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Comment by jasonlotito | Hacker News Reader

Thank you for saying what I had came here to say. Just for context, here is a part of the check out page on JustFab:

This was provided by a Series A investor in JustFab† and was used to help suggest that it's "pretty clear" that you are joining a membership for $39.95 a month.

Compare this to a slightly different crop, where we only include the portion of the page that contains the "Order Summary", the thing you are ordering. Nothing suggests or hints at a $39.95 membership.

I worked for 10 years in the credit card processing industry handling adult sites. Even we never did anything this bad.

I mean, even the investor flat out admits that it's not called out in any way:

"in the same font size as everything else on the page"

Anyways, really just wanted to thank you for posting what you did.

† https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6455575

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I wasn't able to tell right away from the screenshot, even while knowing ahead of time. I must tip my hat to say that this is a brilliantly executed dark pattern. It is a myopic move on their part because even though they will make some money now, these types of tricks never last in the long run. Plus no one likes to be tricked so these people won't simply roll over, they will be out for the trickster's head.

With some luck this will result in regulation with some serious teeth in it in the case of transgressions.

I'm not the first to jump up for more regulation, and for something like this I'll be the first to admit that it's my responsibility to read the fine print, but this is very deceptive. A line needs to be drawn somewhere and customers need to be protected once it is crossed.

I will add that to protect yourself from these and other payment related issues online, have a special low balance card or get one-time card numbers. I know most savvy members on HN already do this but just mentioning it in case.

Even if you default to opt-in you can make it clear what's going on.

I just tossed this crappy example together: http://imgur.com/fxw9xJJ but that one shows it's pretty clear that you are signing up for something optional in order to Save Money Now. There must be some kind of quid pro quo so people aren't being totally suckered.

That's just one thing; there are a lot more things I think are unethical. I wasn't really convinced this site was a scam until the investor used that screenshot to prove it wasn't.

Wait, "your are activating your VIP Membership"?

That's sloppy. You'd think with $40 a month for shoes (wat) they'd be able to hire a proof reader.

Good eye! And if they would actually send out shoes every month to all their subscribers I don't think there would be a problem. Instead you get credits that can only be spent with them and that can't be redeemed for cash. The vast majority of those will in the long term simply never be redeemed at all.

Just like Audible. Do you get a max number of credits, resulting in paying a monthly fee for no new value, like with Audible?

OT: I spent a good minute looking through my comment for that mistake. >_<

The investor in question is the founder of eHow and Betfair.

Wow. The first time I looked at the image of that page (and mind you I actually spent about 20-30 seconds on it), I definitely thought it was just $39.95 for that pair of shoes. Did not realize at all that it was for a membership. And I like to think that my attention to detail is pretty strong... That's disturbing!

It's pretty funny that they scammed their investors too.

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