Sales sites offering cultural and leisure activities use, like other platforms, techniques to encourage consumption. A survey by German consumer protection reveals that out of 73 platforms examined, 48 attempt to influence online purchases by using deceptive manipulation techniques.
You’ve probably already noticed them when shopping online: these countdowns, these little messages that urge you to buy or these pre-checked boxes that weigh down your basket. These are ‘dark patterns’, misleading interfaces in French.
These are interface design techniques designed to manipulate. They exploit cognitive biases to push people to perform actions against their will, such as purchases or sharing data. Very often used for car rental, purchasing clothes or plane tickets, they are also common on cultural or leisure platforms.
The Consumer Protection Foundation (SKS) examined 73 cultural and leisure events platforms: 48 of them, or 65%, use these deceptive manipulation techniques.
Among the sites concerned: the Pathé cinemas, the Zurich zoo or the Knie circus via Ticketcorner. Contacted, the Swiss National Circus refutes these accusations: “Ticket insurance can be deactivated with a simple click.”
Mostly legal practices
These practices are mostly legal, but not always, specifies Lucien Jucker, lawyer at SKS: “For example, a very short countdown with ticket insurance which, although it can be deactivated, goes practically unnoticed in the stress linked to the purchase of tickets. It could be that this is then illegal.”
Another illegal practice: the invoicing of administrative fees a posteriori, applied by Pathé cinemas. “We have developed a solution which will guarantee in the future that transaction fees are initially included in the price of the ticket,” assures Lucien Jucker.
This practice should end by July. For other sites, caution remains in order.
TV Subject: Serge-Alain Simasotchi, Rouven Gueissaz and Clémence Vonlanthen
Web topic: fgn
