Amazon fined in Poland for dark pattern design tricks | TechCrunch
techcrunch.com
cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/10891549
Amazon fined in Poland for dark pattern design tricks | TechCrunch
cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/10891549
Amazon fined in Poland for dark pattern design tricks | TechCrunch
The important stuff:
So basically, because the moment of purchase is not the conclusion of a sales contract amazon reserves the right to just cancel your order, the writing that states this is purposefully hidden, the countdown timers are meaningless, the purchased product may not even be in stock, they don't ship products when they say they do, and the products sometimes don't arrive when they say they will. Who would have guessed.
I find they don’t charge until the picker picks the product. It does not get charged at time of order. I’ve not once seen that happen in the US at least. Must run afoul of a Polish or EU law?
It's different in Poland, because we don't normally use credit or debit cards for online purchases — we use Blik, which is a proprietary inter-bank payment system based on one-time tokens which are only valid for 2 minutes. You don't give your card information to Amazon or wherever you make a purchase (also compatible with regular contactless card terminals in physical locations) to charge you themselves however much they feel like, but rather provide a one-time code, confirm the transaction on your phone and you're charged immediately.
EDIT: oh and also it supports contactless payments via NFC on rooted phones so we got a workaround to Google messing with Gpay 8)
Well that definitely explains the difference. Thanks!
$8million isn't even a rounding error to them....
Exactly. This kind of thing is just a tax they have to pay, unless they can convince a court otherwise. Unlike normal tax.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
It also found the information was sometimes “difficult” for consumers to access, noting for example Amazon could use a grey font on a white background in text displayed at the very bottom of a page — a classic example of so-called ‘dark pattern design‘.
“Thus, Amazon misleads consumers as to the moment of conclusion of the sales contract,” the authority wrote [in Polish; this is a machine translation].
“For many people, this can also have negative consequences: The consumer does not receive the product, so he cannot use it, he loses the opportunity to buy at an attractive price that may no longer apply, and his money is frozen until he returns it.”
Its enforcement also calls out Amazon for using deceptive design to encourage shoppers to click buy by presenting misleading information about product availability and delivery windows — such as by listing how many items were in stock to be purchased and providing a countdown clock to order an item in order to get it on a particular delivery date.
Its investigation found Amazon does not always meet these deadlines for orders, nor ship products immediately as they may be out of stock despite claims to the contrary shown to consumers.
Commenting in a statement, the UOKiK’s president, Tomasz Chróstny, said: “Information about product availability and its fast shipping is very valuable for consumers and for many people it may be the main reason why they make a purchase decision.
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