UX Dark Design Pattern — Forced Continuity

What is forced continuity? Force continuity is when your free trial with a service comes to an end and your credit card silently starts getting charged without any warning. Let’s take a look at an example of it being used.

Audible.com

When signing up, for Audible you are asked to provide your credit card information. Not a big problem as it’s a “free trial”. Two months later you look at your credit card statement and see that Audible has deducted a fee each month from your credit card. How come? You didn’t get any notification beforehand. This pattern occurs when your free trial with a service ends, and you quietly get charged for the service without warning

Making people share their credit card details in exchange for free trials is not malpractice. Companies do it because they are hopeful that a user will convert as a customer as a result of the value they will experience during the trial period.

Companies that have good ethical guidelines in place will send the user emails, text messages, or notifications to remind the users before the trial ends so that they have their permission to start charging the credit cards. Unfortunately, a lot of those companies only look at their short term goals. As designers, and the voice of the customer in the product design process it’s our responsibility to pushback and educate stakeholders on why using forced continuity will hurt the company in the long term. Users remember negative experiences and they tell others about them. Instead of trying to siphon off the money from users let’s focus on selling the value of our service.