[tylerrobinson]

Wow! A lot of fast replies here without much substance.

"A dark pattern is "a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things, such as buying overpriced insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills"."[0]

By this definition, no, it's not a dark pattern. It may be a pricing strategy that you don't like, but not a dark pattern. It's an invitation to start a full discussion with the vendor about what you're trying to achieve.

Usually, you'll see "Contact Us" on the pricing page for enterprise services. If you're an enterprise buyer, you usually have lots of people on your team who want different things. You might have special requirements for your industry. You probably need to sign a contract for special provisions or services.

Or maybe the vendor is in a new market and they're trying to learn about their customers with an MVP. How many times have you seen the recommendation here on HN to set up a landing page and add a button that says "Email me if you're interested"? Same idea.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pattern

[neltnerb]

I almost only see this for very expensive non-commodity products. I think in these industries the vendors at least believe that they are more likely to make a sale if they do it person-to-person over the phone. I don't know if they're right or not, when I see that my first step is to look for other vendors.

But I think that they simply believe that they are more likely to make a sale if they screen for only people interested enough to submit a request for a quote. That's not really a dark pattern, yeah. It's not a trick, they just don't want to sell stuff that way.

Vici-Valco is the most confusing one to me for this, but I believe for them it's to create a barrier to keep small time orders out. Basically, I don't think that they make much money on me ordering ten compression fittings so if they make it too easy to find prices and order stuff without human intervention they'd spend proportionally more time on small clients? It's odd, I mean, they do have a catalog and the catalog has prices. It's just super hard to order online or find pricing otherwise.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

There's a vendor I deal with that does something like this. They have an online catalog and prices are listed, but to buy something, I have to email them and then they respond with a link to their fulfillment partner.

At first I thought it was really dumb, because they're in a technology sector and deal with engineers all the time. Why not just take me to a shopping cart? But then I got an email that said something like "HeyLaughingBoy, I noticed you bought 5 units of $SENSOR in July and another 10 units in August. Would you like to discuss volume prices going forward? We can scale the price to your estimated annual volume..."

I thought it was a great idea to get a dialog going with someone who looks small time (me) but could become a major customer. This way, they build a relationship with me before I just start looking for someone cheaper as my sales grow. If they just listed prices at preset volume levels, that would never happen.

[hctaw]

It's more about charging prices based on what customers are willing to pay rather than a fixed price. In B2B sales you can swing much higher prices from bigger clients for the same thing, but that's harder if they know what you charge smaller businesses.

[_wldu]

People talk. I'm in a specific industry and on a lot of industry specific mailing lists. When companies charge some of us extra, everyone quickly learns about it and that ends up making the vendor look bad and makes everyone in the industry seek alternatives.

[1123581321]

It's not that companies are charging arbitrarily different amounts. They package features and levels of service or support differently for bespoke contracts, and that makes some of them cost more.

Any email list that failed to observe this would not be useful other than for the small companies looking for the feature/price floor.

[neltnerb]

Within reason, I personally am not offended by small variations based on legitimate negotiating for larger volumes (or even smaller volumes). I feel like most places will give you at least a bit of a discount if you offer something in return like enough volume to make it less hassle to sell to you.

Or if you just ask... I've definitely gotten 5-10% "discounts" multiple times just by asking if they can give me one. I figure this is the "wasn't price sensitive enough to ask" surcharge.

But if the prices were super random feeling yeah, for sure. I haven't personally run into more than a ~5-10% variation myself usually.

I think the only time I hear about it is when I get a price from a vendor, turn them down, and then have them come back with an offer for the same thing at 25% off. At that point they're kind of highlighting that their pricing is 25% higher than it needs to be for them to make a healthy profit so while I might take them up on it (once) I'm extremely likely to find a new vendor.

I've definitely done that before with a company that had dramatically overpriced high speed cameras. We kept ordering from them because we didn't want to worry about changing the brand. I doubt we'll order from them again.

[ozim]

I hate it because it is used as a tool to find out "how much we can make that sucker pay" which is adversarial approach instead of partnership. So in the end it is device to sell me overpriced service.

There are pricing pages that have price x, price y and "enterprise contact us". So maybe vendor that has only "contact us" is selling only to F500 and I am not a customer for them.

[skmurphy]

If a product is used in very complex environments and has a rich set of options then a conversation is needed to be able to offer a quote. If no price is quoted on the website it's probably safe to assume minimum pricing is above $10,000. I don't think this is a dark pattern.

[horsawlarway]

I mostly agree with you, but I think there are forms of this that I would definitely consider dark patterns -

The one that immediately jumps to mind is "Add this item to your cart to see the price".

There's no good intention there, just manipulation. The statistics show a user is more likely to buy an item after adding it to their cart, and this forces them to do that before revealing pertinent information to the user.

---

Basically - If it's not a solution that can be customized to the user/customer, I find hiding the price is almost always a dark pattern.

If it is a solution that can be customized, it may or may not be a dark pattern, but I still tend to avoid companies that do this - it often means they want additional information from me, or that they're hoping additional sales and marketing information will make me less price sensitive before showing me the final price.

[humbledrone]

While the "add to cart to see price" pattern may be dark, it's worth noting that the retail seller that makes you do this is probably not the party who's responsible for the pattern. It turns out that some manufacturers make the retailer agree to not advertise a price lower than MSRP. But, though they cannot /advertise/ a price below MSRP, they can /sell/ at a price below MSRP. I guess it's generally accepted that showing you a different price after you've added the item to your cart doesn't technically count as "advertising" the lower price.

https://www.consumerreports.org/online-shopping/why-do-i-hav...

[rdtwo]

I know a successful business owner who uses this feature to then pay a tracking service to grab your email then spam progressive cart reminder and discounts in hopes of converting a sale. He says it’s very effective

[toomuchtodo]

Showing a price after an item is in the cart can be a contract hack around pricing contracts with manufacturers or distributors, where you’re not able to directly advertise your “best” price.

[irscott]

Most of the time this is referred to as a MAP agreement and companies can be real aggressive in enforcing them.

[ajhurliman]

I agree with this answer. While I don't like the approach, I don't think it's a dark pattern. I applaud your effort to distinguish them, though; diluting words by overloading them is a disservice to language.

[ignoramous]

It all comes down to whether it's a product-led or sales-led company.

Product-led companies usually have plans for all usage sizes including custom plans for large enterprises.

Sales-led almost always don't want to be in business with the long-tail of the market. That sales call is their way of effectively filtering those customers out.

see also: https://blog.close.com/product-led-sales-led-marketing-led/

[foolmeonce]

Maybe it is really many possible product combinations presented as a comprehensive product or maybe they don't even have a product..

I'm sorry but what is a dark pattern if that doesn't qualify?

[flax]

By that definition it _is_ a dark pattern. The thing people are being tricked into doing is divulging contact info/interest even if they're not going to buy at the eventually revealed price.

[ironmagma]

Also, the act of filling out a form may cause them to give undue weight to the product since there has been an “investment” made after submitting. So that is another way the pattern tricks you.