cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/35308060
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.
If they’re overcharging you then don’t buy. If they set a price and nobody buys it then they’ll lower it.
No one’s forcing you to subscribe to the Wapo.
Why would they lower it? That might hurt short-term profits, which might scare shareholders, which might mean the CEO gets a lower bonus, or even gets replaced. Nah, they'll just maximise profit from their remaining customers by adding in advertising, harvesting data, or even raising the price.
Which is irrelevant to the main point that, no, paying $7 for something worth 50 cents is not good. I save a LOT of money by seeing scummy marketing tricks for the tricks they are.
If no one’s buying it then they’re not maximizing profit. Profit is maximized at the market-clearing price.
And no, it’s not “worth 50 cents.” That’s a temporary price for the first year. The price goes up after that. At 50 cents per week they’re almost certainly losing money. The goal is to lose money the first year and make money the next year when the price goes up. It could backfire and people just cancel after the first year. But that’s still more money than not getting the 50 cents per week.
People will buy it alright.
Rich people won’t care and its more profitable to sell to one rich person for 200x the price then to 100 poor people at 1x the price.