This is a short episode on the dark pattern of not allowing a customer to leave a service without having to go through a lot of unnecessary effort. I had not intended to leave but was just checking the monthly cost of my digital subscription–and noticed that there was NO way to stop the monthly billing of my credit card.

This made me so angry I immediately decided to cancel the subscription, even though the content was good. It’s the principle of the thing. As a customer freely engages with a business, so should they be able to leave. Unless there’s a commitment in a contract, which did not apply in this case. It took a 15 minute online chat  to accomplish what should take one minute and a couple clicks.

The Dark Patterns website referred to in this episode is at
https://darkpatterns.org

Thanks to Harry Brignull and Alexander Darlington for their excellent work.

Here’s the excellent Sunday Times article on the French philosopher Levy’s latest book. I never disliked the Times for its content, only for trying to hold me captive.

And Wired magazine has a timely article on some other dark patterns.

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