{"id":133820,"date":"2025-11-14T00:21:19","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T00:21:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/133820\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T00:21:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T00:21:19","slug":"consumer-says-manipulative-design-tactics-costing-online-kiwi-shoppers-millions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/133820\/","title":{"rendered":"Consumer says manipulative design tactics costing online Kiwi shoppers millions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"rVZUAWgtAFijHNuRNP\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cIt would be conservative to say that dark patterns cost New Zealanders millions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"rVZUAWgtAFijHNuRNP\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cUnfortunately, these tactics often fall into a legal grey area \u2013\u202fexposing a major regulatory gap.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"rVZUAWgtAFijHNuRNP\" style=\"display:none\">The impact of these patterns is widely felt, with 93% of New Zealanders saying they had encountered scarcity cues like \u201conly three tickets left at this price\u201d, while\u202fthree out of four people had discovered hidden fees at the checkout. <\/p>\n<p class=\"rVZUAWgtAFijHNuRNP\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cDark patterns are omnipresent with the online shopping experience,\u201d Schulz said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"rVZUAWgtAFijHNuRNP\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cTo mitigate the threats posed by dark patterns, we\u2019d like to see prioritisation of a general ban on unfair trading and strengthening of our privacy laws. New Zealand is currently unchecked and unregulated, and it\u2019s New Zealanders who are paying the price.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"rVZUAWgtAFijHNuRNP\" style=\"display:none\">Consumer NZ said dark patterns may drive a business\u2019 short-term profits or boost data collection, but they erode long-term trust with customers.\u202f<\/p>\n<p class=\"rVZUAWgtAFijHNuRNP\" style=\"display:none\">A recent case study asked research participants to cancel a HelloFresh subscription.<\/p>\n<p class=\"rVZUAWgtAFijHNuRNP\" style=\"display:none\">The five-step process took several minutes to complete, and participants encountered a variety of dark patterns along the way. <\/p>\n<p class=\"rVZUAWgtAFijHNuRNP\" style=\"display:none\">One person told Consumer trying to unsubscribe was such a woeful experience, she wouldn\u2019t touch the business again with a barge pole.<\/p>\n<p class=\"rVZUAWgtAFijHNuRNP\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cGiven how frustrating it can be to cancel a subscription like HelloFresh, we weren\u2019t surprised to find that one-quarter of New Zealanders kept a subscription longer than they intended to because of a dark pattern,\u201d Schulz said.<\/p>\n<p>Listen and subscribe to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.iheart.com\/podcast\/1049-today-in-business-287718209\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Today in Business<\/a> podcast \u2013 the top headlines from the NZ Herald business team summarised and delivered by an AI voice as an easily digestible recap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt would be conservative to say that dark patterns cost New Zealanders millions,\u201d he said. \u201cUnfortunately, these tactics&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3225,17517,138,3311,54760,501,88040,194,91635,4380,130,111,139,69,1642,1518,312,16739,14040,29238,131,8229,1529,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-133820","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-according","9":"tag-because","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-consumer","12":"tag-costing","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-intend","15":"tag-kiwi","16":"tag-manipulative","17":"tag-millions","18":"tag-more","19":"tag-new-zealand","20":"tag-newzealand","21":"tag-nz","22":"tag-online","23":"tag-research","24":"tag-says","25":"tag-shoppers","26":"tag-spend","27":"tag-tactics","28":"tag-than","29":"tag-they","30":"tag-three","31":"tag-zealand"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}