[roelschroeven]

Pet peeve of mine, but Canva doesn't hike its prices by 300%; it hikes them by 200%.

I'm not a native English speaker, but I assume "to hike prices by x" means the new price = the old price + x, right? If not, ignore my comment.

In the example used in the article (team of 3 users), the old price = 12 * $39.99 = $479.88, and the new price is $1458. Let's see what a price hike of 300% looks like: 300% of the old price = 300% * $479.88 = $1439.64. New price = old price + that 300% = $479.88 + $1439.64 = $1919.52 which is nowhere close to the actual new price of $1458. When I do the same calculation with 200% instead of 300%, the answer is pretty close.

What they're _trying to say_ is that the new price is 300% of the old price, but what they're _actually saying_ is that the price is increased by 300%. That's _not_ the same thing. You could say that the price is increased by 200%, or that the new prices is 300% of the old one (or that it is 3 times the old one). You have to pick one of those, not mix them.

[jhanschoo]

Yes, it is ambiguous and I frequently encounter such ambiguous language in Apple's marketing copy, as a prominent example. Here I would rather they made a substitution of preposition from "by", to "to".

[EasyMark]

Haha I’ve had this argument with friends, you have to start them out with 2x is “100% more” the way percentages are used far and wide, and then they get it.

[euroderf]

Have they not previously learned the verb "to triple" ?

[TeaBrain]

Yes, this is correct. I disagree with the other guy who said that it was ambiguous. Claiming the prices were hiked by 300% is simply wrong.

[ac29]

Its ambiguous because its so often done incorrectly that you cant reliably determine what the speaker meant.

[packetlost]

> I'm not a native English speaker

Yeah, but based on this post alone I can tell you have better English reading comprehension than the average US adult lol