[gruez]

>but it's still an attempt to prime a would-be subscriber to focus on the annual, billed monthly and play on their understanding of the word "monthly" by using it in both options.

Do you think "$500 biweekly" car ads, or "$2000/month" apartment rentals are the same?

>"Annual, billed monthly" is set in smaller italicized type right under the actual price of US$59.99/mo on the main pricing page[0].

I might be sympathetic to this reasoning if this was a $2 coffee or something, but $60/month is nothing to be sneezed at, and I'd expect buyers to read the very legible text under the price tag. Otherwise, this makes as much sense as complaining about supermarket price tags that show "$4" in huge font, and "/lb" in small font, claiming that it misled buyers into thinking an entire package of ground beef costs $4, because the $4 price tag "primed" them or whatever.

>While it mentions a fee for cancelling after 14 days, you'll find nary a mention of what that fee actually is until you track down a legal page[1] that isn't linked to any point during the payment process up until the sign-in prompt (I didn't bother creating a new account to look beyond that). At the very least, it's not present during the stage when you're still relatively uncommitted and somewhat more likely to notice any more onerous terms were they present.

Okay but if you read most complaints, it's clear that they're not even aware that such early termination fee even existed. There's approximately zero people who were aware the termination fee existed, found it too hard to figure out what it actually was, but somehow still went with the "Annual, billed monthly" option.

>Finally, there's an option for a 30-day free trial of Adobe Stock. I'd have sworn it was pre-selected a few years ago, but I may be mistaken on that. If it was, then at least that's a change for the better. Anyhow, did you notice how it's on a 30 day trial period whereas the normal plan has a 14 day cancellation window? Let those deadlines fall to the back of your mind for a week or two, and will you remember which is 14 days and which is 30? There was no reason why Adobe had to use 30 days for Stock or only 14 days for their other offerings. But it adds to the confusion, and that's the entire purpose of a dark pattern. Stock is also an "annual, billed monthly plan," but nowhere in the checkout process is it mentioned that Stock also has a large cancellation fee. That's hidden in a separate part of the Subscription Terms page.[1]

This feels like grasping at straws. If we're going to invoke "people might get two numbers confused with each other", we might as well also invoke "people can't calculate dates properly, and therefore a 14 day cancellation window is misleading because they think 14 days = 2 weeks, and set up a cancellation reminder for the same day of the week 2 weeks afterwards, not realizing that would be just over 14 days and thus outside the window".

[fc417fc802]

It isn't grasping at straws because confusing or misleading people is literally how dark patterns work.

> Do you think "$500 biweekly" car ads, or "$2000/month" apartment rentals are the same?

The rentals make it very clear what the contract period is and what the penalty for breaking early is. Those terms are also tightly regulated in most jurisdictions for exactly the reason that they are prone to abuse.

> I'd expect buyers to read the very legible text under the price tag.

Given that the text fails to provide details about the fee is this even a valid contract to begin with? On multiple levels there's clearly been no meeting of the minds.

> if you read most complaints, it's clear that they're not even aware that such early termination fee even existed.

Isn't that a strong case that it's an unfair practice?

[gruez]

>The rentals make it very clear what the contract period is and what the penalty for breaking early is.

On the billboard or in the multi-page rental agreement that they send for you to sign? How is this different from than the ToS/fine print on adobe's site?

>Given that the text fails to provide details about the fee is this even a valid contract to begin with?

It's probably buried in the fine print somewhere, which courts have generally held to be enforceable.

>Isn't that a strong case that it's an unfair practice?

No, the legal standard is "reasonable person", not whether there's enough people bamboozled by it to raise a ruckus on reddit or whatever.

[fc417fc802]

I can only speak for myself here but I have never had an interaction with a new (to me) landlord where I was later surprised to discover what the rental period or early termination penalty was. Every one of them has gone out of their way to verbally specify the length of the term in addition to requiring me to initial it on the contract.

I have had plenty of other issues with borderline dishonest landlords but mutually understanding what was being agreed to up front was never one of them. The issues generally came later when they tried to get out of or add additional things without my consent.

> It's probably buried in the fine print somewhere, which courts have generally held to be enforceable.

People elsewhere in this comment section reported that they checked and claimed that it is not found anywhere directly linked from the sales page. You generally have to specify the terms of a contract up front, before it is signed.

> No, the legal standard is "reasonable person"

It isn't conclusive, but I think it makes for a strong case. The more people who are confused by it the stronger your argument that it is confusing to a "reasonable person" becomes.

[Bluestrike2]

> I might be sympathetic to this reasoning if this was a $2 coffee or something, but $60/month is nothing to be sneezed at, and I'd expect buyers to read the very legible text under the price tag.

In some things, expectations are made to be disappointed. This is one of those.

We know that people use all sorts of cognitive shortcuts to make processing their environments easier. It doesn't matter if you're smart, dumb, foolish, or perfectly average. It's just how our brains have evolved to function, and companies have been consulting with industrial and organizational psychologists for decades to help them optimize their marketing and business strategies to maximize the chances that those shortcuts play out in a way that breaks in their favor. Before I/O psychologists, companies tried to do the same by guess and trial and error...and they stumbled upon lots of strategies that were later confirmed by psychological experiments.

Cereal boxes marketed to children have cartoon characters whose eyes are drawn looking down so as to appear as if they're making eye contact with kids walking down the cereal aisle.[0] There are all sorts of "tricks" commonly used by salespeople selling things to sophisticated buyers who are capable of recognize them for what they are. Why did pharma reps take doctors to dinner and give them cheap pens and swag? Or consider the success of psychological pricing[1] and how those strategies somehow manage to be successful despite it being commonly accepted wisdom that odd prices (i.e. $1.99 instead of $2) is a marketing gimmick. We know it's a gimmick, and yet, it still has an impact on our buying behavior.

Yes, the text is there below it, but the whole point of a dark pattern is to manipulate a large enough percentage of buyers/users in a way that generates more revenue than is lost due to any frustration or annoyance created by the same patterns. Most people skim through websites, pluck out key words, and continue on. We can bemoan people for not reading the fine print, but that's not going to change the behavior.

As for the beef metaphor, per unit pricing can absolutely be used to trip up would-be buyers into buying a bit more than they planned. Not because the foolish shoppers don't know any better, but because mixed units usually require a bit more cognitive engagement. Grocery stores absolutely recognize that and benefit from it. On the other hand, you can't really sell beef in a way other than by weight, so it's the opportunity for abuse is much more limited.

> Okay but if you read most complaints, it's clear that they're not even aware that such early termination fee even existed. There's approximately zero people who were aware the termination fee existed, found it too hard to figure out what it actually was, but somehow still went with the "Annual, billed monthly" option.

Sure, because Adobe purposely hides information about the fee. That's one of the dark pattern at play. In the absence of that information, users will insert their own expectations to create meaning. If there's a fee, we'd expect it's probably a reasonable one (even if we have countless examples in our lives of how fees can be anything but reasonable). Does half the annual cost of a subscription seem reasonable to most people? Would that be most people's first guess? Probably not. I might not have been clear about this in my original comment, but there are multiple dark patterns at work here.

> This feels like grasping at straws. If we're going to invoke "people might get two numbers confused with each other",[...]

That particular dark pattern is less about people confusing two different numbers with each other when they're directly in front of them, so much as it is about giving you two different numbers to remember two weeks after you've made your decision and gone on with your life. Literally nobody on the planet is going to keep the free trial or cancellation period as a mental priority over the course of two weeks, so it becomes little more than a random thought at the back of your mind. At best, you might jot it down or set aside the receipt until closer to the deadline. The pattern's purpose is that, if you think of the cancellation/trial periods at all, the numbers will be easily conflated. Think about the times in your life when you've asked yourself something like did I see/do/hear [insert thing] last Monday or was it Tuesday? and weren't quite confident in your answer.

Dark patterns doesn't have to trip up all subscribers or even most of them. But if it trips up a some of them, well, Adobe isn't going to complain about the opportunity. Multiple, more subtle dark patterns together can work just as effectively as one particularly vicious one. They can even be preferable, in that they won't piss off your customers nearly as much, either on their own or as a whole.

0. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2014/04/food-psychologists-...

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_pricing