[ggreer]

I'm not sure why you posted this. Are the pageviews from the controversy really enough to offset a long-term loss of reputation? Maybe you don't understand the line you crossed.

You advertised video courses taught by talented entrepreneurs. Later, you launched what is effectively a forum. These two things are hardly similar, but you charged users for the latter when they signed up to pay for the former.

Couch it in as many euphemisms as you want, but you tricked people for your own gain. I don't want someone to do that to me, and I won't do such a thing to someone else. Unfortunately, you didn't treat others as you like to be treated. I think that's unethical.

In the future, please treat your customers with more honesty and respect.

[rrhoover]

Adii isn't forcing anyone to pay and as he stated in his essay, he personally reached out to customers to inform them the video content was ready YET. Adii isn't doing a bait-and-switch without intention of delivering a quality product. He left his successful startup, WooThemes, to build a platform to help entrepreneurs. Before criticizing his approach coming from the outside (with less context), I'd prefer to hear directly from his customers.

[rayiner]

He's doing exactly a bit and switch, and he's proud of it judging by his writing.

Let's consider a meat space analogy. Say I'm establishing a maid service. I don't have any maids or cleaning equipment, but I want to gauge interest in the neighborhood by signing people up for appointments and take their billing info. I don't tell them that this is what I'm doing. If I "reach out" to my customers and then say "J/K, I don't have an actual business yet, but I will soon!" that doesn't make it all okay. If I took any money on top of that, that's fraud. Indeed, even if I didn't take any money, taking billing info for a product that doesn't exist without telling customers as much is sketchy as fuck at best.

[USNetizen]

I believe they call that "deception", the definition of which is telling people something exists which does not in order to get their buy-in. Had he taken so much as a single dollar in revenue from someone, it will be fraud. It ruins the reputations of legit startups everywhere.

[j_s]

  > Adii isn't forcing anyone to pay

Everyone who did not opt-out was billed (eg. if anyone missed, misread, or otherwised ignored the email explaining the pivot).

I'm more discouraged this guy was given a platform to promote this approach at MicroConf Europe. How sad to 'hear directly from his customer' that he only discovered how he was being scammed when he attended the presentation! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6515095

[BrechtVds]

As I understand it customers were informed about the change in plans before they had to hand over their money, so it's definitely not as bad as you put it.

The roadmap was actually changed because of those customers, so presumably the end result should align better with what they really were looking for.

I would've done an opt-in though.

[thibaut_barrere]

(disclaimer: I'm a initial customer who asked for a refund!).

Opt-in would have been the minimum to my taste. Here is how I lived the experiment from here:

- the billing info was captured by making me believe the content was completely available (it's actually still advertised here http://publicbeta.co/library/)

- I wrote to Adii who asked back for my trust etc, I said: ok let's wait until this guy is able to bootstrap his stuff, let's give him a chance

- later, I received a mail which I didn't fully read ("Announcing our new launch", I just assumed that everything was going on as planned - I didn't receive "We change everything, are you ok with that?" as the subject or similar)

- then I got charged for something different from what my billing info was captured for

EDIT: I then realized what was happening by actually attending the MicroConf Europe where Adii made a presentation.

- I tried to cancel but could not find a link to cancel from inside the app

- I asked for a refund + cancellation by email and got it

Note that I'm in no way angry (personally) against Adii!

I'm just analyzing this from a customer perspective.

The problem is that trust is basically broken at step one, and then later one can only wonder if the long email then the charge without clear notice then the lack of link to cancel etc aren't just other tactics to keep the game going on.

I wouldn't recommend using these techniques to friends!

I'm pretty sure this is illegal and risky to do (at least in some countries) and could actually break the TOS of Recurly or payment gateways.

Again, nothing personal, I'm just sharing my experience in case someone wants to mimic the technique here.

[BrechtVds]

That does sound like a scammy experience.

Personally I wouldn't mind about leaving my CC details if I was told the entire truth afterwards and then had the opportunity to opt-in again. Any reason why you didn't take the "second opt-in" approach, Adii?

[Robin_Message]

Getting the customer to say "Yes" repeatedly [1], and relying on their own internal consistency to make them less likely to change their mind [2], is a well known sales technique.

So this would still be a dark pattern even with an opt-in, since people will mentally start rationalising ("It's a good service for smart entrepreneurs like me to learn from each other") instead of assessing it from scratch ("It's an online startup community I pay to belong to. Is that worth $30 a month? Hacker News is free...").

It's a shame, because if the thing people had paid for had been delivered this would have probably been okay, but as it is, it seems pretty unethical.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot-in-the-door_technique [2] Can't find a good reference, but basically avoiding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance