[numakerg]

The intolerable frequency of dark pattern on Amazon's site has made me very bitter. If I can find another store to fulfill the order online, I'll go there, even if it costs a little more. Retailers like Costco and Bestbuy have comparable shipping speeds anyways.

[paulcole]

What’s 2 examples of dark patterns on Amazon’s site?

[numakerg]

I'm glad you asked. Just two examples off the top of my head:

1. No timestamps on chat. Returning a product can require multiple chat sessions over the course of a week, where each representative swears on their mother's grave that in the next 48 hours we'll get an email and everything will be sorted out. They leave out timestamps so you can't clearly see that they've left you hanging for 15-20 minutes between each message.

2. Switching back to the recurring (vs. one-time) purchase option for some products each time you make a change to the order.

Numerous other issues, many of which are features that sellers exploit (mostly around reviews) and that Amazon isn't interested in fixing because they profit from those sales.

[choward]

I have a couple.

Constantly trying to get you to sign up for prime it their credit card. They show you the prime free 2 day shipping even when you don't have prime to trick you into signing up. They also do something similar where they show you the price if you were to sign up for their credit card.

They try to get you to add a pointless warrantee whenever they can. The button to accept looks like the one you should click.

You can't actually sort by relevance when searching anymore. Every time you search it defaults you back to sorting by "featured". Let's through the game "Amazon's choice" flair in there also.

It's a lot harder to tell you're buying from a third party than it was before.

They tell you that you are purchasing an ebook. Try deleting your account and you'll learn real fast you didn't buy the books.

They have an option to export your data but it has never worked for me.

They list "items often purchased with this item" when clearly they wouldn't be.

They replace items with different items and keep the same reviews.

[thrwn_frthr_awy]

Here are some of the ones I've noticed:

"Best seller" is not a best seller for what you searched for; it could be a best seller for a specific query for that model.

"Editorial recommendations" are just ads

"Videos about this product" are just ads

The star rating (4.2 out of 5) is not an actual average of ratings. Amazon creates that number.

Touting "Free Shipping w/ Prime" when most Prime products have free shipping already.

[98codes]

They don't care about counterfeiting and they don't care about product swapping, to give you two.

[jayrot]

Claiming "they don't care about..." is specious. It would be more accurate to say "they haven't been able to stop..."

[choward]

So you haven't heard of them commingling inventory? There is no way to stop counterfeiting with that so no, they aren't trying at all.