this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2026
96 points (86.4% liked)

Technology

87627 readers
3650 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/50434194

Proton VPN's pricing page exposed an ab-test identifier linked to two VPN Plus prices: €2.99/month (70% off) and €3.49/month (65% off). Repeated testing produced B → A → B → A → B, with the variant matching the rendered price each time. €12 difference over 24 months.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 5 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

Can someone articulate what is wrong with this? It intrinsically feels wrong to me, but when I think about it I dont really have any good reasoning why this would be bad.

We expect a standard price and it feels bad when we find out someone else got it cheaper.

But the consumer should be operating the same, they review the deal and if its a price they are willing to pay they go through with it.

[–] ruby@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 weeks ago

the standard price expectation is how it tricks the customer, if you open a webpage and go pay for something then you expect that the price you're paying from the same vendor is set the same for everyone (or at least constant for your geographic location to accomodate for purchasing power). pretty much no customer would expect opening the page in another session to offer a better price, which is why they did it this way.

if people knew there's a better price available, they'd not take the worse deal. and people in general don't like having tricks pulled on them, especially if they're meant to gauge how much they can get away with charging you.

load more comments (4 replies)