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.
I am glad you are aware of going to your credit card company when you can’t resolve problems.
But… your requirement is to make one good faith effort to cancel (e: keep screenshots or timestamps of phone calls and notes), and if it does not work, you should go straight to your credit card company. It is not up to you to chase them or argue or beg.
Sure. But when you’re starting the process you think “maybe I just did it wrong”. By the end, you can see the pattern and conclude “these people are just scammers”.
You’re absolutely right about that, but I guess I’ve been through this enough times that I’ve just refined the process, like a river slowly smooths down a stone over years.