with, or dispose of the goods as if they were an unconditional gift to him"

which happens to be an incorporation of a 15-year old EU directive:

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:319...

> Article 9

> Inertia selling

> Member States shall take the measures necessary to:

> - prohibit the supply of goods or services to a consumer without their being ordered by the consumer beforehand, where such supply involves a demand for payment,

> - exempt the consumer from the provision of any consideration in cases of unsolicited supply, the absence of a response not constituting consent.

Hi Everyone,

in response to the great reception her interview has received on HN, Heather has created a discount code for her ebook. Use the code 'hackernews' at the checkout to get 50% off.

If you work on any ecommerce products based within the EU then it's a worthwhile purchase.

Get the ebook here: http://www.consumerrightsdirective.info/

Hey AirBnB. I hope you're listening. Sneaking in service charges and "cleaning fees" is no bueno. I know it's not you doing the later but I hate it when I find an apartment at an appropriate price then good hoodwinked for additional services I don't particularly care for.

FWIW, I recall the latter being included in the nightly rate when I was searching for places. It does switch to an itemized list of expenses when you actually view a property though.

Yes, that's true. It helps avoid people setting nightly rates low but then charging $100 cleaning fee.

Cleaning fees make perfect sense to me. When renting a house out, if I stay 1 night, the owner has to clean the house once. If I stay 1 week, the owner has to clean the house once. Seems like this is just matching pricing to costs.

Fine. Then announce the fixed fees upfront.

Announcing "x per night, y fixed cost" is different from announcing "x per night" but then tacking in the charge for y at the last minute.

The cleaning fee is announced up front. Service fees, not so much.

Yes, I was assuming that the cleaning fee was listed upfront. I have frequently seen these listed when booking right in the pricing section. If they aren't listed, then they are definitely unethical and I wouldn't pay it.

Nobody is saying that there can't be extra fees, and this EU law does not outlaw extra fees. It outlaws not telling the consumer about extra fees up-front, or sneaking extra fees into the purchase.

Cleaning fees and service fees, to me, are like delivery fees. Everyone assumes they are paying for them in the rental.

And almost everyone I know uses AirBnB because it is cheaper than a hotel. But once you start adding on fees that value diminishes. The last place I rented wasn't exactly located downtown and, after all the fees, only $15/night cheaper than a hotel. Our final 2 nights we stayed at a hotel and had a lot more fun.

I've been a big proponent of Airbnb but my last stay reminded me that civilians are civilians and tourists are tourists. Some have very different expectations when it comes to housing.

That's not how I treat AirBnB at all; I use AirBnB to stay at a place that's not a hotel. Sometimes it ends up being a lot more expensive (i.e.: when renting out a cabin, or an on-beach room), but exactly what I want.

I don't think everyone assumes that delivery fees are included in normal prices. I would say quite the opposite.

My last hotel bill had:

HSIA 5.95

OCC Tax 25.90

CTA Fee 0.10

Tour Tax 2.59

adding almost $35 to my room.

When I rent, I put down a deposit. If it's not in similar condition when I move out, they use the deposit for cleaning and repairs.

Funny, last time I staid in a hotel, they didn't charge me a cleaning fee... and they cleaned the room every day!

That's actually the reason there's no cleaning fee; its more or less the same amount of work per day, regardless of turnover. If it only gets cleaned once at the end of each stay (typical of AirBnB), then it costs more per day for a 1-night guest than a 7-night guest. Adding fixed fees in additional to the daily rate allows the price to match the cost better.

I think most people would be OK with an additional flat fee so long as the notice is clear and conspicuous. For example, if I were renting a space daily and had to tack on a flat cleaning fee, I might write something like this:

$99 per day, plus $20 flat fee

In other words, you can develop whatever fee structure you want. You just have to adequately explain it to customers so they can make an informed decision.

Shouldn't the price be $119 in that case? I get bothered when someone thinks I'm dumb enough to not notice their little price increase in the form of a fee. I am not OK with that.

I would prefer to deal with honest folks that just give you the price straight away.

I only interface with assholey businesses that add fees when I have no other choice. I have no allegiance to those types of businesses. I'm thinking Delta, Southwest, every car rental place, Wells Fargo, most cell phone companies, etc.

Shouldn't the cleaning fee only be a one time extra though? $119 for one night sure, but I'd rather pay $515 than $595 for five days. How would you add the flat fee to the nightly rate without knowing how long the stay will be?

Hi all - glad to see the interview creating such a buzz!

Regarding all your questions, I've listed all the original source texts of the law and its implementing guidance here. http://www.consumerrightsdirective.info/links-and-resources

A good example of beneficial government regulation, for people who refuse to believe such a thing exists. (Another good example is the Internet itself, but it's best to start small)

Yes, a good piece of regulation, but who believes in no regulation? To me, no regulation means no law, which means anarchy. And the only people who want anarchy are the same types of people who would be dead the first day it broke out.

But much of the regulation in the US is regulatory capture. We need regulation for the people, not for the companies. Moving in the right direction is a challenge and we need to break down the illusion that half the population is for good (those on our voting team) and the other half for bad.

How ironic that the only way to get rid of objectivist libertarians is to give them what they want. Still, it is probably worth it.

Anarchy doesn't really exist. It's just that people want to go back to a state before the current contracts and laws were passed. What would happen? The same kinds of associations, rules, and laws would form again.

Anarcho-collectivists, which as far as I understand, represents the dominant modern anarchistic philosophy, examine alternative methods to central government for generating laws. So they don't argue for an unregulated society - which is obviously a non-starter under the lens of reality - or a return to pre-government, but rather a complete replacement of the law-making mechanism.

Basically, they're all over complexity theory and how to use strong local interactions to develop self-organising non-local societies. Which I personally think makes anarcho-collectivism possibly the most sophisticated and futuristic of current political models. They were two decades ahead of the "localism" and "direct democracy" ideologies, and with a far better understanding of the maths.

Do you have any links to writings on this (Anarcho-collectivism from a complexity perspective or vice-versa)? Did both a quick journal search and a Google search and didn't find much.

Sorry for the very late reply, I've been hoping I'd get some time to do this properly, but haven't succeeded. It's something I first read ~10 years ago, where it was mostly in the musings of a complexity theorist. Since then odd things have cropped up which have supported that narrative in my mind, but I haven't got a particularly convincing collection to work with. There's some leads in here though: http://www.anarchist-studies-network.org.uk/documents/Anarch....

Yes, as someone who's interested in this, I'd love to read any links or papers about this aspect of it.

Apologies for my poor stab at answering this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8273839

All self-proclaimed anarchists I am aware of oppose the state, but do not oppose associations, rules, or laws.

The point is that "the state" will just come back. You can't get rid of it permanently.

So I commented on your first paragraph just to make a joke, then I read your second.

There is no reason to believe that cross-party unity would solve anything, and plenty to make us think it would make things way worse. Two parties that are friendly and cozy with each other are equivalent to a single party. That will leave US voters with no real choice at the ballot box, and remove the only real repercussion to a politician - the fear that their opponent will take them to task during the next election.

Partisan politics is the most powerful tool we have to preventing politicians from running rampant with power. Heaven help us if they ever unite against their common enemy - the people.

Not really. Friendly relations is a prerequisite for compromise which is a prerequisite for progress. Lots of parties have friendly relations without society collapsing. Your belief is very ignorant and US-centric.

> Friendly relations is a prerequisite for compromise which is a prerequisite for progress.

Ask a professional diplomat whether this idea is true. Israelis and Palestinians achieve compromises all the time -- they're fragile and short-lived, but they're certainly compromises.

Unions and management come to compromises regularly, after sometimes bloody demonstrations (in the early days of the organized labor movement).

In a now-famous story from 1943 Berlin, a group of wives of Jewish men protested and demonstrated against the regime's plan to round up and exterminate their husbands. Because the demonstration took place in Berlin, because of its size and international visibility, and because the wives were not themselves Jewish, the Nazis reached a compromise -- the men were released.

Reference: http://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/german-wives-win-re...

Quote: "As the women continued to protest at Rosenstrasse into March 6, the German leadership finally gave in, even as 25 of the intermarried Jews were being deported to Auschwitz. The Nazi Propaganda Minister, Goebbels released the remaining intermarried Jews in an attempt to maintain the visage of conformity in Berlin. The protests of Aryan women against the internment of their Jewish husbands had shown open dissent to the Nazi program and for Goebbels (with Hitler’s approval), it was more important to eliminate this dissent by releasing those Jews than to allow such dissent to be visible to other Germans or international bodies. Thirty-five intermarried Jews that had already been sent to Auschwitz were also returned. While twenty-five of the detainees were not released, thirty-five intermarried Jews that had already been sent to Auschwitz were also returned to Berlin."

> Friendly relations is a prerequisite for compromise ...

In reality, this is proven false every day.

> Your belief is very ignorant and US-centric.

Your ignorance of both current events and history is embarrassing.

Though I think he is correct that politics does not need to be antagonistic to prevent "politicians running rampant with power". Plenty of democracies use more collaborative politics than the USA (e.g. the Polder model of democracy in the netherlands). And I think most people would agree that the US republicans & democrats could engage more constructively while maintaining ideologically distinct positions (and not turning the country into a single party fascist state).

> I think most people would agree that the US republicans & democrats could engage more constructively while maintaining ideologically distinct positions ...

Yes, absolutely. My point was that compromise doesn't require that the parties share values or show mutual respect -- history proves otherwise.

Dude, those are really good examples! I will reconsider my opinion immediately! Not. How do you even write that shit with a straight face?

Which of the uncontroversial historical facts I posted is causing you the most personal anguish?

My problem is that while they fit the literal definition of compromise, they don't really achieve much. Those are barely ceasefires, and not much progress. So compromise without friendly relations does exist, it just really really sucks. The spirit of my criticism still stands.

> My problem is that while they fit the literal definition of compromise, they don't really achieve much.

Compared to what? The OP's contention was that "Friendly relations is a prerequisite for compromise". I proved that false. You're now changing the subject.

> So compromise without friendly relations does exist, it just really really sucks.

So the wives of the doomed Jewish men getting back their husbands really, really sucked? You need to learn a bit of history -- it's replete with valuable compromises between antagonistic parties.

I think poof31's idea of cross-party unity is less about the PARTIES and more about the POPULATION.

Meaning that the political parties do a pretty slick divide & conquer on highly polarizing topics that give half the population a reason to "hate" the other half despite the fact that both generally want the same thing.

Most people actually don't want regulatory capture since most people aren't in a position to benefit from it. But it happens because half the people "want" it on some topics because their party says "this is necessary for us not to get screwed!" and people generally go with the party line. And then on other topics the other party convinces its constituents that this other kind of regulation is necessary (which again has lots of regulatory capture built in) and their voters generally agree and support it.

If it wasn't for the few highly polarizing topics splitting the population pretty evenly some stuff could actually get done.

Worse is that the vast majority of people would actually support rewriting the tax code to greatly simplify it and close loopholes because most people aren't in a position to benefit from said loopholes. But this doesn't get any traction because the representatives from both parties know that they can't for the sake of campaign donations. This is literally in the interests of the people but it doesn't happen because it's not in the interests of the representatives.

Being able to realize that the people of the other party are good folks and that the representatives of both parties aren't so good would be a huge win to trying to solve a lot of the legalized corruption that makes Washington so dysfunctional.

Where does he advocate cross-party unity? He criticizes blind partisanship, and there are plenty of better alternatives to that besides just melding the two major parties into one.

Paradoxically, the current situation of extreme partisanship is close to a single unified party. The parties choose small wedge issues to fight over, and the rest is generally untouched. I won't go so far as to say "both parties are the same", but the differences aren't huge. Health care reform is a big wedge issue right now, and the two sides basically boil down to tweaking the dial on just how much private sector involvement there should be. Foreign policy is portrayed as a big divide, but the two parties seem to just switch sides on that depending on which one has the Presidency. There's no place in a major party for someone who wants to vote on the basis of getting out of the Global War on Terror, or for drug legalization, or single-payer health care, or many other such things.

Right now, the parties don't have to actually compete very much. Most people have chosen a side and stick with it no matter what. If we can get away from the idea that the other side is evil, that would increase the competition between them, not decrease it.

>And the only people who want anarchy are the same types of people who would be dead the first day it broke out.

This is an amusing statement. What kind of people are you referring to here? Keyboard-warrior lolbertarians, randroids etc? Surely not the black bloc types and their various dog-on-a-string, squat-dwelling, convoy-travelling chums? I would have thought they'd be better equipped than most for a mad max style dystopia...

"But much of the regulation in the US is regulatory capture. We need regulation for the people, not for the companies."

I'll just go ahead and leave this here for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

Replace "anarchy" with "self-organization" or "decentralized governance" to make it sound a lot less scary. I've just started a pop econ book on this topic (after watching the author's video) that seems interesting so far.

http://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-Unbound-Self-Governance-Cambri...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7K-0ohtb4Y

I disagree. This shouldn't need specific regulations, they should be treated as plain fraud by small claim courts.

This just underlines the brokenness of the system.

What should happen instead?

Unless case law is created in the small claims court, having specific regulations for things which normally end up there is very beneficial for consumers. It gives you a tool to fight the disease - the company committing fraud - rather than treating symptoms by settling in small claims court with anyone who cared enough to bring it there.

It gives you a tool to fight the disease - the company committing fraud

In what way, exactly? And why couldn't that be done if the behavior was simply considered fraud, which is should obviously be?

For one thing, what is "considered fraud" will be different in each of the 27 member countries of the EU in any area of fraud where national law has not been superseded by a harmonisation directive like this one.

Part of the point of the EU is to have a single market for goods and services. That means I should be able to order something from a Danish company with the same confidence (in a basic level of consumer protection) that I would in my home country, knowing that any caselaw will have been at the CJEU level (because it's interpreting an EU directive) and so will apply EU-wide.

Courts writing law. What could possibly go wrong with that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law

> A good example of beneficial government regulation, for people who refuse to believe such a thing exists.

I don't get how people can hold that belief. It falls apart the moment you think about game theory for five minutes, or read up a Wikipedia article about externalities and tragedy of commons.

It's amazing what personal greed and arrogance will do to ideology.

I'd say: it's amazing how ideology can shut one's mind down. But then again, isn't that written into definition of ideology?

I'm not sure I agree that ideology automatically shuts a mind. After all, being open-minded is an ideological position as well.

I was just thinking that some ideologies seem to exist for the purpose of allowing people to justify their greedy behavior.

I was thinking about ideologies that work as a proxy for evaluating facts. It's kind of like saying that scientific method is also an ideology. In some sense, it is, but it's the one thing that's not like others.

> I was just thinking that some ideologies seem to exist for the purpose of allowing people to justify their greedy behavior.

Maybe. I try to be more charitable, especially that I know many friends that are (by their own admission [0]) borderline libertarian and are definitely neither greedy nor selfish. I think that it's a way how people respond to governments clearly overreaching with their regulations. It's a kind of cultural backlash, but if you treat it as an ideology, thinking that e.g. Free Markets Are The Best And Government Is Always Evil, then you're throwing baby out with the bathwater and trying to replace a bad hell with a worse hell.

[0] - I try to avoid using such labels, because I think they shut down the mind. I personally might be more liberal on topic A, and lean more conservative on topic B, just because different methods work for different problems. Labeling things by political ideas make people lose that distinction. I've personally been called Marxist And Therefore Wrong by bringing up in a discussion the topic of tragedy of commons, which was immediately labeled as The Part Of Marxist Economy, Not The Real One. sigh

I don't believe that no beneficial government regulations exist, but I believe the net effect of government regulations is negative. And I would point to game theory (and economics more generally) to support that view.

> And I would point to game theory (and economics more generally) to support that view.

Please do, this sounds interesting.

I think the primary idea is that the economic issues that plague markets also plague governments. Public choice is the discipline of applying economic principles to governments. You can't treat government as a black box to solve economic issues without recognizing that economic issues affect government as well. For example, to theorize a law, regulation, or form of government to solve some economic problem like the public good problem, one must consider that "good government" is also a public good. It's true that a society might fail to produce a public good like flood control systems. But it's necessary to argue why, if the society cannot produce the flood control systems, why it should be expected to produce a government that will produce the flood control systems.

You have a good point here. I agree that governments are not exempt from the game-theoretic rules that affect everything else. While they are an effective solution to coordination problems of society, they suffer from coordination problems of their own (I think that might be one of the reason governments tend to develop layered structures; it's like turtles all way down, but here we have governments all way up).

> But it's necessary to argue why, if the society cannot produce the flood control systems, why it should be expected to produce a government that will produce the flood control systems.

I think one of the arguments for this would be the fact that it actually happens - i.e. people left alone tend to form governments that then make flood control systems :).

From what you wrote in your previous comment I understand that you believe, that if one would sum up all the benefits and all the costs of government regulation, one would end up with a negative number. Have I undestood you correctly? If yes, could you elaborate on why you believe the effect is net negative and not net positive? I.e. what makes the costs bigger than benefits?

> I think one of the arguments for this would be the fact that it actually happens - i.e. people left alone tend to form governments that then make flood control systems :).

I should have said "efficiently produce flood control systems." In other words, produce them in cases where the benefits outweigh the costs, and not produce them in cases where the costs outweigh the benefits. Of course, that's implied in the concept of "public good problem."

> From what you wrote in your previous comment I understand that you believe, that if one would sum up all the benefits and all the costs of government regulation, one would end up with a negative number. Have I undestood you correctly?

Yes, although I fully recognize that there is probably no physical way to measure and agree on each cost/benefit.

> I.e. what makes the costs bigger than benefits?

I think the biggest effect is that concentrated interests tend to beat dispersed interests when they compete to influence a government, and less so when they compete in a market.

But a market for governments does exist. People "buy" or support their governments through elections and immigration.

Edit: On second thought, perhaps you were talking about not a particular government, but a system of government. In that case, immigration is the only choice.

> In that case, immigration is the only choice.

That would be the "exit" from [0].

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A

> People "buy" or support their governments through elections and immigration.

True, but elections are plagued by the public good problem, and immigration is in most cases an extremely large transaction cost. There is also obviously some pressure on governments from the threat of violent revolution, but that's an even larger transaction cost and less certain endeavor.

If you had stopped at the first comma, this would have been a fine comment. But by taking a swipe at people[1], you start a political discussion.

[1] even if they are people that you Know For Sure and can Absolutely Prove are in the Wrong

Unfortunately, what may seem to be obvious and apolitical to you inevitably steps on the toes of other techies on this forum who sees things otherwise. I don't see a way for this story not to be political. (Though that's no excuse for any of to be impolite, if that's what you're getting at. [Which is not to say that the swipe you mentioned was impolite.])

I think most people who tend to oppose regulation do so not because they believe a beneficial government regulation is impossible, but because the net effect of government regulation is negative.

Actually as one of the people I think you're talking about (though as someone else noted I don't know if your description of radical free-market types is perfectly accurate, it's really about net benefit) this concerns me. In principle it seems to be banning fraud, and if that's all it does then I can't really complain. But to say "you can't structure your site in such a way" I think it's rather heavy handed. I guess it comes down to how it's enforced. Given the way governments generally are, there's going to be some sort of government agency with an official review process for websites, it's going to bog everything down, things will get developed much more slowly. This is a hidden cost. The web is a very agile industry, so this would be particularly painful. So until you can quantify this cost, you can't argue that this is unquestionably a beneficial regulation.

I think a better way (though maybe with lesser hidden costs) to deal with it would be to declare that such dark patterns constitute fraud. That way, a customer is free to sue a company for committing it. Then the incentives are placed on the company not to set up these patterns. If there's a grey area, it's not the job of a bureaucrat to prescribe, it's the job of a consumer to decide if they've been defrauded, then judge to agree or not, and also the company to make a risk trade off, and so forth. Much less rigid that way.

  Given the way governments generally are, there's going to
  be some sort of government agency with an official review
  process for websites

With a lot of consumer rights in the UK, the principle is that you don't need prior approval or proactive monitoring, instead relying on complaints from the injured party to identify violations.

So assuming 99% of websites comply with the law, 99% of websites have no need for any sort of official review.

IMHO your assumptions are far from evident.

Okay. Well, pending learning anything else about it, I'll assume that it's likely not so bad a law, then.

> In principle it seems to be banning fraud, and if that's all it does then I can't really complain. But to say "you can't structure your site in such a way" I think it's rather heavy handed.

What if the only way to ban fraud is to say you can't structure it this way? Pyramid schemes seem like a good example.

>some sort of government agency with an official review process for websites

My understanding of the article was that customers complain to their local council, get their money back, and the company changes after loosing too much money.

>it's the job of a consumer to decide if they've been defrauded

The EU doesn't like doing that, there's too many vulnerable people, too much to do in the day for the less vulnerable.

> What if the only way to ban fraud is to say you can't structure it this way? Pyramid schemes seem like a good example.

If it's really the only way, then I can accept that tentatively (without taking an even more radical stance which I won't introduce here). But, I would still say tread very carefully and make sure it's the only way. Government regulation has a tendency to creep up and become entrenched. Even if it is the only way to prevent it, it may not be worth the increased government scope.

> My understanding of the article was that customers complain to their local council, get their money back, and the company changes after loosing too much money.

Okay, sorry I skimmed the article rather briefly. Still, if that's the format, why not keep it in the judicial system? I guess I don't have a strong point there, though.

It's also a good example of good EU regulation. There are many in the UK who think the EU does nothing but regulate bendy bananas. The EU brings a lot of good law for the little guy to the UK (and other EU states)

Living in the UK, the thought of the UK potentially withdrawing from the EU is terrifying - so many of the complaints about the EU are about areas where the EU are interfering in absolutely awful attempts by UK politicians to restrict peoples rights.

It's even worse when they complain about things that are independent of the EU, but still blame the EU, such as which often happens with decisions from the European Court of Human Rights.

To me this isn't additional regulation to standard contract law. A transaction is a contract between two parties, if the contract is intentionally deceitful you have the right to dispute it. So this it's great that they're putting it in print, because nobody's going to sue over a couple of items being added to your basket.

Any sufficiently advanced business model is indistinguishable from a scam.

This is golden. Adding this to my quotes file.

It's really true. Scams are just the extreme end of ways-to-profit-somewhat-legally spectrum of business models.

I am not sure this attempt at legislating good behavior will have much effect. Too often these things are easier for the bad guy to ignore than for the individual to prosecute. I've wondered for a while if there was a way of creating some sort of "Small Claims Court as a service" system that would not overly benefit cranks. Something where you could mail in a complain with attached details and have the prosecution engine just run through it. Someone gets a bunch of these and it upgrades to class action or something. The downside (and reason I've not done something like this yet) is that it also enables bullies and malicious prosecution. It is quite a challenging system (weirdly with many parallels in game design where you're trying to keep opponent factions "balanced")

Filing a small courts claim in the UK is really, really easy, doesn't require a lawyer, and actually favours the little guy. I don't think we really need a SCSAAS system.

Historically, legislating this kind of behaviour has had a very big effect in the UK. We have strict trading and advertising standards and by and large people adhere to them. Companies that frequently flout the rules tend to get in more trouble once a journalist or watchdog gets wind of it and makes a big stink.

government's done "small claims process as a service" already: https://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk/

fill in website, the letters go out automatically.

if the person you're suing admits fault (or doesn't respond): the cheque normally turns up in a few weeks.

otherwise will give you a court date.

I wonder why there seem to be no companies that use "not being cheating bastards" as a marketing advantage. I'd gladly pay more to buy from a shop that emphasizes transparency and fairness.

Huh? There are loads. I can think of several companies that I buy things from because I know I won't get messed with even if the headline price might appear a little higher than their competitors (think EasyJet v.s. RyanAir).

From my relatively small experience I remember EasyJet trying to upsell random crap in a similar way to RyanAir. I might be misremembering though, I haven't flew with any of them since last year.

Anyway, I meant why there are no companies with marketing messages that would amount to "we're not going to fuck you over like the Other Company We Can't Name".

> I meant why there are no companies with marketing messages that would amount to "we're not going to fuck you over like the Other Company We Can't Name".

Probably because they can't name them in the ads, which would make the message rather confusing :-)

Well, if the other company is doing something bad, it wouldn't be difficult. Actually, to provide some sort of an answer to my original question, we had sort-of this style of marketing with domain registrar, i.e. "hey, we don't try to upsell you crap, don't support SOPA and definitely don't shoot elephants for fun!".

I can only think of DuckDuckGo ("we won't track you").

Last time I flew with EasyJet I didn't get any strong upset. They do try to sell you insurance but the default is "no" and they also sell food/drinks onboard. No real hidden fees or additional charges aside from that. You do need to understand the baggage policy however.

> trying to upsell random crap in a similar way to RyanAir

"Trying to upsell" and "trying to hide the opt-out of an upsale" are not the same thing. I see no problem with a company trying to upsell you, and lumping that in with what RyanAir is doing is wrong.

Easyjet have an upsell but at least the price you see on the homepage is the price you pay at the end, unless you go for the upsell. It's predictable.

Ryanair don't do that. The price they advertise at the flight choice time is the price you pay. THey then try shove extras down your throat, but you're not obligated to buy travel insurance, rent a car, use their jet ski etc .

The £2 fare, £45 processing fee example was a RyanAir tactic (although the internet seems to remember it as £1/£65, based on a quick google search).

Oh I know it used to be, but It's changed now was what I was saying!

Sorry, you're right -- RyanAir's headline price is actually achievable these days (if you manage to get past all the Dark UX practices, some of which were called out as examples in the OP). I was thinking of a few years ago, before the EU had to pass a law specifically banning their advertising practices, much like the law currently under discussion.

In my experience, EasyJet do offer you lots of low value "extras", but they do not try to trick you into taking them in the same way as RyanAir do (did?).

So I stand by my example, although perhaps it's not the best one available :-)

That's not the case - I flew with them a few weeks ago. Turns out in order to print the return journey boarding pass more than a week in advance you need to pre-book a seat (for a cost). Not great if you're going away for two weeks without guaranteed access to a printer.

I fly with them regularly, but they're short trips (2-4 days) so my experience is different. You can check get your boarding pass in some airports by phone now though which also helps!

In my experience pretty much any hotel or hostel will print them if you ask nicely, or at least point you in the direction of someone who will cheaply. I paid €1 to print 5 pages at an Internet cafe in Italy a couple of months ago.

(UK) This is basically what you get from John Lewis, and the Co-Operative; both are the last vestiges of the old mutual movement.

The building societies used to be a good option for non-aggressive finance, but almost all of them sold out.

The Nationwide Building Society is still a mutual.

Sort of. New members don't get share rights any more.

That is so that carpetbaggers can't vote to turn it into a bank.

Sounds rather "we had to burn the village in order to save it".

The remuneration packages and board make-up are very corporate-banking and not 'mutual' in their outlook.

If it still thought of itself as a mutual building society Nationwide would have one of the best interest rates around for their members' savings.

Isn't this basically what Amazon does? I've always felt very comfortable and safe when pushing the buy button on their site.

No they don't:

* Can't get shipping charges before the last step (after selecting the credit card which implies I am about to pay)

* Sneaking in Prime

* Fucked up search

Nobody can give you shipping charges without knowing your address. The credit card step exists because most of the time the billing address and shipping address are the same.

I've been their customer for ages, surely they could've worked it out.

It depends on what shipping address you use though. An online vendor could probably be sued for false advertising if they showed one shipping price, but then changed it later because a customer decided to use a new shipping address.

It depends really. Amazon.com, no of cause not, the US is huge for small countries, you do know the shipping cost.

I work for a company that has seven webshops, in six countries. We work out how much it will be to ship an item, on average and just include it in the price of the product. If the customer orders multiple item, we save a bit of money on shipping for that order. So in our case, because one webshop only shipping within one country, we always have a shipping cost of zero (it no zero of cause, it's factored into the product price, but it easier to figure out the actual cost of a purchase ).

I have a few addresses in my amazon account, and post to one 99% of the time. It shouldn't take a genius to figure that out.

And misquote to you 1% of the time? That would open them up to a fraud claim 1% of the time.

Billing address won't change the shipping address.

And if I'm sending a gift to an address that isn't already in my account?

Ship cost estimates are far more difficult than just making an assumption about where it will be shipped to. You just flat out can't quote a shipping cost unless you know for sure what the address is, or else the act of quoting shipping can actually be considered fraudulent. They get the delivery address at the same stage as the payment information because it allows for an easy "Shipping address is same as billing address" option.

For anyone that is too skeptical about entering payment information before seeing shipping costs, there is an option to estimate your shipping costs beforehand. It requires more work though, which is why it is an optional step.

Hmm, I am paying here on amazon.de with direct bank transfer, and it shows shipping costs even directly on the article page as long as I'm logged in.

Why is that?

Denmark is much smaller than USA, so the shipping cost doesn't depend much (or any) on your actual address/postal code.

I agree with the f*ed up search comment, assuming you mean they sort by how it affects their bottom line.

But if that's the worst of their 'dark patterns', then the experience of shopping on their website is one of the better ones.

The first I agree with, but I'm not sure what you mean by "Sneaking in Prime".

"Fucked up search" is almost certainly not deliberate. I suspect it costs them a good deal of sales when people cannot find what they wanted to purchase. I don't think you can call that an 'dark pattern' unless it is deliberate and they are working some sort of angle.

It means they try to trick you into joining Prime, every time you make a purchase.

Case in point:

Yesterday my wife made a small purchase on Amazon. In the evening, I was checking our shared credit card statement and noticed that there were two charges from Amazon. One was for the amount of her purchase. The other was for $1.00 and said "Amazon Prime".

I went to my wife and asked her, "Did you mean to sign up for Amazon Prime?"

Her reply: "What is Amazon Prime?"

We then had to go into her Amazon account and manually cancel a service we didn't want that would have silently billed us $99 in 30 days.

Now, you could say, that perhaps my wife did not clearly read every word of every screen that was presented to her during the checkout process. But shouldn't it have been obvious? My wife literally had no idea she signed up for something that costs $99, by accident, all while making an $11 purchase.

I don't think it's possible to argue that this is an accident. Amazon clearly knows what they are doing, and it is by design.

I don't know what GP meant, but maybe Amazon is aiming for a spot where it's easy to find something that fits the bill, but hard to find the cheapest thing that fits the bill. That's generally been my experience with their search, anyway.

Exactly.

Also they tend to search for synonyms, which sometimes returns ridiculous amount of results.

For the shipping charges, it used to be like you say, but since some time now, if I go to the basket, a little below the "Proceed to Checkout" button there is an "Estimate VAT, Postage and Packaging" option.

Nice one, did not know that. Thank you.

What is also confusing "Dispatch to this address" button. Am I going to pay now with no return? When do I get the actual price?

also defaults to non-free shipping at least some times...

I wonder why they purposely fuck up the search... is it to prioritize shipped from amazon products (sort by new and popular is one example)?

Here's my Amazon challenge: Find a phone charger on Amazon that:

* Isn't one of Amazon's own * Doesn't have a single review saying it caught fire or exploded

Amazon is completely happy selling poor quality or even counterfeit goods, phone chargers are a particularly bad area of the site but others exist as well. There is no way Amazon could claim ignorance of this - there are 100s of reviews on some products such as "Samsung" chargers saying they are fake. Amazon cares more about their bottom line than 1) complying with British law when it comes to product descriptions 2) complying with EU safety laws 3) the safety of their customers.

Can you even begin to imagine what hell it would cause Amazon, at their scale, to be burdened with policing that? It would require a whole building full of Amazon compliance officers who won't always get it right - and when they don't they'd be liable which would cost more even more money and create ill feeling between Amazon and its customers as they'd be making assurances that they could not possibly keep (the story of every consumer protection law ever, btw.)

Seems to me the review system - by your account, not mine - is working just as intended.

Well, they are obliged by law to make sure whatever they are selling is not counterfeit and is safe to use. And no, the law does not care how that is enforced - but I imagine that when they order a batch of chargers from China, someone could take a look at one and see if it's genuine or not?

What is the burden on every smaller shop that operates in this country and manages to obey these laws? Without Amazon's economies of scale, it costs them far more per item than it would Amazon. Just because the absolute cost to Amazon would be huge doesn't make it unfair as they have a lot more money total, in fact it's completely unfair that only smaller companies have to deal with this.

If it genuinely isn't possible for Amazon to sell chargers and obey the law, then they should stop selling chargers. No-one's making them do it.

> Doesn't have a single review saying it caught fire or exploded

Well, it is a case of every mass-produced good that if it has 0.001% of catastrophic failure, and a million of people will buy it, it will explode in the hands of ten of them, and maybe one will get and write that review. The others probably won't bother writing 999990 reviews saying "it worked as intended".

"A failure to comply cancels the transaction. You can get your money back and keep the goods. If the sale was for a service or a digital download, the contract is cancelled and no further payments are due." I would think that, under contract law, you get your money back and you return the goods - that would be cancelling the transaction. Likewise for digital downloads or services. Can anyone explain why the provider would be penalized further ?

Because that could create a situation where the seller can put a burden on you. (arcane rules on how to return goods, trying to get shipment expenses from you, etc.)

We probably should have clarified that this is an online and and offline law affecting all sales and purchases, not just e-commerce ones.

The law provides better protections to consumers, but it also provides some protections to retailers against some of the dodgy practices they've had to deal with from consumers. Returns and expenses are a HUGE part of the law.

My favourite bit is what I call the "anti-wardrobing provision". Under the new law, when you return an item, retailers can now deduct a fair percentage of its cash value from your refund if you have returned it clearly damaged or un-resellable. This is because of wardrobing - the practice of buying an item of clothing, deliberately keeping the tags on, wearing it once, and returning it for a refund stinking of your night out.

I don't claim to know for sure, but it seems to me like the reason for that is because all of these laws are restrictions are companies trying to do shady stuff to sell you more then what you wanted. Allowing the person purchasing the goods to keep them as well as get money back encourages companies to not break these laws since they don't want to lose their stuff. If they got their goods back then there really wouldn't be any repercussions toward the company for breaking these laws since the transactions would (presumably) be cancel-able within a specific time-frame already.

I'd say that this is explicitly meant as a punishment to disincentivize such actions. Completely canceling the transaction just undoes the damage, and only if it places zero burden on the consumer - no shipping costs nor effort, which is unlikely.

This may come out as a 'double refund', but in generally accepted practice, paying triple of the dishonestly earned amount is also often considered an reasonable measure just as a penalty.

Otherwise if half of the cheated consumers complain and get their money back, and half don't notice it, then it's still a net win for a shady company and an incentive to continue such activities, contrary to the explicit goal of this legislation.

> Can anyone explain why the provider would be penalized further ?

Because nearly always the trader/seller has more power than the little guy. It's good to 'encourage' them to not break the law in the first place.

It's like punitive damages.

As others have stated, it's to disincentivize abuse. The USPS had a similar problem with scams and fraud, where scammers would send "gifts" to people, then follow them up with a bill. This is now explicitly against the law, but also importantly, if you are sent ANYTHING unsolicited, you may keep it. I'm guessing the second part is the stronger enforcement. Probably similar in this case. See: https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/investigations/mailfraud/...

The same reason many states say that if the grocery store accidentally overcharges you by N cents for an item, you get 10 * N cents (up to a limit) off of the marked price.

This is encouraging the consumer to engage in self-help and gives them (in theory) just enough of them the motivation to keep on the lookout for the scam.

It's not the only way to run a regulatory regime, and it has some downsides, but it also has a measure of appeal.

i was pleasantly surprised that the article called out specific, high-profile companies. all too often the writers simply pussyfoot around that part.

I wonder what effect this will have on ryanair ticket prices? As I understand it the tickets themselves are not profitable, it's the extras.

Ryanair have been moving back towards clear pricing. I guess it will be more like flight £25 rather than flight 99p, charges £24.

Honestly I hope they will finally have to label them correctly.

When I booked flights to Dublin recently, I felt being cheated on even though I checked everything twice and googled some. The insurance trick is among the worst practices I had to encounter personally.

I'd prefer to have the official prices being hones even if they are somewhat higher. Their business model of offering only the minimal thing should work nevertheless and laws like that does not forbid them to offer extras which many people would choose nevertheless.

> When I booked flights to Dublin recently, I felt being cheated on even though I checked everything twice and googled some.

Why on earth would you do business with a company that makes you "<feel> cheated"? RyanAir ran off all of the other airlines? They had the only flight to Dublin to see your poor, sick mother? Flights so cheap that you're willing to put up with the bullshit? It's an honest question, and I've heard some answer it with "they're so cheap, I'm willing to put up with dealing with weasels." But it sounds like the whole weasel-dealing thing isn't for you.

One of the reasons I fly SouthWest, even when they're not the cheapest or most convenient, is because I don't feel like I need to watch my back when dealing with them.

> Why on earth would you do business with a company that makes you "<feel> cheated"?

Because everyone bitches about them but everyone still uses them, since after all, they are the cheapest. They just like to hurl rocks from the top of the mountain without actually doing anything productive about it - i.e. taking their money elsewhere.

Yup, same as WalMart, hehe. They're awful and evil and rahrahrah, but at 1am on Sunday when everywhere else is closed, they'll sell you a loaf of bread, electric drill, computer monitor, a case of beer, and new underwear, and they'll do it at a lower price than any other store in town. So people hate it, but they still go there.

> Flights so cheap that you're willing to put up with the bullshit?

Yes.

I've taken ~100 Ryanair flights. It's a bus service. Buses are crap too. Ryanair, like busses, are cheap.

Yep the main reason here is them being cheap. I did travel with some people who really had to save up for this so cheap flight + cheap stay it was :)

A lot of extras are sold on the plane or at checkin (like 60EUR for a boarding pass)

That's why I never fly with them. Too much BS to waddle through.

What's the 60 EUR for? Printing your boarding pass?

They updated it last year: "Starting December 2013, boarding card reissue fees will be cut from €70 or £70 to €15 or £15."

You can see their fee schedule at: http://www.ryanair.com/en/fees/ — yes, they charge a fee to even assign you a seat.

(Anecdote: I had a printed boarding pass all crumpled up at the bottom of my bag (they let you check in weeks before your flight, so it had to survive for a while) and my poorly kept pass was basically unreadable by their scanners. The baggage check rep printed a new boarding pass for free (without even asking, since she couldn't exactly scan my home printed and crumpled paper)).

> yes, they charge a fee to even assign you a seat.

Everyone does that now. Delta, BA, AA, Virgin, etc. I can think of very few airlines that give you free seat selection before check-in.

I don't agree with it, but it is the way things have gone for all airlines. Just like baggage fees on local flights (even though that causes mass delays during boarding since now everyone is trying to show too much into cramp overhead lockers).

United doesn't. And it's not listed as an elite benefit so I'd guess it applies to everyone.

Are you sure? I feel like it's the opposite. Nearly everyone I've flown with in the last few months has let me pick a seat in advance. I can even pay for the premium seats in advance.

What's new is that Ryanair used to not have any assigned seats. You got onto the plane and picked a free seat. It's a good way to ensure passengers get on quickly, so that the plane can take off 25 minutes later. Wonder what the assigned seating is doing to their turnaround times.

A lot of extras are sold on the plane or at checkin (like 60EUR for a boarding pass)

That's not an extra, that a "you should have printed the PDF at home" charge.

> "you should have printed the PDF at home"

Just remember that with Ryanair, simple is not an option unless you pay and pay and pay and pay.

Example: Printing boarding passes a few days ahead: not possible. Oh, unless you pay for reserved seats. Otherwise feel free to wait until a few days ahead of departure, remember to check in, or you'll be hit with another charge at checkin.

Source: Traveled w/Ryanair this summer with my family. The whole process was so annoying that I made it a priority not to give them a single € extra, even if that meant spending more than an hour at a slow internet café somewhere to print boarding passes for our flight home.

You can print your passes between 15 days and around 2 hours before the flight. I don't get your point.

I've flown with Ryanair plenty of times and, if you are able to ignore the constant bugging with booze/parfums/car rentals onboard and can stand the small seats, they are the probably the best thing that there is.

it's 7 days, not 15. the point is that if you're on a trip longer than 7 days you have to print them while on your trip, which might not be easy.

For the life of me, I'm sure it is (or at least it was) 15 days. And yes, printing it while on your trip can be a major nuisance (happened to me once; it was not a nuisance for me on that trip, but depending on where you are, yes it can be).

Is there a Dealing-With-Ryanair-As-A-Service company out there? It would be hilarious for someone to figure out all the tricks of Ryanair and then offer, for €5 or something, that they will make the plane reservation and text you the moment you need to do the things you need to do, and otherwise clarify the process.

I took ~100 Ryanair flights for a while, and I can't see the benefit of this. You learn quick enough how to avoid all the charges and you don't pay more. Why would I pay €5, when I know how to get the flight for €30?

I suspect I am not alone in not having a printer at home. The sooner they do e-tickets the better, but they have little interest in doing so.

In any case, I take Aer Lingus for flights between London and Dublin now. They're not considerably more expensive, but they are 100x better, and I don't feel like I'm giving money to a shower of utter bastards.

Ryanair switched "credit card fee" to "booking fee" ages ago.

> I wonder what effect this will have on ryanair ticket prices?

Prices will go up. No question about it. Since they are making less profit elsewhere they have to make it up.

It's like how when the US passed the Credit CARD Act prices went up on credit cards, and it was harder to get low cost cards for those people who were already able to avoid the add-on fees.

I guess that depends where you fly. In some Eastern European countries Ryanair has pushed out local carriers and now has a monopoly with ridiculous prices.

The title says UK, but the article says it's for the entire EU.

It's an EU directive which has recently been enacted into law in the UK. Sorry, we should have made that clearer in the interview text.

I'm surprised how hard it is for me to think of a case where including some extra by default makes sense for both the seller and customer.

My initial reaction was a mixture of happiness about combatting hidden charges and suspicion that it might rule out some reasonable practices. I opt out of the sandwich drink and chips combo at a lot of restaurants, but most other patrons like it. But after mulling it over, I can't think of any of the latter that would apply to online sales.

That's a reasonable worry. You never do notice things that are working correctly, because they are working correctly.

The worst one I had was Vistaprint. I bought some business cards then found a mysterious £9.99/month charge disappearing from my credit card which turned out to be for some discount club they'd signed my up for in the small print without me being aware. Bastards! I never did get that back. Hopefully the new laws should help stop that.

> As a part of that, retailer fees and surcharges must be brought out into the open and explained. Retailers can no longer charge “processing fees” in excess of what it actually costs them.

Does that mean charging me to print out my own ticket is now illegal?

Because it certainly doesn't cost 2 quid to generate a pdf.

They may be able to frame this as an additional service, not a processing fee, as there are alternatives to the (essentially free and clearly much more convenient) print-at-home option.

you pay for the ink and they charge you even more.

Oy. That was legal? It seems that I have been cross-border shopping a bit too carelessly.

I know that the English Newspapers will manage to put an anti-EU spin on this, but cross-border e-commerce has to become easier. From regulation to shipping cost, there are a lot of things that need to be harmonized.

The actual EU directive is from 2011, but it takes some time for it to get adopted in local legislation; more time for any transition periods to pass (as in, here's the law, change your process by yyyy/mm/dd), and even more time while the habits change.

"Quite simply, businesses who don’t comply face a loss of revenue. If you make a purchase, whether that’s buying goods or a service, on a non-compliant web site, you have the right to recourse through your nearest Trading Standards office. A failure to comply cancels the transaction. You can get your money back and keep the goods. If the sale was for a service or a digital download, the contract is cancelled and no further payments are due."

... has anyone successfully tried this in practice yet ? It would be good to know of "test cases" on sites potentially in breach. You can bet if complaints are upheld those sites will suddenly experience overwhelming interest from consumers :)

I'm really looking forward to buy airplane tickets from Ryanair without having to remove insurance from my shopping basket manually.

EU has been doing lots of good things to ensure consumer rights over the years.

For those addressing a US audience, some of this stuff will get you in trouble with the FTC as well as State AG's. Other practices may bring in revenue now which will have to be paid out later from class actions.

There are also strict rules regarding influencing how the designs of providing permission to call a user behave; these were updated with the TCPA and went in to effect earlier this year. Many companies remain out of compliance and subject to $2,000+ fines per individual called.

I've noticed that eNom/Bulk Register has stopped sneaking bogus 'mobile website converter trial' and similar nonsense into the cart when you buy/renew domain names as of late. They're designed to not have a fee for the first month, so they sneak it into your cart and then hope you don't notice when it starts automatically billing to your credit card a month later. I wonder if their disappearance is related to this?

Financial services are exempt under the Directive

Great. Let's take all the downside of heavy regulation but give up most of the upside.

If I, as a consumer from continental Europe, can't be subject to what is essentially a rippoff by UK online shops any more, then it is a win. It even makes it easier for UK online shops to be compliant with consumer protection laws within the rest of Europe.

I fail to see the downside.

Downsides are the same as always. The higher the regulation burden, the fewer new companies and products we will see. This is how we ended up relying on Americans for almost every service online, computers, phones...

Even with all the upside, I don't that's the right trade-off. But once you start piling up exemptions, and industry-specific rules, you forgo most of the benefit you could have achieved with uniform regulation.

This was the whole point behind letting EU set up the regulatory regime: to create a single EU-wide market. It's self-defeating to unify it across countries and then break up into hundreds of industries.

If a company that formerly would have existed will now not spring into existence because it breaks these new regulations, then I say good riddance. One less scam merchant looking to make a fast buck by ripping off their customers. That's an area we really don't need any more innovation in.

It's not about breaking this or that particular regulation. It's the sheer number you have to comply with. Even if every single regulation was positive on its own, in aggregate they could still stifle economic development and lead to perverse results.

Take web for example. Of course it would be better if every website followed standards, was available to impaired users, and over ssl. But if you started fining people who fail to live up, you would make it prohibitively expensive to run a private site outside of a handful of massive platforms established by large corporations who can afford developers and usability testing.

We understand that in this context. The advice to start with whatever works and iterate from there is common.

It's the same with running a company. The more requirements there are, even if each one is perfectly reasonable, the fewer people will be able to afford to start them, the less innovation we will see, the more we will rely on foreign products from countries with lesser regulation burden.

Financial services had quite a lot of such things regulated multiple years earlier under different EU directives, for example the Payment Services Directive that covers common payments, credit cards and direct debits; and introduced some nice rights for the consumers.

There are many specific things that don't make any sense for goods but rely on the particular nuances of specific financial products, so they are regulated separately, not within this directive.

Of course, that doesn't mean that the current financial services regulation is competely done and doesn't need further improvement for consumer rights, but it should be expected to be done separately, in domain-specific legislation.

Makes you wonder why financial services are exempt. Do they simply have better lawyers and lobbyist or is there an actual good reason.

Yes, ordering from Ryanair is pretty complicated if you don't want to end up paying all sorts of fees, but financial services can be even harder to understand and have more long lasting consequences. If anything financial services should be the first to be targeted.

PeterisP explains it above. Financial services are already very heavily regulated in the EU through legislation specific to financial services.

I feel like this is at least partially a success story for people like those at darkpatterns.org who have put a lot of time and effort into documenting these abuses. It seems pretty likely that without someone cataloging all these abuses, they would have been able to stay under the radar and remain just something you have to put up with.

>The “sneak into basket” pattern is now illegal. Full stop, end of story. You cannot create a situation where additional items and services are added by default.

active.com is a horrible offender. If you sign up for an event, you are automatically enrolled in their $60/year subscription fee - which they don't charge for until a month later.

when will the US adopt a similar law? Ticketmaster will be first one to go bonkers if this law ever makes it to the US

I'm more annoyed by telecom, internet and other utilities that add fees for "regulatory compliance" or for other costs that the provider had to pay.

If you want to pass your costs on to your customers that's fine, but then raise your prices. Don't advertise a fake, unobtainable low price and then add fees disguised as government mandates.

"Oh, poor us! The guv't wants our money! May you perchance help us? It was a total surprise, honest!"

It's an easy sell in the US, I imagine.

It's an easy sell because they stick it right next to "Sales Tax" and make it sound like something the government is requiring the customer to pay.

Quite frankly, all business should have to advertise a final price. "Fuel surcharge" on a transport product ... as if fuel wasn't an intrinsic part of their service.

It's true that there are stupid things like USF which is like 17%, but that's well-known.

The only "surprise" stuff are things like assorted locales deciding to charge you fees. Like some podunk county in Missouri will decide you now need to pay a $1/month 911 fee if your number is from there, even if you aren't there. But it's nowhere nearly as bad as the big telecoms make it out to be.

A lot of these EU laws exclude tickets to music/sports/leisure events/

hopefully never. The more of these frivolous regulations the more hard it becomes to compete with existing businesses.

I find that Ebay makes it very unclear what the fees are if you sell something; this £0.50 to list something I assume they would have to say + x percent of the say price now? Be even better if they were force to list an estimated sale price and fee...

Last time I listed something on eBay they nickled and dimed me hard, but it was clear that I was being nickled and dimed. Perhaps the only hidden fee was that you've got to pay through PayPal and take that 2-3% hit.

I seem to be missing something, are the direct fines for non compliance. Refunds and keeping an item are all nice and such but still requires action on part of the consumer. Some sites may factor that in and continue the process.

In the US, hidden charges would be rallied against as "unamerican" and "let the consumer decide" (when consumers have virtually no such power because of lack of options/transparency).

Related: http://darkpatterns.org/ - provides a list of common dark patterns with examples

TIL there's a thing called "Dark Patterns".

http://darkpatterns.org is an interesting read.

This is ridiculous. So now every tom dick and harry trying to sell something online need to keep in mind a new government regulation which can be bypassed in 10 different ways by those who will do it nevertheless.

At this rate government will even regulate the size and position of buttons. This is something the tech community should unwelcome rather than acting like cheerleaders.

Be upfront and honest with your clients about what you are providing and what you are charging for it and you won't have anything to worry about.

No one is arguing about that. My opposition is government trying to micromanage what constitutes "upfront and honest".

Sorry, but this seems like a stupid law. Clearly fraud was already illegal, all that was needed were court cases clearly demonstrating these patterns.

A law like this just encourages people to tweak their practices slightly and continue as before.

Fraud is still illegal. What this means is that people don't have to prove the practices in question are fraudulent, just that the companies used them.

That's exactly why it would be more scalable as a court decision. A law can never encompass every possible dark pattern, while a new court decision can be added every time somebody discover something bad, and sue.

Additionally, court decisions will be more efficient, since once a pattern is found fraudulent, it is not only banned, but there is also a whole case of discussion to refer to. With a specific law like this, with no prior cases, we aren't really much further than we already were.

Your argument falls flat simply because the reality on the ground was that existing laws and enforcement wasn't taking care of the problem. These new laws give more powers to consumers to effectively take the law into their own hands.

Additionally fraud (at least in the UK) doesn't impact several of the practices as they weren't misleading, just obnoxious (like adding things to your cart, or fees not on the advert but on the final checkout page).

> A law like this just encourages people to tweak their practices slightly and continue as before.

By that logic why try and do anything at all ever? It is a very defeatist attitude that results in inaction.

> By that logic why try and do anything at all ever?

Just sue them, so that it becomes well known whether the practice is illegal.

If it's not illegal, make a law covering the general problem, and let the court specify the individual matches.

I feel really bad about the fact that this is a thing. Apparently there are a lot of "entrepreneurs" that will always choose to annoy and damage others for a little currency. Why do these things have to be made illegal? They were immoral to begin with, that alone should stop people from doing it. Shame on you, people who sneak insurance into shopping carts and Ask-Toolbars into Java installers.

> Why do these things have to be made illegal?

To stop people doing it.

You've missed the point, which was that it's lamentable such clearly immoral business practices have to be made illegal to keep people from engaging in them. Disallowing such practices brings benefit only because employees and business owners were being so unscrupulous to begin with.

Take the number of times you've heard the sentiment "and this will protect consumers! yay!" - call it h (for hope). Now take the number of times you've heard such sentiments be justified in a logical, rigorous manner - call it j.

Calculate an independent thought index, t, as follows: j / h.

Call me if it's greater than 0.01. I'll be over here in the corner watching as we entrench half- (or hundredth-?)baked ideas into statute books that don't change for decades.

The economic damage of these petty regs (enforcement, compliance, cognitive load on businesses, yadda yadda) far outstrips that which brought them into existence in the first place - that I'd put my life on (but good luck actually measuring it.)

These kinds of 'consumer protection' laws are exactly the reason why the UK only has 5 major banks operating as a government-backed cartel - the laws became so complex that the market is impossible to enter now. Just ask Richard Branson - he wanted a bank for a long time, but the only way he could get one was to buy a preexisting one. This argument extends almost verbatim to the insurance and payment processing (and more) industries.

The internet is what it is because it has been almost completely free (as in liberal) and had very low barriers to entry up until very recently. The day I have to fill in a government form to open a webshop else fear prosecution is the day we let another good thing die - and shit like this is a big step down that road.

laws should be based on logic and not emotion. unfortunately I doubt anyone will campaign against this and if they do they will be portrayed as pro-cronyism or that they are somehow for the things that this measure aims to prevent.

the UK seems fond of things like this though. As I recall you must be 18 years old to buy a plastic knife, as it is considered a deadly weapon.

Although that sounds completely believable, I think in this instance it's only sharp knives over a certain length, and if I'm not mistaken I think the age 16. But never fear, HM Government will no doubt fall over themselves trying to appease the relatives of the one teenager who managed to gouge their own brain out with a plastic knife (when it happens).

I find it really, really hard to give a crap about the poor ickle businesses in this case, because you're not going to trip over these laws unless you're going out of your way to do something sneaky.

If you enter into it with good faith, i.e. be as forthright as possible with your customer, you won't end up in a situation where these laws will ever apply to you.

The people that will have a massive "cognitive load" are those who see the regulations as barriers and impediments to be worked around.

Things such as "Don't insert shit into your customer's cart that they didn't explicitly and knowingly request" is one example of the regulation, and is dead simple to both comprehend and implement. The intent and practical application of this particular piece of this particular regulation is crystal clear, and will only be muddied by people who like to rules lawyer terms like "explicitly and knowingly request". I know what it means. You know what it means. Every person with a functioning set of brain cells knows what it means. Shady companies will have a hard time with this.

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