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I absolutely hate subscriptions, I can't wrap my head around why people got so comfortable with allowing companies to charge their credit cards whenever they want, how much they want and how long they want.. Yes it's convenient, but there are so many potential problems - what if you loose access to your account and basically won't be able to cancel the subscription? what if company will continue to charge you even after closing your account? what if they accidently charge you for who knows what? what if you simply forget you even had a subscription?

I've had enough bad experiences with subscriptions that I avoid them at all cost, just to give an example - I subscribed to a popular streaming service because I wanted to watch a movie that was only available on their platform. I immediately canceled my subscription so it would end with current billing month, but to my surprise when I checked my credit card history several months later I've noticed an additional charge that was around 10x what I paid for the one month of subscription! I emailed them and they answered me that "it was some kind of mistake" and refunded me, but it made me realize how dangerous subscriptions are.

Subscriptions should be able to be paid by invoices - you receive an invoice before next billing period and if you don't pay, account is locked, but of course that would give user too much control over their spendings and companies clearly don't want that.

Some counterexamples, subscriptions that I and others are happy to pay and which tend to provide a worse experience when funded any other way:

* Email provider.

* Online Newspapers.

* Heavily online collaborative SaaS.

* MMO games.

The common thread is that the alternative funding model can't usually be a one-time purchase because the product is delivered over indefinite time, which leaves some combination of ads and microtransactions as the remaining viable funding models. Given a choice between the three, subscriptions have reliably produced the best experience for me as a user.

Obviously, I'll heartily agree that subscriptions are overused and abused (I'm looking at you, car manufacturers), but I tend to take a more measured approach than avoiding all subscriptions of any kind. And I would absolutely hate to receive and manage invoices for these things.

Yes, I'm highly skeptical of subscriptions, but there are obviously cases where they make sense (and I work for a SaaS company so it'd be pretty hypocritical if I said the never do). I subscribe to a gym and actually go regularly as an example. I'm slightly on the fence about music - it's nice to be able to own the file in such a way that no one can ever take it away, but the convenience of Spotify is impossible to match and I sometimes subscribe.

I love the idea of owning my own music and I own some but Apple Music allowed me to discover so much albums I love that it makes it impossible to buy them all. For the price I paid over 10 years of subscriptions I might have bought them all but the subscription is what allowed me to discover them in the first place …

   > but the convenience of Spotify is impossible to match and I sometimes subscribe.

The way I handle any streaming video subscriptions is:

- Have a list of stuff I want to watch.

- Once the list has enough on it from any one streaming provider (Netflix, Apple TV+, HBO, etc), I activate my subscription on that service, pay for a month, and immediately cancel.

- Use the month of access I just bought to watch the stuff.

- Continue with whichever service "fills up" next at some point in the future.

This method results in me typically buying a month of access on the usual suspect services once per year or so, and I never pay when I'm not actively using the services.

If I don't use it for awhile, then I unsubscribe. If I find myself in a situation where I'll potentially be listening to a lot of music (recently it was a road trip), then I'll re-up it. If they send me a good deal and I notice it, then maybe I'll re-up then. Given the cost, it probably doesn't matter, but as I said I'm very skeptical of subscriptions.

Subscriptions should be able to be paid by invoices - you receive an invoice before next billing period and if you don't pay, account is locked

This is exactly what I do with my business (RadioReference/Broadcastify). If you have a premium subscription, you can pay with a credit card, but we do not auto-renew subscriptions. We'll simply send you an email 7 days before your subscription is about to expire, and if you want to renew it, you go ahead and submit a new payment.

I've been told by a number of PE firms and others that I'm missing out on significant revenue, and I KNOW that is probably the case, but I just cannot gather enough energy to climb that summit and commit my users to such dark patterns. Even in the face of clear and concise evidence that my revenue would probably increase >20%, I'm more afraid of the loss of customer goodwill, and chargebacks that would occur. I can simply look at my own rage when I see dark patterns that extract money from my pocket.

Sadly, it's one of those things were if your business is in a crowded space of players, the ones that do participate in the dark patterns will earn more money, which leads to more funding, which often leads to winning. So most companies don't have a choice but to foist dark patterns like auto-renewals on their customers.

I experience this recently. I had to go cancel my Tivo subscription when I ended my cable service and the website didn't have the button it was supposed to have to let me cancel it. Support was obtuse and unhelpful all around, simply replying with a link to the documentation saying to click the button that didn't exist.

Luckily, I'd been experimenting with privacy.com at the time I signed up, which lets you general card numbers for use with specific services and that's what I used for my Tivo subscription...so I was able to just go cancel that number.

Warning: sometimes if companies persistent at stealing your money I’ve heard that they can still manage to charge your card even if your privacy card is disabled. That’s what I’ve read somewhere, maybe even here on HN. But still, I also use privacy.

Canceling a credit card does not legally get you out of an obligation to pay. The only question is what is in the fine print of the subscription contract, if the company is willing to pursue it, and if the contract will hold up in court. Nothing about the credit card/payment info no longer being valid invalidates a contract in general - and in some cases you will be liable for their efforts to get payment if the card on file is no longer valid.

> I’ve heard that they can still manage to charge your card even if your privacy card is disabled.

Yup, privacy allowed a company to charge me fraudulently.

Their response was basically: "We have standards for disputes with our card networks and you have no evidence that you didn't purchase this, so we won't be allowing you to submit a dispute."

Yeah, I didn't have evidence that I didn't buy a random charge that I knew nothing about aside from the "retailer" and the dollar amount...

Call your CC company fraud office. They'll find that button pronto.

> what if you simply forget you even had a subscription?

Others have addressed your other points, but this one is where I roar. As a very frugal and paranoid guy, I watch my credit card activity like a hawk - like twice daily. There is no way in hell I'd simply "forget" that I'm paying for something. This idea evokes one of those "how do people live like this" reactions from me.

If there is a transaction against my credit card I don't recognize, an outgoing check i didn't write, a charge that doesn't match what was on the receipt, an interest deposit that doesn't match what it should be, and so on, I know within the day, not within a few months, and can take action.

And the best part is: It's not a lot of work. Get something like Quicken or one of its alternatives, which can connect to all of your bank accounts and credit card accounts at once, and simply hit refresh once a day while you're drinking your morning coffee. You'll find you're much more on top of things just by doing that simple thing.

> but there are so many potential problems - what if you loose access to your account and basically won't be able to cancel the subscription?

What do you mean by "basically"? You write a mail.

> what if they accidently charge you for who knows what?

Then you write a mail. Businesses are not all that keen on manually resolving issues like this, so they will try to avoid them.

> what if you simply forget you even had a subscription?

Yes, not using the things you paid for seems something you would want to avoid, in one of two ways. This is not a subscription problem.

> Subscriptions should be able to be paid by invoices - you receive an invoice before next billing period and if you don't pay, account is locked,

Why should the service provider hope for your compliance to pay for an already rendered service?

These hypotheticals seem awfully contrived.

>> Subscriptions should be able to be paid by invoices - you receive an invoice before next billing period and if you don't pay, account is locked,

>Why should the service provider hope for your compliance to pay for an already rendered service?

1. No one implied that they have to provide you a service first before you pay. OP said "invoice before next billing period". I.e. if you don't pay before the next period starts, you don't get access to the service. I don't see why this is that hard. This purely serves the provider offering the service which somehow wants to put you in some sort of contractual month to month contract as opposed to "pay before you get access" model.

2. You could turn it around: "Why should the payer hope for the service that's already been paid for?" There are contracts and norms for starters. The "subscription arrangement" makes it entirely the payer's problem to cancel the service, or to keep track of it's lack of usage (the Gym membership model). One can definitely argue that it's predatory, and certainly so if it's combined with how difficult it sometimes is to cancel subscriptions.

>"What do you mean by "basically"? You write a mail."

This is never that simple, your hypothetical "they're reasonable and respond to reasonable email requests" is not how it works in practice. Past a certain growth size of the provider, there isn't even an email address you can email that's actively monitored and actioned.

> These hypotheticals seem awfully contrived.

Well.. they're not. I've first hand experienced "what if they accidently charge you for who knows what" as I mentioned in my example and I recall many, many stories on HN regarding problems with subscriptions related to these "hypotheticals". Not to mention that the "what if you simply forget you even had a subscription?" is probably the most common, I doubt most people periodically check their credit cards history and given how many subscriptions an average person have, it's way too easy to forget you've subscribed to something - maybe in a heat of a moment or for "free trial" that required your CC and started charging you once the free trial expired.

Yes, in theory, you write an email. But in practice, most of the big companies do their best to hide any human-observed mailbox behind a quick and sloppy "customer support FAQ with a useless search bar" page.

> Yes, in theory, you write an email.

You are misreading it. Not an email. A mail. The paper variant. And depending on the rules of your country you often want to do that as "registered mail". Again this changes jurisdiction by jurisdiction but where I am from registered mail is useful to show others that you tried to contact them. With regular mail they can just say "so bad, so sad, the dog must have eaten it". With registered mail there is (sometimes and again depending on your jurisdiction) as "assumption of receipt".

> hide any human-observed mailbox behind a quick and sloppy "customer support FAQ with a useless search bar" page.

These are companies. They have offices and staff. The business world runs on official correspondence. The governments and courts for sure don't send them messages via a chat box.

They don't want you to use those channels because it would be too costly for them. But if they truly dropped the ball as the OP's comment implies you can do that.

Plus you can always call you bank and say "hey there is this money taken from my account. I don't recognise it. Can you tell me what is this?" And they will give you how you can contact the counterparty to dispute the charge.

How much is your time worth? $5/hour? $50/hour? $500/hour? More?

How much $$$ is being fraudulently extracted from you that you're willing to go to these lengths?

I am reminded of a quote from Voltaire:

"I was never ruined but twice in my life. Once, when I lost a lawsuit, and once when I won one."

You write an email is so last century. These days it's:

"You hopelessly try to get any contact info out of the company's chatbot and fail. If there even is a chatbot. Then you post your problem on the web and submit it to HN and hope it makes the front page."

A virtual debit card service like privacy.com lets you create a card for each subscription, limit how much per month can be charged, and end the virtual card at any time.

By default the card will be vendor locked, meaning once a company makes a charge to the card then only that company will be able to do so.

That said, doesn’t solve the issue of everyone wanting subscriptions. A few $5-$20 here and there will quickly rival a utility bill.

Sure, you can use PayPal as well (which I do when I really need to pay for a subscription), but that's just a solution to a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place - I get it that some people like the convenience of automated reccuring payments and that's fine, but it shouldn't be the only available option to pay for services.

Totally agree! There should be more flexibility to accommodate different preferences and concerns regarding payment methods.

That's not less hassle than getting an invoice and paying it.

A subsrciption to manage all your other subscriptions?

Sound counterintuitive yet can actually be a valuable service

Privacy.com was free last I checked.

Anything delivered as a subscription that does not have correlating employee and infrastructure expenses for the business is just a trick to get you to overpay & support an otherwise unprofitable business idea.

I am thinking, particularly of these asset / resource libraries where you try to purchase one thing for a project and they say “hey subscribe for monthly access to all our assets”. That’s never a good value.

Invoices are too high friction, both for the user and the business.

You just need a central tool to manage your subscriptions without all the dark patterns, where you can be sure if you terminate the subscription you 100% won't be billed again.

Also, pay as you go business models are great, but more work for app developers, so there'd need to be a good tool to make that easier.

> You just need a central tool to manage your subscriptions without all the dark patterns, where you can be sure if you terminate the subscription you 100% won't be billed again.

This is why I like to pay via Apple App Store.

This could be extremely easily solved with legislation. Just have a law that says you must be able to cancel a subscription exactly as easily as how you signed up for it.

I don't know about other places, but I'm pretty sure there are laws to such an effect (or similar) in the EU.

Laws don't do much if they are not enforced. As is the case with this law. Regulations on anti-consumer behavior are very poorly enforced, and there's often in practice no penalty for violating them.

> and there's often in practice no penalty for violating them.

This is the crux of the matter. The laws are too weak. If the law said that that in addition to a refund there was a mandatory $100 compensatory payment due for every payment taken improperly (eg. every payment taken while unsubscription using the same method didn't work) then you'd have a few activist consumers waiting five years, recording the evidence and then demanding $6000. The problem would disappear overnight.

I wouldn't be so sure. E.g. EU mandated substantial compensations for delayed or cancelled flights. In practice the airlines typically just refuse to pay. You can contact an ombudsman that can sternly suggest that they pay, but not actually make them pay.

Of course you can take it to a court, wasting countless hours of time and risking tens of thousands in legal fees if you lose.

> wasting countless hours of time and risking tens of thousands in legal fees if you lose

That's a huge exaggeration. For example in the UK (not in the EU now I know, but roughly the same and I know the system better) you're looking at risking under £200. The loser will pay the fees. If you're certain that you're owed compensation under the law then there's little risk to take.

Source: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/small-claims-court...

Doesn't California already have this? I've heard the trick is to VPN to California and magically the Cancel button exists on the website now. Never tried it though, I'm also mostly allergic to subscriptions.

You understand most SaaS companies are global, right? This isn't a problem only impacting 5% of the world.

Same comment, different conclusion. Being international, it will be difficult to enforce those laws when the business and client are in different countries. Even if different countries implement similar laws, they will invariably be just that: similar. Altruistic small businesses will have difficulty with compliance because it is an additional burden they must handle. Then there is malicious compliance. Too many businesses are willing to distort the intent of the law if they can find some sort of loophole.

How is it difficult for an altruistic small business to offer a prominent "end subscription" button? It's only hard to cancel most things because businesses purposely make it difficult.

When there are no laws regarding it, it is quite simple: you add the prominent end subscription button. When you are dealing with the laws of one jurisdiction, you (or your lawyer) review the law to ensure you meet the definition of prominent, are using the correct language, etc.. Multiple laws in multiple jurisdictions: not only is it more time consuming to ensure compliance, you better hope the laws don't conflict (otherwise the complexity of the solution is going to climb rapidly).

I see this same argument presented by grandparent trotted out when people argue against including tax and fees in the price in the States. Australia and NL manage this just fine, and somehow multinationals and small businesses manage to conduct business that follow these regulations in these countries while still dealing with a patchwork of country and region specific enforcement regulations. And the example I gave is more difficult than adding a cancel subscription button.

And? Every country can pass its own legislation, which may also (but is not required to) be in the form of a joint agreement to harmonise laws to make business requirements simpler.

It doesn't matter to any single subscriber if two different countries happen to be in sync or not.

> You just need a central tool to manage your subscriptions

So... a bank?

The US's inability to forbid companies from stealing people's money is a pile of bullshit that makes the lives of everybody all over the world harder.

(Or maybe, that's a good opportunity for competing with them.)

In an idea world, something like a bank. The problem is that banks have services and structures designed to enrich the bankers, not be useful to their customers. This sort of stuff isn't worth their time, and the digital banking infrastructure is too much of a mess for apps built on top of it to really shine.

I have a really hard time matching your stated inevitability with the fact that my bank has had that exact kind of service since I have bank accounts (all of them, except Citibank that I tried once... so all of the local ones).

But, of course, they don't interact directly with the US banks.

That's called PayPal

I have a very simple approach to evaluating if a subscription is worth it: I multiply the price by 20 times the annual cost [1]. If it is monthly, that is 240 times. If that is too hard for quick mental arithmetic, 250 is pretty close (divide by 4, multiply by a thousand). $12/month? That is almost $3000. It may seem extreme, but it's not. That is the real cost to your wealth over time.

[1] Net present value [2] of all future payments with a 5% discount rate. 5% is not scientific or anything. This is just a rule of thumb.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_present_value

Most egregious thing I’ve recently discovered is the partnerships with the card issuer so that if you cancel a card, the subscriptions can automatically follow you to the new CC number.

It is a standard feature that all card networks have provided for a very long time and is known as the «recurring payment» flag on the card charge that follows the card account number, not the card number (both may or may not be the same).

Originally invented as a convenience feature to free up card users from having to update payment details every time when the card expires, gets lost etc, it has also been abused with nefarious intentions by subscription providers as the only way to stop recurring charges is to contact the service provider which is disinclined from letting a customer go. Banks are bound by card payment networks terms and conditions to honour the recurring charge flag and are not empowered to remove it at the customer's behest.

I am going to both agree and disagree.

For the most part, I definitely don't want a subscription since I want to keep the product indefinitely, don't want to deal with recurring fees, and don't want to see stuff that I am interested in disappear (whether it is the rotating licensing agreement for IP on streaming services, or a feature vanishing/moving to a new tier in a software update). Then there are issues with automatic billing, sometimes due to the mistakes you mentioned and sometimes due to hostile terms in the EULA. That being said, one has to be careful with credit card purchase even if they aren't recurring.

Yet there are also products that I don't want to purchase outright. Streaming services are appealing since they offer access to a large library. Few people would be able to afford purchasing everything they use. Even if they could afford it, they may not want to manage an accumulating pile of stuff that they will use only once or twice. While I am thinking of streaming services, I would imagine that the same would apply to software for some people.

Someone mentioned that your suggestion would offer too much friction. I don't really see that being the case. If you're subscription ends on the 15th of the month and you log in on the 20th, they can simple present one-click dialog box offering a renewal. If you don't want stored credit card information (either as a business or as a customer), it looks like the major browsers handle storing credit card information on the client's side. (Note: I don't know how reliable or secure this is since I don't use it, but I have seen the feature in multiple browsers.)

The subscription model offers significant convenience, particularly for services that provide ongoing updates and support. But it does have some cons! I was dealing with potential access issues.

> I can't wrap my head around why people got so comfortable with allowing companies to charge their credit cards whenever they want, how much they want and how long they want

You’re not alone. There is a race to the bottom on exploiting these deficiencies on careless/unknowing/impulsive customers. But there’s a growing number of opposite people like you and me who are avoiding subscribing because we anticipate the dark patterns, and that’s lost business. By the time the marketing departments will wake up to the reality that people avoid subscriptions even if they want the product, they’ll be faced with an insurmountable reputational barrier for entire cohorts of users they will be desperate to convert.

Tangentially, this is related to a beef I have with Apple. Their IAP system as middleman for purchases (but especially subscriptions) is worth a lot and cheap to maintain. I already trust them much more than a random SaaS (might even sign up for NYT if I’m confident I can cancel with a click later). In other words, they’re providing huge value, BUT they refuse to compete on fair terms. Their obsession with the 30% tax have pushed the market to do business outside of their App Store (which reduces their market share and fragments the UX), and even created massive badwill to the point of upsetting toothful regulators. They could have avoided all the tantrums and fighting, made a shitton of money in the long run, increased their market share, if only they hadn’t been stuck in the last decade first-mover monopolistic mindset.

EDIT: The more I think about, the more I realize how good Apple's (and maybe Google/Android to a lesser extend) position is. They're sitting on low-fraud rate one-click payment access with biometric verification, with a verified customer region, prefilled info, etc. They're a merchant's dream, and yet they're scaring everyone away with their short-sighted greediness and erratic rules of engagement. On the open market, an MOR (Merchant of Record) like Paddle lies at around $1 + 4%. Apple could easily add another 5% on top and people would pay for it, happily. But no, they insist on clinging to the past.

> Their obsession with the 30% tax

> On the open market, an MOR (Merchant of Record) like Paddle lies at around $1 + 4%. Apple could easily add another 5% on top and people would pay for it, happily.

Apple charges almost every developer 15%, not 30%. The only developers who pay 30% are the ones earning more than a million dollars per year through the App Store, for things that aren’t long-lived subscriptions.

15% isn’t quite as low as you’re suggesting, but Apple are a lot closer to that than to 30% for almost all developers.

Apple are the ones responsible for a lot of this subscription nonsense. They went around (had meetings with top devs) and convinced developers that they should switch to a subscription model. That's about when the narrative of the starving software dev came out as well.

Subscriptions existed before Apple and trying to put the genie back in the bottle is an entirely separate discussion. The point is about how subscriptions could be better for everyone.

> what if you loose access to your account and basically won't be able to cancel the subscription?

write an email or a letter. if they don't react, see below

> what if company will continue to charge you even after closing your account? what if they accidently charge you for who knows what?

file a chargeback request

> what if you simply forget you even had a subscription?

well yes, if you can't manage your finances properly to the extent that you miss a regular payment, then maybe you shouldn't use a subscription. or credit cards in general.

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I personally never had any issue around any subscription that I pay for. I would totally understand if you asked for the option to pay by invoice, but personally, I hate paying bills manually, so I'm glad that there are subscriptions for most recurring services.

I too always hated paying bills manually but finally stopped and went to automatic online payments after my mortgage payment twice arrived late — incurring a late fee of $55 each time — even though I'd mailed my checks two weeks in advance of the due dates.

Charlottesville, Virginia, where I live, has been plagued by undelivered/late mail for many years, to the extent U.S. Senator John Warner personally intervened on several occasions to try to fix it — without success.

After I switched my mortgage payment to automatic withdrawal from my bank account I was so pleased at how frictionless it was that I changed ALL my monthly check payments — Comcast Internet+XfinityTV/AT&T/electricity/water/trash pickup — to automatic credit card payments.

So much better now, plus I no longer need to buy stamps on a regular basis.

Yes, I didn't clarify that I would want an option to pay for subscriptions by invoice, not to get rid of automated recurring payments. Let's be honest - the only reason companies won't do that is because it's not in their interest, similar to the right to repair.

Well I have several bank accounts (in the same bank, for convenience). The one attached to the debit card I use for subscriptions has usually very little money in it. Enough so I can forget a month or two about the payments but unless I explicitly transfer money in it, they don't have what to charge.

In the end I still have too many subscriptions that I lost track of but worst case, I just nuke the account and I'm free of leeches.

A debit card linked to an account with insufficient funds in it is not a sustainable solution with many banks as many of them will honour the transaction (usually within a small limit, e.g. ⩽ $50-100 but can be more), AND will apply the overdraft fee, plus the interest on the overdraft until it is paid off. Banks love shady charges, and it is a source of substantial revenue for them.

You are simply lucky if your bank bounces a transaction instead of slapping you with the overdraft fee.

> many of them will honour the transaction

What country? I'm not aware of any banks that will honour transactions on a debit card with zero funds in my country.

It has nothing to do with the country, and it has everything to do with: 1) the transaction type, and 2) personal wealth.

Transaction types. There are two: a) customer present, b) customer not present. Instant electronic funds transfers fall into (a) and are almost always declined, with the caveat. The caveat: you are overseas, the payment terminal has captured the card details, dispatched them the local/nearest payment processing centre, then something has fallen apart and the acquiring bank (i.e. your bank) could not be contacted. It is a rare situation nowadays, but it can happen nevertheless, and the transaction may be honoured. Most merchants don't bother with it, though, and they will simply produce a «payment declined» receipt instead. But if not, such a payment can send a card account into overdraft irrespective of whether your local bank advertises it or not.

Customer not present. This has i) online transactions (e.g. purchases over the internet) and ii) completely offline transactions. The handling of the customer-not-present-online-internet transactions is done solely at the discretion of your bank. Typically, a random purchase will be declined, but a recurring payment may be honoured. Completely offline transactions are very rare nowadays, but they still can take place, e.g. on a flight when the plane has lost the internet connection – the flight attendant will promptly return, produce a mechanical contraption and take a slip of your debit card, provided the card details are embossed on it. If they take a slip, the payment networks do mandate such a payment to be honoured, and a cheque account that is linked to such a debit card will go into overdraft. It is non-negotiable, independent of the country and is mandated by the payment netowrks.

Personal wealth. Your bank continuously monitors the in-flow of money into accounts you hold with them as well as the expenditure and the class of merchants you spend your money with. Depending on which one occurs first, e.g. you reach a certain income threshold (undisclosed and defined internally – by your bank), you may get the overdraft automagically allowed on the account your debit card is linked to. There are no specific rules as to when it is going to happen and what is the selection criteria for such a thing to happen – it is solely at the bank's discretion.

All this stuff is somewhat obscure, yet it is real and is entirely independent of country borders and the local legislation.

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

At least where I live, I have to specifically request enabling of overdraft (of course they would love me to do so), but I ain't doing that. So with a debit card, I'm safe.

Banks lure you with credit cards and overdraft on debit cards (which in turn turns it into credit). If you can resist that you're in a much more robust position than otherwise.

I know the term. But in the days of instant electronic transactions it's useless except as a way for the bank to get some undeserved fees. And where I am it's never on by default.

It should really be federally mandated that card issuers maintain a webpage with all your recurring subscriptions and give you one-click access to cancel.

Your contract, and hence obligation to pay, is with the service provide not your bank. Requiring banks to integrate with any company’s subscription terms seems unduly burdensome and impractical.

Having a list of allowed recurring payments for your card is not an impossible requirement. Ability to cancel approval on your side would not be too complicated for the bank and would be very useful even without integration with other side to really cancel the subscription.

That sounds like tortious interference. Or maybe they'd get away with it since technically they're only providing the means for the customer to violate their contract at the click of a button. But anyways, cancelling your payment without cancelling your subscription doesn't actually save you any money unless the service provider chooses to immediately cancel your account in response.

Nonsense. You also have a card holder agreement with the credit card issuer and as you know they can already decide to stop conducting business with a certain merchant. So they absolutely have power in the setup and they extract healthy fees from each transaction.

This is very possible and fits the spirit of recent regulation towards “making it as easy to cancel as it is to sign up”

> what if you simply forget you even had a subscription?

Isn’t that the business model of a lot of businesses these days, specially junk apps and gyms?

It’s not “these days”

there was a famous scene 25 years ago in Friends where one of them wanted to “quit the gym”

These models have always existed.

A number of those issues are present even without subscriptions. For example, let's say you take it back to 2003, and buy Photoshop outright instead of subscribe. $700 piece of software, but when your computer dies and you need it on a new system, can't find the license key?

> A number of those issues are present even without subscriptions. For example, let's say you take it back to 2003, and buy Photoshop outright instead of subscribe. $700 piece of software, but when your computer dies and you need it on a new system, can't find the license key?

This is the same with losing anything of value. It's called a valuable lesson.

Possibly just a nitpick, but back when Photoshop had permanent licenses did the terms (and the software itself) allow customers to make functional copies (with the one license key, I mean) and store the copies elsewhere?

For me, the lesson is: use free as in freedom software over proprietary software whenever practical.

I was writing a contrasting view re:invoicing that ended up convincing me that you were entirely correct. If you lead with that last paragraph it would probably be sufficient to secure my vote for whichever office you were running for.

> I can't wrap my head around why people got so comfortable with allowing companies to charge their credit cards whenever they want, how much they want and how long they want.. Yes it's convenient

It sounds like you do understand it.

Periodically I review my bank statements and account settings to ensure I'm only being charged for services I actively use and want. Coz I had similar problem. Yet the subscription model offers convenience still.

>can't wrap my head around why people got so comfortable with allowing companies to charge their credit cards whenever they want, how much they want and how long they want..

So, you hate payment methods not subscriptions

[flagged]

As far as I know Adobe was a billion-dollar company decades before forcing subscriptions on users

Ironic quip:

The guy who apparently got Adobe to switch to subscriptions was on the Hacker News cofounder matching, claiming that as one of his big accomplishments. I almost wanted to try and match with him just to impart the magnitude of the pain that decision had caused in the user community, and how it ultimately has opened the door for photoshop competitors even if it has juiced short term profits. Definitely a short sighted business move that is going to eventually end Adobe's market dominance.

Poppycock. We gladly buy payed upgrades. If and when we deem it worth it.

As far as I know, Jetbrains, HashiCorp, SublimeText etc. has not yet gone bankrupt.

When a product(or service) generate real value, people will happily hand over their money. The only people having issues with giving away something free are mostly generating negative value overall in my experience, hence they need dark patterns.

Jetbrains is subscription, at least if you click on 'store' :)

Only if you click much further you find out that you retain the rights to the last major version. If that's still true.

What? What you replied to had nothing to do with ‘not paying,’ or ‘getting things for free,’ it only discussed their dislike for the subscription model.

Why isn't there yet a "two clicks away unsubscribe" law? Unsubscribing from any service is two clicks away: one for unsubscribing and the second should be a mail with a link to confirm that you effectively want to unsubscribe. And you should receive another email confirming that you definitely unsubscribed. This button for unsubscribing should be visible at all times from whatever app/browser/GUI you're using. It is as simple as that. Why isn't this a solved problem yet?

California actually passed a law requiring unsubscribing from a subscription to be as easy as subscribing to it. NY Times is infamous for requiring calling to unsubscribe, but if your billing address is in California, you can do it on the website.

Such businesses deserve canceling customers to be as inefficient and costly as possible in the cancel call.

"Ah, my name? I'll spell it out. It's a bit long and difficult to understand through a phone"

"D like the first letter of De…o…xy…ri…bo…nu…cle…ic". A few seconds pass. "You can confirm you got it right? Right, D, D like Deoxyribonucleic, the first word in DNA. That's what you have in your cells. Okay, were was I? Let me start over… What, you are what you say? Ah, annoyed? It'd be easier on a form on your website you know… bear with me…"

While this sounds fun and satisfies our justice reflex, the only person you're "getting back at" here is a low paid call-center worker who you're causing stress by missing their targets and tanking their metrics, who has no power over decisions like this.

It's the equivalent of trying to inconvenience BigStoreCo by harassing a register worker and something best avoided.

If everybody started doing it:

- suddenly all low paid workers would miss the same targets, in which case no individual can be blamed anymore

- the madness might stop rapidly because it would make the dark pattern worthless

I sympathize with the low paid workers. I also don't like the fact that by that logic, businesses can just use low paid workers to protect themselves from the consequences of their dark patterns. Like, it's all too easy to go full evil and just put relatable human shields in front so nobody feels like lifting a finger. What are we supposed to do against this?

Of course, it won't happen: the effective way of fixing this would be through law.

Now, while this comment is serious, the previous one was more intended as humor.

I disagree here. The right action is boycotting the company and lobbying/protesting/voting for better consumer and worker protections. Or organize it as a concentrated group action so your first point holds, but don't just do it solo.

Boycotting is a nice counter measure. Effectively, you don't even participate in funding the dark pattern and you put a pressure on fixing it because of the loss of income.

You need to know the issue beforehand though.

lobbying/protesting/voting for better consumer and worker protections is obviously the right thing to do, and acting collectively too. Only collective actions will be effective against such tings, most probably.

This brings up a good point that harassment of dark pattern implementors is an untapped market. Just slap on AI and sell it as a service…

“You paid them to waste your time, pay us to waste theirs!”

Just don't use the word "harassment" in your marketing material, and find a solid justification for the existence of your business for legitimate purposes, while at the same time reaching your target xD.

They just hang up on you if it's taking too long

P for pneumatic, X for xylophone...

I unsubscribed to two mailing lists just yesterday. Open the mails, click unsubscribe, confirm. I do remember the old days, though.

Or:

Robert Loggia. R as in Robert Loggia. O as in "Oh my god, it's Robert Loggia." B as in "By God! It's Robert Loggia." E as in "Everybody loves Robert Loggia." R as in Robert Loggia. T as in "Tim, look over there! It's Robert Loggia." Space. L as in "Look! It's Robert Loggia."...

Ah, you make me yearn for the days when I had time to troll someone like that over bad business practices.

The difference is that the other side is paid to do it, and the caller is wasting their time.

Another difference is that the customer wants something, and the other side can just hang up if their patience runs out.

Maybe other countries are different, but terminations here are a unilateral declaration of intent. Would it occur to you to tell a company exactly how its communications (e.g. invoices) should look like? No, of course not. And neither can a company tell you exactly how your terminations should look like. It's none of their business.

Same rule has been in place in the EU for a few years, such a godsend. Before there were still a lot of places where subscribing could be done online, but unsubscribing required a registered letter.

IIRC Colorado has or had such a law. I took advantage of it to cancel Xbox Live back in the day by updating my billing address and then canceling the service (despite not living in Colorado).

Heh, you can't cancel xbox live online with a click? You have to call?

This was way, way back in the early 360 days. I don't know what you have to do now.

I think roughly the same rules around consent for sex (ie."ongoing enthusiastic consent") should also apply to money.

They should have to actively ask "are you still using us?" if you aren't using the subscription ending it if you don't get back to them.

Brings a whole new meaning to "sleeping giants"

[dead]

> Why isn't there yet a "two clicks away unsubscribe" law?

B̶r̶i̶b̶i̶n̶g̶ Lobbing.

Oh, that's just considered "tipping" now. What's the big deal, what could possibly go wrong?

you could do a one-click unsubscribe, but then set up a website where that button keeps jumping away from your mouse for 20 minutes, while it's showing you uplifting messages why in fact, you should continue with the subscription. Still, only one click!

Or, follow this maze with your mouse pointer until the unsubscribe button in the middle. If you hover-move across a wall, you need to start from the beginning. Good luck!

> but then set up a website where that button keeps jumping away from your mouse for 20 minutes, while it's showing you uplifting messages why in fact, you should continue with the subscription. Still, only one click

Most laws can be misinterpreted, it doesn't necessarily mean they are useless.

Pretty sure when I unsubbed from Amazon Prime a few years back, I had to navigate three or four pages of “are you really sure…” where the primary button sometimes took me further and sometimes sent me back. It was fun. And afterwards my Roku TV box somehow managed to resub me twice even though I didn’t watch any Prime content (customer support rep said it was the Roku and I had no other explanation).

> And afterwards my Roku TV box somehow managed to resub me twice even though I didn’t watch any Prime content ...

Is that the kind of thing that a pet chewing on a remote control (or similar) could trigger?

No idea. I just wanted the customer service rep to reverse the credit card charge (yeah I only found out from monthly review of credit card bill, pretty sure I never even got an email saying my subscription was reenabled) and cancel the subscription, and didn’t prod when that goal was achieved. After the second time I ditched the Roku altogether. IIRC I also did a sign-out-everywhere.

This would follow the letter of the law, but not its spirit. It might not fly in court. IANAL.

you are a monster.

> This button for unsubscribing should be visible at all times from whatever app/browser/GUI you're using

At all times? So movie streaming subscription services would have to have an unsubscribe button on the movie playback screen?!

I can't see any reason it would not be sufficient to just require an unsubscribe button or link on the account management page.

I was so hopeful when subscriptions became a thing because it could technically solve one of the big problems with desktop software: updates.

Selling a version of software that you "own" creates a perverse incentive: charge as much as you can and as often as you can for "upgrades". Back when Photoshop was sold this way, support for the raw formats of new cameras that came out was gated for absolutely no reason behind buying a newer version of Photoshop. Even bugfixes would eventually only be applied to the latest version or two.

And what constitutes a major version requiring a paid upgrade anyway? Well that's completely arbitrary but the company is incentivized to make that happen as often as possible.

Subscriptions technically mean the company can just keep updating the software. There's only one version to support, really. There's no incentive to gate features behind another paid update.

The gold standard for subscriptions is Jetbrains. Cancel anytime. When you do cancel, whatever version you had you got to keep, basically. You got warnings in your email that you would be charged in a few weeks if you didn't cancel. The prices were reasonable. Jetbrains quite literally did everything right.

Then there's Adobe. The subscription prices are pretty outrageous. No warning. Hard to cancel. Easy to get a recurring charge. Adobe, like many companies, seems to have decided that whatever the sticker price was for the standalone software, charge that every year in a subscription.

But before you start waxing lyrical about the halcyon days of software you "own", you've either forgotten or never experienced the shady things software compnaies did to maximize revenue then as well.

Jetbrains only “did it right” because there was huge community outcry about their move to pure subscription so they moved to the “if you subscribe for X amount of time you get to keep the last version you had when you stop subscribing”.

Props to them for listening to the community but question whether they should be the gold standard given it is still a compromise position.

> But before you start waxing lyrical about the halcyon days of software you "own", you've either forgotten or never experienced the shady things software compnaies did to maximize revenue then as well.

Just because there was shady shit back then doesn't mean it wasn't, in some ways, a better system.

Can't that same argument be applied to subscriptions? Just because there is shady shit that doesn't mean it's not a better system?

Adobe gating new camera RAW formats behind paying for an upgrade was a real problem. You buy the latest Nikon DSLR and Adobe makes you buy PS CS5 for literally no reason other than that.

But bugfixes was a real problem. So a colleague of mine had an old iPhone or iPod Touch. I forget which. He used it for testing. He kept it on iOS 7 (this was years ago) because later upgrades just slowed the phone down. This ultimately became a problem when heartbleed [1] came out. Of course, Apple pushed a fix but that fix required upgrading iOS. If you didn't want to upgrade iOS or couldn't because your device wasn't supported, well you were SOL.

So this isn't exactly the same as paid software but you can in some ways view the phone as buying hardware and the software. And there defeinitely have been cases where bugfixes (including serious vulnerabilities) were only fixed on later versions.

When upgrades are paid, people stick to old versions. This can be bad for everyone. There's an awful lot of botnets, for example, that rely on old versions of Windows and other software that's never upgraded. I suspect this is why Microsoft abandoned paid Windows upgrades because it ultimately hurt them and it was untenable to fix every bug in every version of Windows.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbleed

I remember purchasing the latest version of 1Password every other year for around $40. And if I didn't need the latest features, I would postpone the purchase. Everything continued to keep working if I didn't get the latest version.

Nowadays it's $2.99 a month. If you cancel or miss a payment they lock you out of all your passwords at the end of the current billing period.

Heya! 1Password employee here. We have never locked anyone out of their 1Password Account for missing a payment, and we never will.

Whenever your subscription lapses your 1Password account will instead go into a "frozen" state. While your account is frozen, you can still view, use, and even export all your items, copy your passwords, and even copy items to vaults outside your account.

The only things you won't be able to do while an account is frozen is add new items to vaults, edit existing items, invite people to your family or team, or autofill items in your browser.

> Jetbrains quite literally did everything right

The problem I have with Jetbrains is that they do continuity discounts. If I cancel my subscription because I don't need it for the job I'm doing the next year, I will lose my 40% continuity discount and have to pay a lot more after re-subscribing. So I let my subscription continue for that period instead, but that also doesn't feel right.

I don't know if it counts as a dark pattern but I don't particularly like it.

Like it or not, I’d say it’s still better to have the opportunity to get a loyalty discount than to keep paying the initial price as with all other subscriptions.

> But before you start waxing lyrical about the halcyon days of software you "own", you've either forgotten or never experienced the shady things software compnaies did to maximize revenue then as well.

I don't think software developers not giving me new features and support options for free after purchase was ever shady. Bugfixes maybe is a grey area. Neither of these things are anything close to the level the outright scam dark patterns subscriptions now utilize almost as standard.

At the end of the day it is about leverage. With the old model the companies didn't have much leverage after the sale so there was only so many abuse angles available. With subscriptions there are tons because the customer has much less leverage.

> Then there's Adobe. The subscription prices are pretty outrageous. No warning. Hard to cancel. Easy to get a recurring charge. Adobe, like many companies, seems to have decided that whatever the sticker price was for the standalone software, charge that every year in a subscription.

I believe the pending lawsuit against Adobe is because if you cancel your subscription early for a "pay monthly yearly subscription", you have to pay 50% of your remaining subscription balance.

I mostly agree with you. I think there is one thing you are hand waving a bit though. When you bought version X, you could use that forever if that was sufficient and your cost basis and value proposition to upgrade was known and you could personally amortize it. The problem now is that the subscription can jump from a reasonable $5/month to $40/month for literally no reason. You have sunk time adapting to their tooling and have no ability to just do the one thing you started out doing. Sure, you can switch to another tool but that has a different cost and lots of them have moved to similar models. These kinds of subscriptions can really feel like a bait and switch. The example you cite above sucked more for people who needed each new raw format for camera Z but was great for all the people who didn't care.

Who has gone from $5 to $40 overnight?

Jetbrains also gives a 2nd year and 3rd year subscription discount if I recall correctly.

> And what constitutes a major version requiring a paid upgrade anyway? Well that's completely arbitrary but the company is incentivized to make that happen as often as possible.

Okay, but I don't have to buy it. I can more easily move to a competitor. Or, just use the version I bought and be content.

> The gold standard for subscriptions is Jetbrains. Cancel anytime. When you do cancel, whatever version you had you got to keep, basically.

No. You can keep a 1 year older version if you subscribed for 1 year or more.

Im more shocked by the world of direct mail advertising. I constantly receive important and substantive looking letters from banks, car insurance, car warranty resellers that are all aiming to trigger a negative emotional reaction (urgency) so you open their mail and don’t throw it immediately in the trash. The sheer volume of junk mail I receive and its toll on the environment throughout the entire chain honestly makes me shudder.

In the digital world FIGMA - Is by far the worst at adding monthly users to your account, without clear indication that it’s happened and they make it incredibly difficult to find where to unsubscribe those users as an Admin

Probably my "favorite" out direct mail advertising these are home warranty companies. We bought our home and immediately after, started getting letters about home warranties. They take all the info from public record but they always do something to make it look like it's a bill from the government or some other "official" source. Some of my favorites:

- "FINAL NOTICE" printed on the letter (spoiler alert it's not the final notice)

- Use that paper that you have to rip on either side to open.

- Print the name of your mortgage company and other information to make it seem that they have info on you (all public record). Occasionally they will also print a "case number" which I assume is just some random numbers and letters.

I think the first one I got gave me a spook until I looked at the bottom and saw in 5pt print "we are not affiliated with any mortgage company or government agency, we are a home warranty service bla bla bla". Since then it's honestly kind of humorous to get one and see what tricks they tried to pull.

I recently purchased/sold a home so I went through this a few times now. The warranties, title search, etc direct mail people are annoying.

However, the actual ads for moving companies was great. I just got a stack of 30 moving company post cards, sorted it out by gut feeling basically, and started calling. It was a lot more efficient than google search.

I'm thankful that the name of my mortgage company is different from the slug they report publicly because it makes it very easy to discern garbage. Like somehow I don't think that this message from APPL is legit.

A particularly egregious example is that once you get a mortgage you'll get flooded with hundreds of letters over years bearing the name of your mortgage company in the top left corner of the window claiming to be extremely urgent. If you look closely at these mailers you'll note that the name of the mortgage company isn't quite where the return address should be, and if you open the mailer and read the fine print they do finally disclaim being the mortgage company, but they're intentionally designed to mislead you into thinking they're from your company in a way that really ought to be illegal but isn't.

I found a small trick that much of the most junky mail doesn't get delivered to business addresses, and so I forwarded all my mail to my business address. This worked for a little while, and greatly reduced the amount of junk mail I received. But the US post office only lets you forward for a limited amount of time (or makes you pay a ridiculously high price to keep doing it).

At that point, I just took down my mailbox and changed my address on all my bills and such to my work address. This lead to the USPS reporting to HUD that my house was abandoned. That got forwarded to the bank that holds my mortgage, who freaked out. I got them calmed down, but then went through a period of having to explain to quite a few people why I don't have a mailbox. I got accused of being selfish and of being a luddite. I got told it was illegal. I basically was shamed about it endlessly.

After ten years, I finally just put a mailbox back up at my house because my son, who just turned eighteen and was applying for credit cards and such, ran into issues where he couldn't receive them because he had no residential mailbox and the banks told him "tough luck".

Being called a luddite for choosing not to use the antiquated system is a new one.

Did not having a mailbox interfere with deliveries?

I'd guess that FedEx and UPS don't care, but many online sellers (such as Amazon) don't let you choose which carrier they use for your shipment and sometimes choose USPS.

If any piece of mail has “standard postage” stamped on it on the top right, throw it in the trash. Any legitimate mail has “first class” stamped on it.

https://www.mw-direct.com/blog/posts/first-class-mail-vs-sta...

Fun fact the US government subsidises mail spam. It's called media mail and for some inexplicable reason is 10x cheaper than normal mail.

No, that's wrong. The media mail rate is for books and other similar media, and it specifically may not be used for advertising.

That mail comes with rules. It presorted and so even though it is a lot cheaper to mail for them, because everything is in order there is a lot less work for the mail system and so they still make money on it in general.

That’s not what media mail is. Media mail cannot contain advertising.

I use a dedicated email address for registering on websites where such mailings are possible. It helps keep my main inbox free from spam emails.

These dark patterns are also pervasive across all of American society in general. A common one that is spread across many aspects of American society is the hiding of the full cost of something, e.g., flights, apartment leases, home purchases, car purchases, internet contracts, etc. where there are all kinds of last moment cost ad-ons. That may look like extra monthly fees on apartment leases beyond the price that was advertised, air travel that obscures things like the baggage charges, internet service that requires monthly equipment rental and various fees, etc.

You know it’s all deceptive and fraudulent just by virtue of that they hide it, but also that the companies usually vehemently resist being transparent about the coerced extraction of money, not really all that different than theft. When someone holds a gun to your head you also have a choice to not hand over your money.

As an European I've never really had any of those problems. Is committing fraud part of the American dream?

I'm constantly seeing companies trying that shit here in Denmark. Usually they stop with that specific dark pattern once our consumer protection agency (Forbrugerombudsmanden) threatens them with fines. But then they just try with something else. It's a big game of whack-a-mole and the consumer protection agency is serverely underfunded and understaffed - they have just 24 employees tasked with enforcing marketing and consumer protection law for every single company in Denmark)

This is a bit too harsh evaluation, IMO. I visited USA a few times, and I think people there are just used to not knowing exactly how much they'll pay. I am a bit stingy with money (some would say miserly), so when at home I usually count how much I'll pay before proceeding to checkout. This is impossible in the US:

* even something as mundane as a grocery shopping involves taxes (different in every state), not included in the price displayed in the store.

* In restaurants it's mandatory tipping

* for food delivery it's tipping, delivery fees, marketplace fee and more

* for tourists it's "yes the trip costs just $15, but see we forgot to mention that to actually see something you need to buy entrance ticket for another $15"

* etc

Only the last one I would call fraud, but nobody except me was angry so I think it's just the way it is.

> I think people there are just used to not knowing exactly how much they'll pay.

I've been an American my entire life and I've never gotten used to it. I'm pretty sure the pervasive dark patterns are what is deranging our society to the point where we think electing a conman, genital-grabbing, reality TV star as our president will solve things.

blaming trump for all the nation’s ails while a demented conman and possible rapist is actually president seems odd

I'd note that I didn't blame Trump for the nation's ails, but vice-versa.

Applying the phrase "demented conman and possible rapist" to Biden but not to Trump seems odd.

It's all fraud. They just have Stockholm syndrome across the pond :)

AFAIK, the procedure for counting taxes is mandated by law. So the first one just can not be fraud.

(And yeah, lobbyists in my country tried to import that law several time claiming it provides better transparency.)

If the price displayed is not the price i'm paying it's fraud. Even if it's legal.

If the law clearly tells you the relation between the displayed price and the billed price, and the business is doing exactly what the law requires, it can't be fraud.

Anyway, you can ditch the first part. If the law requires it, and the business does exactly what the law requires, it's not fraud.

You can't go around demanding that business violate the law, arguing that not doing so is a crime. You can push for it on moral basis, but never on legal basis.

Can you show me the law that requires the store to not display the final payment amount then? In any jurisdiction?

Note requires not allows.

Bonus: why can't I call it fraud if it's immoral but legal?

I see it all the time in Europe. Go to any online store and see how the listed price jumps up during checkout due to "taxes an fees". Even though I specify that I'm shipping to Finland, they're incapable of calculating taxes until the last stage of the checkout process. Airlines do those things here too. Air Baltic charges you something like 15 euros to print a boarding pass. Ryan Air is notorious for these various hidden fees.

It's possible that the foreign website shows the price including VAT at their local percentage. Finland has 24% VAT (25.5% in 2025) on most products so at checkout you get the price with Finnish VAT. It is also possible that Finland has various consumption fees that are only applied after the website verifies that you are indeed Finnish.

VAT is a complicated tax. I prefer to get petrol in The Netherlands because despite higher gas prices than Germany and Belgium, it is much easier to get the VAT back at the Dutch tax office than it is with the German or Belgian tax offices. Every country is its own silo.

For a European like me, most commercial transactions in USA feel more or less like fraud. It's really hard to figure out price of almost anything beforehand. E.g. in restaurant your meal will cost someting like 50% more than the sticker price. Even vending machines ask for tips, with dark patterns of course.

I'm a European. When I travel to another country (which I can do in about 30 minutes) and use my bank card the machine asks me if I want to pay in local currency or foreign currency. If I use local currency the local bank does the conversion, if I use foreign currency then my own bank will do the conversion (typically at a favourable rate).

On machines with larger displays you get a long text with the usual fear mongering about not knowing the exchange rate of your own bank and having security of knowing exactly how much will be withdrawn if you pick the exchange rate of the local bank.

I have similar annoyances at holidays, train tickets and flight tickets being advertised at very low prices, but when you want to book that price is only available on February 28th 2025. Any other date is at least 30% extra.

And don't get me started on the costs that are added at the checkout for my local super market. Suddenly I get plastic tax, bottle deposit, bag tax etc. The prices that are used on the shelf are only for club members so I get to pay a little bit extra if I don't have my member card with me. This is for The Netherlands. It can be difficult to know exactly what you have to pay at checkout while shopping.

California legislators just worked overtime to pass a law allowing restaurants to not include all fees in their menu prices.

Not a Californian, but which bill number is it? SB 1524 seems to do the opposite: service fees are allowed (terrible, but a separate issue), and non-tax fees have to be rolled into menu prices [1].

[1] https://sf.eater.com/2024/7/1/24189966/california-restaurant...

Your link says SB1524 does exactly what I wrote in my post. SB478 banned junk fees, including at restaurants, in Oct 2023, and then SB1524 a week ago allowed restaurants to charge junk fees.

> SB 1524 was a last-minute bid by lawmakers to extract restaurants from the junk fee ban known as Senate Bill 478, which Newsom approved in October 2023.

There is no reason that a restaurant menu should have a mandatory charge on everything shown separately from the prices for the food, other than for restaurants to be able to make prices seem lower than they are.

Oops, you're completely right. I retract my previous comment. I not only copied the wrong article (got the "rolling" part from https://www.latimes.com/food/story/2024-06-25/restaurants-ch...) but also misidentified which bill would have required rolling.

Genuinely interested, is this perhaps a result of the practice of writing prices without VAT? As a european, I always felt this has a fraudulent touch.

Ditto as an Australian. To be fair, we have a valid historical reason for prices down here always including tax - GST (our name for VAT / sales tax) was only introduced in 2000, and before that there was never any tax involved at point of sale - so it would have been too big a cultural change for "the marked price" to suddenly not be "the exact price that you pay". (Tipping is also rare here, same as in most of Europe.) So, yeah, the American way of "marked price plus tax plus tips" seems like egregious fraud to us too.

Although, over the past decade or so, "credit / debit card surcharge" fees (generally of 1-2%, but sometimes much more) - which aren't included in the marked price - have become pervasive here. And they're often charged (both online and in-store) when there is no alternative form of payment available (either a really lousy alternative - e.g. "pay by bank transfer, but we won't give you the product until the transfer has cleared, which may take up to 3 business days" - or literally no alternative at all, which is supposed to be illegal, but plenty of businesses seem to get away with it). But I guess it's a good sign, that quite a lot of people here complain loudly about such fees - maybe in the USA, the vast majority just resign themselves to it being yet one more gotcha creeping into everyday payments.

It gets worse when you're a contractor and regular consumer protections don't apply, since they address you as a business.

I'm currently receiving unwanted attention from a credit scoring company, whose sales person said falsehoods about their records about me just to make a sale. I had to go to their office to confirm that without buying a subscription, because while they're legally compelled to give me this information, they don't have to make it easy, so the only ways are appearing there personally or usig snail mail.

Name and shame?

I kind of want to, but they're local to Poland and maybe, just maybe their lawyers are reading this. Also they're infamous for such practices now that legislation protecting from loans taken using a stolen id is in effect and they lost their value proposition.

In any case when I went there I've met a man who had a poor credit score because a person with the same name and almost the same id number had a court case against him, and someone somewhere made a typo.

Strong case for giving children original names.

FYI: the specific dark patterns are listed and described on pages 8-16 of the report:

https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/science-and-technology/dark-co...

> They generally fall in one of the following categories:

> forced action, interface interference, nagging, obstruction, sneaking, social proof, urgency

If those are dark patterns, then most websites I visit violate that

That's the disturbing part, isn't it - it's completely normalized to the point that most of the sites you're gonna pass through on a given day will be doing it to some degree.

It's like if in literally every room you entered on a given day, there was one of those street peddlers who accost you to make you sign a subscription to something or other. Sure you can just firmly tell him no a couple of times and he'll back off, but going through your day like that sucks!

Yes? That's the headline and the opening paragraph...

I read that as specifically about marketing subscriptions, I mean in general

So much of everything marketing and sales is unwanted.

I'm unclear what your comment is implying. Is it okay then, because websites do it? Is it not okay, so why didn't the paper also include websites? I just not tracking...

I think every subscription should be required to have an information label, akin to the Broadband Consumer Labels (https://www.fcc.gov/broadbandlabels) that contains basic facts about the subscription, e.g.

- Price (only Monthly/Annual prices are acceptable),

- Additional data if this is an introductory rate,

- Minimum length of contract,

- Whether the contract auto-renews,

- How to cancel,

- Cancellation period (i.e. 30 days in advance of renewal),

- Any cancellation charges,

Yes! It's insane how hard it can be to match an automated withdrawal to the service you're subscribed to. This is a bit better within PayPal, but the number of times I had to research what subscription belongs to the parent company/payment provider that just charged my credit card is incredible.

I am not sure if social proof is a dark pattern. If you use it to say, here, we already have x number of satisfied customers, what is possibly wrong with that?

I was/am skeptical also, but a quick Google search found this.

> Testimonials and user feedback usually display positive reviews and lack any negative experiences, or details on services or products. Furthermore, the online environment makes it difficult to differentiate between genuine and fake testimonials.

Yeah, but I'm with OP: lying is obviously a dark pattern in any marketing text, but that doesn't automatically make every type of text where companies can lie a dark pattern.

Testimonials in particular feel harmless to me. They've been used for centuries, they're obviously fluff but people understand that, and they don't attempt to coerce or trick you into making a decision, they're just giving you positive data points the same as any other marketing blurb. If you include testimonials I'm not sure how you can exclude any text at all.

I'd say that social proof is only a dark pattern if paired with another dark pattern (urgency, outright lying), in which case it's not really a dark pattern in its own right, is it?

Yes but to place it in an unnecessary step between clicking “cancel” and “yes I’m sure, continue to cancel”?

I am not sure what this has anything to do with my statement above. I am talking about social proof here, which is listed as part of dark patterns.

What is wrong with saying, we have X number of happy customers? As long as it's true, I am not sure how it is deceptive.

I think it's fine as a marketing argument, like in the page where you present your product. As much as citing the big names already using it.

What isn't fine is when you try to book an hotel room and you get nagging messages saying that 2849 other people want to book the same room for the same dates. And of course when you try to unsubscribe and you need to pass through marketing material, with or without social proof.

That's not social proof, that's false urgency, which is its own pattern listed separately.

> Dark patterns involving urgency impose a real or fake temporal or quantitative limit on a deal to pressure the consumer into making a purchase, thus exploiting the scarcity heuristic. Accordingly, such dark patterns may also be referred to as scarcity cues or claims. Examples include low stock and high demand messages or a countdown timer to indicate an expiring deal or discount.

Which is another not a dark pattern. Otherwise the entire existence of brands like Ferrari, Gucci, Rolex is a dark pattern!

As with “social proof”, the author mistakes lying (dark) with marketing (legit).

> Otherwise the entire existence of brands like Ferrari, Gucci, Rolex is a dark pattern!

They are.

As for the rest of them of course, that is a different matter.

As someone who has had to implement a lot of social proof components and ‘urgency messaging’ I’d guess part of it being down to the fact that, a lot of the time, the numbers are absolute trash. I had to do it so often I added a ‘randomNumberBetween’ function to the frontend library I made for one of my employers.

> I am not sure if social proof is a dark pattern.

It is when it’s faked¹ or biased² which happens mighty frequently. I’ve seen websites posted to HN which blatantly used AI profile pictures and AI generated text for the testimonials. That is the norm, not the exception.

¹ Not real people or testimonials.

² Only showing the 3 positive reviews out of 100 negative.

Is anybody surprised by this? Companies are not your friend, they only want your money...

I'd argue that companies do this are actually your enemy. Most people would agree that stealing and lying is wrong, but this isn't far removed from that.

The socioeconomic system that selects for such companies is actually the enemy. We accept and even encourage and glorify lying and cheating, as long as it's made for monetary gain.

Yes, but also consider what you are saying, this “companies” are really just a group of people, many of those people who engage in or support these types of rather pernicious and arguably evil patterns of behavior are here and all around us, and they likely all rationalize their involvement with some kind of “I just implement what I’m told” or “I’m under pressure to increase revenue” or “if I don’t do it someone else will”.

Companies are just people, a collection of people selected often to engage in rather evil, sneaky, and hateful behaviors in many cases, including the gaslighting about “hate” that many engage in as a means for manipulating an increase revenues … “we are about love … so you will give us more of your money.”

Some companies have discovered happy customers keep paying. They still want your money, and are not your friend - but they will keep you happy so you get paying.

However a lot of companies have discovered keeping customers happy is hard/expensive and so they instead look for ways to trick you into paying more now knowing that either way you won't be back once/if you figure out they don't care to keep you.

> Is anybody surprised by this?

What doesn’t surprise me is that this is one of the comments.

Yes, we all intuitively expected this, but so what? Seeing it in a study with real numbers has value. The study isn’t just a title, it contains a lot more information.

This attitude of crossing your arms and saying “we all know this, it’s how the world works” is a specific kind of giving up which only empowers the bad actors. You’re engaging in the exact attitude that ensures nothing ever changes.

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Usually, misdirections work better if they're not straight lies.

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I won't even agree to 6 months no payments or interest when buying things - sure it is 6 months I don't have to pay and I can invest the money to make interest. However they are looking for ways to make me forget to pay after 6 months.

It's hardly an ideal alternative to ethical business practices, but a few financial tools exist to deal with this. Banks that let you create virtual cards, or a service like Privacy.com, for example.

I've even gone a step further with multiple bank accounts. All of my income goes into an account that doesn't even have a debit card attached to it, and I only allow a couple of sources to even ACH out of that account (like my mortgage). I manually move money out into accounts I use for spending, bills, etc. (not that hard, with tools like Zelle)

I use virtual card and lock the card as soon as I’m done. The company will send a few nag notices then cancel for me.

Only because it isn't worth it for the company to go after you. If they want to fight you a canceled credit card is not a unsubscribe notice and they are likely to win in court.

However if you try to unsubscribe and discover it is too difficult calling the credit card companies and ask them to stop payment can get attention - credit cards companies have consumer protection and they can make things difficult for those making unsubscribe difficult.

I generally use the Apple app store on my phone if anything requires a subscription, even if I usually use the service on some other device. It just makes it way easier to see which subscriptions are still in effect, and lets you cancel them with one click. I hate Apple's billing monopoly shenanigans in general, but this one case where it actually benefits the end-user.

Which virtual card service do you use?

Some banks and credit card companies offer this as part of your service. For others, Privacy.com is a good option.

I’d propose some kind of certification for SaaSes, maybe including a digitally signed seal on the website and a registry, validating that the site doesn’t use dark patterns. Or maybe something like that exists?

What a nice idea, perfect as a subscription business :)

On a serious note, might work well as some sort of community effort.

Remember subscriptions also came about because of corporate limitations on expenses. If the charge was under the corporate limit then an often burdensome and time consuming approval process wasn't neccesary.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-...

While Patreon is often to support an individual artist, it's still a subscription. I wonder how often people sign up and forget they're a member. If your email inbox has 10,000 unreads and you don't check your bank statement, it'll just keep you on as a member forever. Especially since expiring credit card numbers are automatically relinked.

Why exactly does an international organisation have the US FTC as part of its logo and advertise a US .gov side?

Probably because [0]:

> The Network operates under an anually [sic] rotating presidency. On 1 July 2024 the Federal Trade Commission, United States of America, assumed the role of the 2024-2025 ICPEN Presidency.

[0] https://icpen.org/who-we-are

It looks like this organization has rotating presidency and the current president happens to be the US FTC.

Yup, I'm about ready for governments to get involved here.

The place I buy my laundry detergent from now wants a subscription in return for 20% off so now I have to subscribe every time I purchase it, and then unsubscribe. Or be the sucker who pays 20% extra for it.

Who in higher education is teaching and encouraging dark patterns?

Where are people learning not just how to design them, but that there's no ethical impact to subjecting people to them?

They learn about while refering to it as nudging and behavioural theory.

Here is one example: https://sam.hwr-berlin.de/en/vorlesungsverzeichnis.php?p_id=...

Higher education? You think the world runs on the output of higher education?

It's all about incentives and the incentive is to make money.

PE firms, investors, the founder, the employee with stock options. The world runs on making money and subscription businesses are one hell of a cash cow.

I guess MBA fits the bill.

The term "Dark Pattern" is at least ridiculous. Article is trash tier. Still gas 226 comments. Hacker News is a place of schizos.

Get a life!

Not really surprising. The only time my world was rocked was when I figured out a middle-class high-priced spa my partner and I are regularily visiting since more then 10 years is using hidden divs to hide pr0n-akin SEO on their main page. We only "saw" it because a screen reader we were using ignored the visibiliy of elements. Felt pretty surreal, but helped me to understand that everyone is doing fowl-play these days.

> but helped me to understand that everyone is doing fowl-play these days.

No, not everyone, and it’s important to not think that way and just give up. According to the report, they found no dark patterns in 24.30% of cases. That’s almost a fourth, which is nothing to scoff at. That fourth should be rewarded with our business while the remainder are shunned.

Sorry, but 75% bad apples is way too high for me to still be willing to filter out the good ones. My personal self-defense measure is currently to only subscribe to things which I can subscribe to through Apple. A single menu for cancelling everything you have subscribed to is really gold. I even dont care if the occasional sub costs me more via apple. The protection against dark patterns is worth the extra money. If your service can not be subscribed through Apple, I am sorry, but I am not going to do bussiness with you. And if you find that unfair, I am sorry, talk to the other bussinesses that created this situation...

I don’t understand why (or to whom) you keep saying “sorry”. I have no skin in the game and don’t care how you subscribe or to what. It is your prerogative to bundle the good actors with the bad because you don’t want to trouble yourself with the filtering, that is perfectly valid. But the fact remains that a fourth are good actors, and that is large enough to not be considered “everyone” (especially in italics, as per your original post), and that is the one point I wanted to make.

> pr0n-akin SEO

What is that?

Using porn sites to enhance your search ranking. SEO = Search engine optimization.

Didn't know this is a thing. How is that even beneficial, when porn is usually shadow banned?

"How is that even beneficial"

Linking works by linkbacks and other factors, there are specific organizations that reverse engineer googles alogorithms and there's an entire industry dedicated to hacking who gets listed on the first 1-3 pages of googles search results. AKA you can pay an SEO company to tell you what you need to link to get your webpage/company to float up the list of google results when people google for certain keywords. You have to understand there is big money in exposure.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-01/google-s-...

Just see what google pays to be on apples iphone, thats a tonne of money, and we can be certain the bean counters have run the numbers.

subscriptions should just be illegal

so sick of these bottom feeder apps praying on users forgetting that they are subscribed so they can keep extracting life-essence from your empty husk of a corpse

"traders"?

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Every part of both sentences is wrong.

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we should use the more accurate term 'Modern User Retention Strategies'

We should use more accurate term "Modern Money Extraction Bullshit".

To enter this Free And Open Space you must consent to being held upside down and given a vigorous shake. Any money or valuables that fall from your pockets will belong to us, and go in this big sack marked with a dollar sign.

:)