[caydenm]

Free tier and free trial abuse is a huge problem, but also a huge opportunity.

We have seen customers where free tier abusers created 80k+ accounts in a day and cost millions of dollars. We have also seen businesses, like Oddsjam add significant revenue by prompting abusers to pay.

The phycology of abuse is also quite interesting, where even what appears to be serious abusers (think fake credit cards, new email accounts etc.) will refuse a discount and pay full price if they feel they 'got caught'

[akerl_]

I’d love to hear more about the idea that somebody making a fraudulent signup with a stolen credit card is potentially going to pay full price if they “get caught”

[caydenm]

There are obviously people who are doing free trial abuse for commercial gain eg. Signing up 1k accounts to get test credit cards or to resell accounts. They are not going to convert (although sometimes you can successfully convert them into affiliates)

We have seen individuals just trying to get free accounts week after week, who when nudged once pay immediately thousands of dollars even after using fake, stolen or empty cards.

These individuals think they are being cheeky and when they are 'caught' they revert to doing the right thing.

[Aurornis]

> We have seen individuals just trying to get free accounts week after week, who when nudged once pay immediately

This pattern is everywhere. It was foreign to me for a long time because I'm the type of person who likes to play within the rules. There are a lot of people who get a kick out of gaming the system to their advantage, even to the point of breaking the law.

Many people have zero qualms about stealing things when they imagine it's a faceless corporation on the other side. They might even rationalize it with mental gymnastics until they think they're doing the right thing. You see it most often when the topic of media piracy or sharing Netflix logins comes up.

This mindset is very common in startup communities. I've heard so many stories from founders gloating about how they abused some system or used a loophole to avoid paying for something they could clearly afford. It's like a badge of honor to some people. I know one guy who bought an EV but hasn't installed a charger because he drives it to a business down the street and uses the EV charger they installed for their employees every night. Another guy used to brag about sneaking into a cafeteria for another organization and stealing lunch every day. A while ago I talked to a guy who liked to "dine and dash" without paying his tab, even though he could easily afford it. For them, it's all about getting away with it and winning a game.

As soon as you make it obvious that someone is watching them, they cave. They don't want to be the type of person who abuses actual people. They only like to abuse what they see as faceless systems.

[WhitneyLand]

You got called out, responded, but didn’t really address the point. Looks like the original claim was overstated.

[caydenm]

I was referring to generated or disposable card numbers rather than stolen. maybe that is the confusion?

An concrete examples of converting a user using these types of cards for free trial abuse is a user who signed up 8 week in a row using different emails, names, IPs and cards. Nudging of these users was enabled and on trying to sign up for their 9th trial they immediately switched back to their original account and converted at full price.

[WhitneyLand]

I’m not in the that industry so maybe you’re not defining “stolen” as criminal activity?

I think many people would infer it to mean there’s a victim involved, someone’s personal credit card was stolen. If that’s the case it’s especially bizarre and not a customer you’d want to convert.

[TeMPOraL]

I imagine an amateur who wants the problem to go away as quickly as possible and with minimum fuss, to the point of overcompensating from anxiety.

[caydenm]

100%! This was easy and now it is frustrating to get to the thing they want, the service, and the easiest route is to pay.