It’s pretty easy to spot dark patterns when you look out for them, but I found a pretty obvious example of this.
Stoofie is a brand that sells water fountains for your pet (I don’t know what the problem with a water bowl is, but I digress). WayBack Machine
Plastered at the top of their website is “33% OFF Ends Today- Free Shipping” with no way to dismiss it. There is a scrolling text under the main image “FAST AND FREE SHIPPING 60-DAY FREE RETURNS”
If you scroll down, you’re immediately introduced with a product with the option to buy two preselected. The rest of this section explains itself:
Other things are sprinkled in the main page, but it really is the prime example of dark patterns. I am personally sick of finding them, but would love to see more examples of what others have found. Please, share your favorite examples of dark patterns. Don’t forget to archive them first so they can never be lived down.
Amazon, no Prime, when there are several shipping options. It routinely selects by default the one that costs money, even if the free option (if it exists) is only a single day later.
Why no, I would not like to pay $9 to get it by Wednesday, because Thursday is fine and it saves me $9. Now fucking stop trying to trick me into it.
Why do people buy stuff from a creepy company like that? Couldn’t you just stop by at the local whatever shop on your way home? If you live in the middle of nowhere, that may not be an option, but surely there are lots of other online shops to choose from.
Because its the biggest and most visible one that everyone uses. And because so many Amazon shoppers are Prime Members anyway, as the cost of not being a Prime Member makes it functionally a requirement.
How much would I pay not to spend an extra 30-60min fighting traffic and waiting in long lines? In that sense, Prime is a steal.
The presumption is that the brick and mortar store is not bad. Yes, they are bad too. Maybe just as bad, maybe not as bad, but they are no saints.
Options are limited for shopping, so we don’t have much choice. The reason I buy from Amazon is that essentially I didn’t want to shop at any local store any longer, they have bad polices AND they treat me like crap - not a valued customer.
Along came Amazon and I started buying from them. Then there was a big boo-hoo that ecommerce was killing their brick and mortar store sales. No sir, you were killing the sales but now I have somewhere else to go.
Amazon is horrible for many reasons, but pricing and customer service is not one of them. There’s a silver lining to that storm cloud.
For all its very real shittiness, you will likely find that Amazon ships faster, has lower prices, has a better selection, and much easier returns than other online shops. This almost entirely the result of their massive monopolistic power. I don’t begrudge people that are squeezed for time and money from trying to save either, but Amazon needs to be broken up.
For a lot of the cheap stuff on Amazon, the price is literally double at a local brick and mortar retailer. Phone chargers, kitchen utensils, towels, cleaning products are high-margin examples that come to mind. Plus, of course, your time and gas money to grab it. Some people also struggle with impulse purchases they may grab while shopping in store. Its easy to see why people continue to throw money at creepy Bezos and just wait for shit to appear on their porch.
The difference in selection is very real. If you need to buy one of those once in a lifetime things, you’ll probably find those in Amazon. The local stores have no incentive to keep those in stock, because they will probably only sell less than ten of those things within the next 20 years.
However, when it comes to phone chargers, towels, garbage bags or soap, my local store is perfectly fine by me. I don’t even know how much cheaper those things would be on Amazon, but I prefer to keep the local stores around. If I happen to need a very specific kind of charger with some special features, I’ll just see if there’s an online store for that sort of stuff. Usually there is and it’s also within a 1000 km radius of where I live. Sure, shipping usually takes a few days, but I’m in no hurry.