Beware online subscription traps
It seems like a good idea at the time – until you try to cancel the subscription.
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I remember reading an offer from a wine company in an airline magazine, to sign up to an initial 15-to-a-dozen bottles of wines.
It looked like a good deal, and I thought if the whole thing was a rort then I’d just unsubscribe from the company emails.
How naïve was I! Two months later, when I next reviewed my credit card account, I noticed regular withdrawals for hundreds of dollars.
Yes, it was the wine company automatically billing and withdrawing money. The unwanted wine turned up and before I knew it, I had cases of the stuff.
Clearly, I hadn’t read the fine print, and it was a devil of a thing to get the company to stop sending the wine and stop billing me for it.
Similar “deals” often turn up online – examples of the “dark patterns” (also known as “deceptive designs”) that trick users into parting with more money than they intend.
Dark patterns are design features that are built into a website or app to influence us and cause harm.
Kate Bower, consumer data advocate at CHOICE, says subscription traps are one of the most common dark patterns.
“Subscription traps are when an online retailer or service provider treats a single purchase or free trial as consent for an ongoing paid subscription,” she says.
“Often the interface uses several deceptive design patterns to trick people into signing up for a subscription unknowingly – for example, pre-ticked checkboxes, trick questions, and redirection.”
Damaging consumer trust
Earlier this year, the Consumer Policy Research Centre (CPRC) researched dark patterns and how they affected consumers.
In a survey of 2,000 Australians, CPRC found that 76% had experienced difficulty in cancelling an online subscription, including unsubscribing before a free trial period ended. Some 44% of people found the practice annoying and 39% found it deceptive.
Chandni Gupta, digital policy director at CPRC, says subscription traps also erode customer trust in businesses, with 41% of respondents saying they make them want to stop using an app or website, and 39% feeling that they can’t trust the business.
"What we called in the report ‘Hotel California’ [or forced continuity] is just one of the dark patterns that we see used,” says Gupta, in a reference to the Eagles’ song about a place where you can “check out but never leave”.
"Often they are layered on top of other dark patterns to ensure that it is as difficult as possible for you to be able to unsubscribe and leave something that you no longer need or want.
“It’s one of these things that are quite prevalent, so quite likely many businesses are doing this intentionally.”
Apparently, the practice is legal under current Australian legislation.
One of the largest online companies in the world, Amazon, has been caught out using them on its subscription services, Amazon Prime.
In 2021 the Norwegian Consumer Council (NCC) filed a legal complaint against Amazon after they found it took users only a few clicks to subscribe to Prime – but at least seven clicks to unsubscribe from the service. Sixteen European consumer organisations and one in the United States joined in the complaint.
NCC chose to take the case against Amazon to test the limits of the law on dark patterns, and because of the widespread consumer harm they cause.
In the end, the European Commission negotiated a settlement with Amazon where they would make it significantly easier for customers in the European Union to unsubscribe from their Prime accounts.
Professor Jeannie Paterson at the University of Melbourne law centre told CHOICE the Australian Consumer Law (ACL) hasn’t kept up in this space, and that although many of these dark patterns around subscription traps are potentially misleading and unfair, they're probably not illegal.
“An unfair trading prohibition would make it easier to respond to online design choices that make it hard for people to exit subscriptions or other services,” she says.
CHOICE’s Kate Bower agrees that the law in Australia is lagging compared with other countries.
"A ban on unfair trading practices would bring the ACL up to speed with the range of harmful practices we're seeing across the digital economy,” says Bower. “It would address practices such as subscription traps and false consumer reviews, which are oppressive, exploitative or contrary to consumer expectations of fairness in the market.”
There are bans on unfair trading practices in similar markets and countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Singapore.
