Careful, online shoppers

Who wants to buy travel insurance for a domestic flight? Yet, many consumers purchasing domestic airline tickets online end up with travel insurance that they never intended to buy, thanks to deceitful user interfaces that trick them into paying for such policies. Last month, a reader told me about one such purchase of insurance, along with his airline tickets. He said he never wanted the insurance, but somehow ended up having to pay Rs 249 extra for the policy on each ticket!

Well, it was not an inadvertent mistake committed by the consumer, but a deliberate ploy on the part of the service provider to sell the insurance through subterfuge. The user interface on some websites is designed in such a way that when you buy an air ticket, a pre-checked box opting for travel insurance will appear. Since you are not interested in the insurance and do not expect someone to sell it to you without your consent, you do not notice that the website has already tick-marked your acceptance of the offer. So, obviously, you do not negate or reverse it.

In other words, the default option is purchase of insurance, and if you do not see it and change it, you are charged for the insurance. Thus, the insurer sells a policy, the portal gets its commission and the consumer suffers a loss. This is a clear case of fraud, an unfair trade practice. It also violates insurance regulations governing the sale of insurance.

Yet, such practices, described as digital ‘dark patterns’, continue to exploit consumer vulnerability. What consumers do not know is that businesses are increasingly spending money on ‘User Experience’ (UX) designers to create user interfaces (or your interaction with a website, an application or an electronic device) that are deliberately tweaked to hoodwink, manipulate, deceive or push consumers into making unintended purchase decisions inimical to their interest or even share personal data unintentionally, affecting their privacy.

‘Bait and switch’ is another such example, where a website offers some goods or products at rock-bottom prices, but as soon as you opt for them, their prices suddenly go up or a different, higher price is shown. And it happens so quickly that you will wonder whether you mistook the earlier price claim!

Similarly, when you are buying clothes online, you choose a dress based on its quality, design and price, but as soon as you indicate your size, the price goes up, implying that only that particular size is priced higher. Log on to the website in another name and try another size you will find the same response.

Sometimes, when you are trying to make an informed decision, you are hustled into making a purchase by an announcement that the product is available at that price only for a very short duration, and only one item is left! The ticking of the countdown timer only adds to the panic, forcing you to make a decision that may not be in your best interest. Well, do not be surprised if the same product is still available the next day, at the same price!

Make no mistake these are not some inadvertent flaws in technology, but carefully crafted user interfaces aimed at exploiting consumer behaviour and psychology and they are becoming more and more sophisticated and pervasive, requiring consumers to be extremely alert while interacting with a website or an app or an e-merchant.

As consumer protection agencies around the world express concern over this increasing trend and come up with measures to counter them, many UX designers are exhorting their co-professionals to practice ethical designing and come up with configurations that are fair to consumers and completely transparent. Such a plea for an ethical code and self-regulation comes in the wake of consumer demand that not just companies, but even UX designers be hauled up for ‘dark patterns’.

The Advertising Standards Council of India, which last year brought out a comprehensive report on ‘dark patterns’, has also strongly urged companies not to exploit UX designs to build stakeholder value by compromising consumer value. A good piece of advice!

Those who do not heed this advice will have to face the law. Already, the Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs is looking at ways and means of curbing such practices and protecting consumers. While rules and regulations (under the Consumer Protection Act) defining ‘dark patterns’ and prohibiting them is the need of the hour, even under the existing provisions of the Consumer Protection Act, the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) can haul up online entities for ‘dark patterns’. Since the CCPA has wide-ranging powers to deal with unfair trade practices, including deceptive advertising and promotion, it can also impose deterrent fines and penalties.

Educating consumers on the ‘dark patterns’ is equally important. That would not only prevent consumers from falling prey to these kind of machinations, but will also give the CCPA good feedback for action.

The writer is a consumer affairs expert