Don’t Fall for the Tricky Tricks of Online Shopping
While brick-and-mortar retail stores have their perks, it’s hard to resist the convenience of online shopping, especially when it comes to comparing prices.
The idea behind doing this, of course, is to save money, but in order to get what you want at the best price, you also have to make sure you don’t fall prey to the sneaky tactics that online stores use to trick you into spending money. more money than you planned. Here are a few that you may see the next time you’re looking for deals.
Tricks that online stores use to get consumers to spend more
If you’ve ever looked at your credit card bill or receipt and noticed that a seller is charging you more than you expected, there’s a good chance their website used a tactic called “dark patterns” to either cut additional costs, or increase costs. the process is confusing (intentionally).
Recently, researchers from the Merchant Machine price comparison website visited 72 online stores and recorded the dark patterns they observed. Out of the 12 they identified, here are a few of the meanest:
- Adding additional items to the cart . They hope you don’t notice and remove the items.
- Hiding the price of one item . When you search for a product, results are prioritized for “value” packages containing multiple products. The retailer only has the option to buy one of the items, but it’s hard to find.
- Hidden payments. While you probably expect to pay taxes and shipping, other fees may be added by retailers, sometimes simply referred to as “fees”. Or they may make express shipping the default, requiring you to choose regular shipping.
In case you’re wondering, the report says that Amazon was the worst offender when it comes to dark patterns, using 11 out of 12 identified by Merchant Machine researchers. To read the full list of 12 and learn more about the findings, you can read the report here .