You're full of shit. JustFab is a shoe of the month club masquerading as a normal online shoe store. The VIP Membership Program is the essence of JustFab's business model and yet it's missing entirely from the home page of their site. It looks like any other shoe store. And yet you think it's clear that the user is being signed up for a shoe of the month membership when they originally clicked through to buy a single pair of shoes.
The entire checkout process is engineered to get people to sign up for the "VIP Membership Program" without realizing what it is. If they wanted to be up front about it, they'd explain it on the home page. They'd include it in the list of items that you're purchasing. They'd include the relevant terms (not just a link to them) on the page where you enter your credit card information. They'd put the terms higher on the page so that you're more likely to read them. They'd put the "Checkout as a regular member" link next to the "normal" checkout button and they'd make it just as big. And they'd make it a button. They don't do any of these things.
When a user goes to checkout of any online store, they're not going to read everything on every page. It's a process they're very familiar with so they're going to skim and click through quickly. I know this, you know this, and JustFab knows this. That's why the program details are listed on the first page of the checkout process and not the last. That's why they're listed on a page where the user has but one action to take. Click the big pink button and get on with the checkout process.
JustFab is not an awesome company as you claim. It is a scam and you are a horrible investor for investing in them.
1.) The item to purchase, along with the price of the item. 2.) A bright magenta "Continue Checkout" button. 3.) An ad for an upsell on the right hand side which I'm generally not interested in. (on the right side, light grey text, etc)
Only after carefully scanning the page do I notice the following:
3.) This isn't an ad, it's actually something important for me to read. 4.) There is a tiny magenta link on the right hand side with explanation text that says to click it if I don't want to save 50%. 5.) Way down at the bottom of the page is text.
So I went ahead and did try it out myself. I borrowed a friend's laptop (that doesn't have a developer-level screen resolution). The screen resolution was 1333 x 768 and FF is maximized there. Here is what it looked like http://imgur.com/9rHhhLV
What's missing from that page, is all of the important information about the VIP program. What is present is the price of the item, the quantity and a magenta "Continue Checkout" button.
I'm definitely calling "Dark Pattern" on this one. Hiding important text off the screen, coloring the important text a light grey, even when the text is visible it is far down the right side in a small font.
Indeed. This website could be used as an example on http://darkpatterns.org/
UPDATE: I have emailed Dark Patterns, I hope they feature it on their site.
The company is not providing a better product (shoes) or a better customer experience & support. They are not making the world a better place. Their business model is to make most of human weaknesses. To me, that is not morally right.
First off, what is the "happy path" on this checkout page? Right, totals + shipping costs + grand totals + checkout button. What else is hiding in this element? "Promo Code: 50% off your FIRST item", emphasis mine. What this is telling the consumer, is NOT that you are signing up to the VIP program and getting a discount because of it, it's saying "hey, since you're new, we are giving you a discount".
Would a consumer walk away from the happy path with the assumption that they had signed up to a subscription in exchange for the 50% off for their first item? No.
Yes Mr. VC, the subscription info is here on the page, but the location is not an anchor. The way the page is designed is to funnel the users attention down to the continue checkout button. The product designers knew this. At least GoDaddy puts their useless up-sells in the middle of the page, but they clearly give users an ability to opt out. They don't try to fool users by hiding them on parts of the page where they know they won't look.
Wow, I just said a startup is worse than GoDaddy. Getting frosty in hell no?
This is the key point. If I know, you know, and JustFab know, then JustFab is without doubt acting in deceitful behavior. The act of deliberately portraying a subscription as an sale, usually comes down to the FTC (and sometimes State law) under the heading of False advertising.
Going to justfab website, nowhere on the front page or in the catalog does the word "subscription" become uttered. Not even in the linked checkout images is it mentioned. Justfab could argue that "everyone knows" that a VIP membership is the same as subscription, but it would be up to them to argue and prove that.
The front page especially could also be targeted, as it states clearly that 2 pairs goes for 39.95, and uses the word "buy" to describe it rather than subscribe.
"I have a subscription to Wired magazine."
"I have a VIP membership to JustFab."
One the meaning is obvious, the other is meaningless without context.
When you sign up for a site, and create an account, you can be considered a member. I am a member of Hacker News. The VIP is just a potentially meaningless quantifier, some sites like to say "our members our very important people to us."
This is the same mindset that led to Groupon being funded so heavily. Both seem to be classic examples of the "bigger fool" investment model. We all know it's not a sustainable or ethical business, but investors dive in knowing that with the kind of revenue numbers this sort of thing can exhibit for a short time they'll be able to unload their shares to less savvy investors in a year or two, before the reality of this business sets in (or before the law steps in and makes them act right...like a thousand other retailers that make a modest profit and provide good service and fair dealings).
Investors that fund stuff like this should be shunned by entrepreneurs (hard to do with Groupon's investors, as a lot of smart money went into Groupon). Get rich quick schemes should not be how we build the future.
Not delivering value for dollar is called one thing: a scam. It might be letter of US law legal (which doesn't have a stellar consumer protections record), but it's dishonest as predatory lending and crap hawked from backs of magazines.
TL;DR Series A investor is trying to rationalize legitimacy to himself in the face of overwhelming conflicting evidence. Don't worry chap, denial is the first step toward accepting you dumped cash on a charlatan. Hopefully it won't end up in plastic barrels in the desert.
The number to cancel VIP is 1-866-337-0906 (as seen on TOS)
It's no better than the mail-order monthly subscription scams of olde. Perhaps people invest in those too, but no one in their right mind claims it's "a great company."
It's a scam using classic deceptive marketing methods. No debate, no question.
Actually they don't send poor unwary consumers any shoes, they give poor unwary consumers "credits" which most likely got unnoticed and unused.
Take for example item number three shared by both in the side bar: "Skip The Month" or "Skip any month".
This isn't the usual lowercase English word "skip", it is a special "Skip", short for special terminology "Skip the Month", their official term for actively declining within a five day window, not passively skipping a purchase. (The official terms and conditions[3] specify "Skip This Month" rather than "Skip The Month", but that may be another issue.)
Its meaning could be ambiguous if the reader is adept at incorporating new usages for words as they are being defined by the surrounding context. Or, the reader could skim the headings, or the reader simply lacked the reading comprehension skills to grasp that the meaning had changed in the text below the heading.
These challenges can be out of reach for a large majority of adults. Glance at the National Assessment for Adult Literacy[4], see the descriptions of the difference between "intermediate" (44%) and "proficient" (13%), and compare the difficulty of sample questions[5] with the comprehension level needed to grasp the message. (Complete reports can be found here: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/getpubcats.asp?sid=032)
This extremely poor communication that never seems to happen when people benefit from their customers understanding what they are trying to say, and makes it pretty difficult to deny that their business is based on misleading people.
[1] http://i.imgur.com/3di93.png
[2] http://i.imgur.com/d02xmsy.png
[3] http://www.justfab.com/index.cfm?action=home.terms_and_condi...
Also, wow. Looking at the progression from the old page to the new page, it becomes obvious that they're trying to hide the "VIP Membership" details.
1) The right-side column has become more narrow.
2) The right-side column becomes almost entirely devoid of color.
3) The right-side columns now uses grey instead of black.
4) The 4th item, originally headlined with "If You Do Not Make A Purchase Or Skip The Month By The 5th, You'll Be Charged $39.99 For A Member Credit On The 6th" in large, bold font is now moved to the end of the details on the 3rd point and changed match the same light, small-print font as those other details. As a side-note, this point is also the 2nd-to-last sentence in the right-side column; this could arguably make it worse since anyone skipping to the bottom would read "Each credit can be redeemed for 1 JustFab item, so use it to shop later!" and think that it doesn't sound bad.
5) The old page requires you to check a box to "accept the terms of the Just Fab VIP Membership Program."
On the old page, the only other stuff on the page appears to be the form. I'd wager that most people viewing the page would at least glance at the right-column's text, thinking that it's instructions. For that matter, moving the membership details to the order summary page from the payment & shipping page is in itself a way of playing it down.
Seeing the two pages side-by-side, I cannot imagine that many if not all of the points described above were specifically designed to lessen likeliness of the user actually reading the membership details.
Regarding link [2] I'm unable to even find a way to 'escape' the subscription process. Oh, no wait, it's again present as a "Checkout as Regular member" again in a hot pink on white scheme while the other giant CONTINUE TO CHECKOUT is in a more contrasty white on pink, and it's larger. Also, wait, if that's the regular member checkout link, then what's the giant checkout button do? Bam, chicanery yet again.
From what I see in his comment, it looks quite like a rationalization attempt.
Yeah I know, it's sad.
Source: http://www.justfab.com/index.cfm?action=home.terms_and_condi...
http://www.scambook.com/blog/2011/10/justfab-com-justfabulou...
The presence of the sidebar is irrelevant, as it is in no way visually associated with the current transaction.
