Misleading pricing:

Using the billing period as the header and showing the price for the billing period... except for monthly—which shows 1/4 the price and says "every week" in smaller, gray text.

Punishing non-subscription payments:

Adding a $6.50 (1400%) surcharge for wanting a weekly one-time payment instead of a recurring subscription.

Charging more for longer periods:

Monthly billing, once you remove the dark pattern and convert it to its actual price, is $2. There are 12 months in a year, meaning it would cost $24 to maintain that subscription for a year.

Why is the yearly subscription $29, then?


If you want to verify this for yourself, you're going to need to clear your cookies and reload an article a lot. They do A/B tests and show different subscription requied modals. This one was the worst.

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[–] 74 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I remember that I wanted to subscribe to a German newspaper that advertised 6 months for 99ct or whatever. I wanted to see if the regular pricing after the 6 months was good but I had trouble even finding it and when I finally found it, the different subscription options were so opaque that I truly didn’t understand which plan to pick. In the end I didn’t subscribe. I have no idea why some companies make their offerings so inaccessible.

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Write them a physical letter complaining about their website and mail it to them via international mail. That should get the point across nicely.

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