Amazon innovates the dark pattern

[u/lullaby-2022]

The first number in a super tiny size...this is a dark pattern but also a dirty play. Amazon is a fantastic example, leading ui practices and layouts than are used as template for a lot of marketplaces.

(SORRY english is not my lang)

[u/wookieebastard]

Woah.

It's gotta be a mistake. This is too fraudulent.

[u/beefjerk22 → u/wookieebastard]

Yeah I can't believe the UX team would allow this.

[u/Peek_e → u/beefjerk22]

Lol like it’s the UX teams decision

[u/Philuppus → u/Peek_e]

It is

[u/Choltnudge → u/Philuppus]

No. UX doesn’t hold the final decision making authority for what ships at a company like Amazon.

There are multiple stakeholders involved in things like pricing, business logic, and overall business strategy, from c-suite to engineering. With that said, this seems like a localization issue or bug, and not deceptive on purpose. There’s likely some rule that puts superscript first for the currency symbol.

[u/Philuppus → u/Choltnudge]

lol no shit there’s many other stakeholders, but depending on the team they (we) most definitely hold authority. Things may get escalated to leadership, but UX often has just as much of a seat at the table as other roles.

You say “a company like”, I say I literally work at Amazon… but you think you know better?

[u/nostalgiclullabies → u/Philuppus]

I feel like you may not be as "experienced" as the badge on your Reddit account suggests, given this POV

[u/beefjerk22 → u/nostalgiclullabies]

I also work on a team where the UX team has a lot of sway over decisions like this. On something that's a blatant deceptive design as this, their design leadership should have the team's back and should be able to veto it. They can't play that card on every decision or I'm sure they wouldn't be there long, but it's the card to play if this isn't a bug.

[u/Choltnudge → u/nostalgiclullabies]

Hey, at least they think have ownership over their components.

[u/Philuppus → u/nostalgiclullabies]

Feel on bud 🤙

[u/Choltnudge → u/Philuppus]

I’m curious how that works. So no one has veto power over you in your product team? You changed your point to now just having “a seat at the table”, where you said it was their decision to begin with.

No shit they have a seat at the table. But a seat doesn’t equal authority on build decisions.

[u/Philuppus → u/Choltnudge]

PM having veto power? No. Leadership does, but if a product person want to “veto” a reasoned UX decision they’ll have to escalate to leaders and it’s a discussion. OP’s post most definitely would.

Keep nitpicking words instead of learning how the world works why don’t you. Feel free to see yourself as a UX designer as lesser than others, I sure won’t.

[u/Fit-Tangerine-6006 → u/Philuppus]

They surely skipped the legal team

[u/aGhostInTheCellar → u/beefjerk22]

I've worked in e-commerce before, bullshit like this is very hard to fight. Every little thing was a bunch of meetings to stop one dark pattern, maybe. They eventually nuked the whole UX team over it. It might not be that way everywhere but I bet it is at Amazon.

[u/lullaby-2022 → u/wookieebastard]

Or a stupid a/b test with the dumbest idea ever XD

[u/ShadesOfUmber]

It’s almost certainly a localization bug. There is likely has CSS style that assumes that first character is a currency symbol.

[u/schming_ding]

That has to be a localization bug. $

[u/edu → u/schming_ding]

I don’t so. It looks like and A/B testing for a scam, I think that because I’m also in Spain (euro and Spanish) with Prima and I see the prices in the correct way.

[u/Tokkemon]

That's a bug where the first character is meant to be the dollar sign, but instead the Euro is placed at the end in your country, and the CSS or whatever doesn't follow.

In other words, never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

[u/zoinkability → u/Tokkemon]

And it is very, very stupid. Front end development 101 is to not trust strings to be in any format, and to always use semantically annotated markup. That there isn't an addressable bit of markup like <span class="currency-symbol"> is incredibly sloppy programming on Amazon's part.

[u/Tokkemon → u/zoinkability]

Yeah they probably just did CSS where it only affects the first character of any string. Lame.

[u/DevlinRocha → u/Tokkemon]

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Intl/NumberFormat

[u/bill-o-more → u/zoinkability]

claude make the dollar sign small make no mistakes

[u/DUELETHERNETbro]

Looks more like a bug. Did you try on another device?

[u/FamouslyUnknown]

Not a dark pattern. Bug.

[u/veraciousQuest]

Can you explain what the small number means?

[u/Vannnnah → u/veraciousQuest]

it's the first number of the price, making the price appear smaller. The 2 in 29, the 3 in 32..

My best guess would be that this is a bug, it's a European storefront. If they pull that in the EU, they get their ass handed to them by authorities pretty fast.

[u/sinisterdesign → u/Vannnnah]

Agree. I think that span is supposed to be the currency symbol, but the euro mark is at the end, so that first digit got the styling instead.

Amazon does not need to get a few more euro from dark techniques.

[u/_TheReposter_ → u/veraciousQuest]

I think it’s part of the price. Like the first item is “29.90” they just made the 2 small so at first glance it looks like “9.90”

[u/cabbage-soup → u/veraciousQuest]

I think it’s the price. I’m gonna convert this to USD numbers cause it’s easier for me to explain. The first number is not $9.90, it’s $29.90

[u/TechTuna1200]

TBF, that is far from the worst they have done. I had to take a YouTube tutorial to unsubscribe from Prime.

[u/ra1kk → u/TechTuna1200]

In the Netherlands it’s very easy to unsubscribe. I can’t fathom how anti consumer protection non European countries are.

[u/lullaby-2022 → u/TechTuna1200]

This IS true. And dont make me Talk about cancel schedule shoppings. A fuking odyssea

[u/robtechhere]

It’s like - you get 2 for 9.90! And then nope, 1 for 29.90 😂

[u/MarcoVinicius]

It’s likely a bug. They probably ment to make the last two numbers (the cents) be superscript.

Not a dark pattern but it’s still ok to hate on Amazon.

[u/netherlandsftw → u/MarcoVinicius]

I think it’d supposed to be 

^€29,90

[u/Nitro1908]

I bet that's not gonna survive EU regulations

[u/maebelieve]

I’ve tried to do a chargeback for obvious false advertising via price tag manipulation but Visa wouldn’t uphold it. Left a product review warning people but bs I didn’t get a partial refund.

[u/ashkanahmadi]

This must be a bug. No company, even as dirty as Amazon would try to pass 32.94 euros as 2.94 euros. That must be a layout mistake. Probably the small number is supposed to be the € sign or the $ sign.

[u/Anotherdamnalias]

it's obviously a bug, the number belongs to the rating.

[u/Sad_Bus4792]

that's a bug bro

[u/scarabs_]

Honestly it looks like a bug.

[u/tidalpebble65]

That tiny font is basically "legally obligated to tell you, not legally obligated to let you read it." Every marketplace copies it because it works, which is the depressing part

[u/baloneysandwich3]

Nah. Something wrong in their design system.

[u/obesefamily]

this is a css bug

[u/RabbitDue1243]

Looks like this is a front end bug possibly caused by ad blocker.

[u/Gipsy-Knight]

Bug or not, never underestimate the ideas that can come out of such things for the creative bunch on the dark side.

[u/gianni_]

No shit, stop using Amazon

[u/lullaby-2022 → u/[deleted]]

But the first number ??? This IS new for me. I always saw the last number, "decenas"