New Delhi: The Department of Consumer Affairs has alerted customers on Drip pricing that can manipulate the latter with hidden charges upon final payment.
Department of Consumer Affairs tweeted, "Alert: Drip pricing can surprise you with hidden charges. If you come across such situations, reach out to NCH 1915 for assistance or WhatsApp 8800001915"
In Drip pricing, customers are often lured into a product or item via a pricing technique, showing only part-pricing of the product in advertisement while the real amount is revealed only during the full and final billing.
It may be recalled that in September last year, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution had sought public comments on Draft Guidelines for Prevention and Regulation of Dark Patterns.
Under the Under the Guidelines, following 10 Dark patterns were specified:
1. False Urgency -- Falsely stating or implying the sense of urgency or scarcity so as to mislead a user into making an immediate purchase or take an immediate action, which may lead to a purchase
2. Basket sneaking -- Inclusion of additional items such as products, services, payments to charity/donation at the time of checkout from a platform, without the consent of the user, such that the total amount payable by the user is more than the amount payable for the product(s) and/or service(s) chosen by the user
3. Confirm shaming -- Using a phrase, video, audio or any other means to create a sense of fear or shame or ridicule or guilt in the mind of the user, so as to nudge the user to act in a certain way that results in the user purchasing a product or service from the platform or continuing a subscription of a service.
4. Forced action -- Forcing a user into taking an action that would require the user to buy any additional good(s) or subscribe or sign up for an unrelated service, in order to buy or subscribe to the product/service originally intended by the user
5. Subscription trap -- The process of making cancellation of a paid subscription impossible or a complex and lengthy process including similar other practices
6. Interface interference -- A design element that manipulates the user interface in ways that (a) highlights certain specific information; and (b) obscures other relevant information relative to the other information; to misdirect a user from taking an action desired by her.
7. Bait and switch -- The practice of advertising a particular outcome based on the user’s action but deceptively serving an alternate outcome.
8. Drip pricing -- A practice whereby-elements of prices are not revealed upfront or are revealed surreptitiously within the user experience; and/or other such practices
9. Disguised advertisement -- A practice of posing, masking advertisements as other types of content such as user generated content or new articles or false advertisements.
10. Nagging -- A dark pattern due to which users face an overload of requests, information, options, or interruptions; unrelated to the intended purchase of goods or services, which disrupts the intended transaction.
