To give a concrete example, if you're an American traveling in Brazil withdrawing cash from an ATM or buying something for BRL 500, you'll be presented with an option to pay BRL 500 or pay just US$110.58 in your own currency (with text saying conversion includes 15%).

But the typical American (and Canadian) credit card adds at most 2.5% to the Visa or Mastercard exchange rate, which is at most 0.5% higher than the interbank rate. So basically by clicking the wrong button, you're paying an extra 12% to the payment processor. In the example above, your credit card would have charged you about US$99.04 had you declined the conversion, and saved you $10.

I can't imagine a situation where it's to your benefit to accept the "conversion service" they're offering. I wonder if the payment processor is kicking back some of the profit back to the merchant because this swindle is spreading everywhere.

The worst part is that a couple of people that I've tried to warn don't get it. They still think that they should pick US$ (or whatever their own currency is) because that's what their credit card uses.

Normally in Germany, you've got those distinct card terminals with a display where you see your total before paying. Some of those have started nagging you for tips which you need to explicitely accept or decline first before tapping your card. Not in this case though: after you've ordered your food, they point you to the combined order/pay display and while you awe at the technology marvel of combining both, you tap your card on that and then you notice that 15% tip has been automatically included and charged. You needed to notice some small text and small buttons in the corner of that display beforehand and actively tap on "0%" or something before tapping your card. I'm already furious they've let this tip begging to be added to the card terminals, but charging tips without explicit consent should be completely illegal.

Then when you spend down the credit to $2 any attempt to buy something that costs more refills the credit.

Starbucks app btw. You have to specifically pay with card on the payment screen to avoid buying credit and paying as above.

I'm from EU, so ymmw. I simply don't tip. Why? Because I don't have to. And if I don't have to, then I don't. It is that simple.

Having the knowledge which dark patterns even work well for technically affine users while still being "socially acceptable" can be worth a lot of money to specific companies.

More recently though, I must say, YouTube has really jumped the shark in terms of perfecting their dark patterns/algo stickiness. I can’t even go to the site without immediately forgetting my original intent.

I drop it down a bit and pay it on my credit card for him, but what's the right way to deal with this situation?

I’d much rather the game progressed in a fixed logical order and the choices became less obvious without a timer. In other words, I think this makes more sense as a puzzle game, not a reflexes game.

But until that I do tip for dine-in service. But I found the "buy me a coffee" link on the button of this to be much funnier / ironic than it probably should have been.

It's also missing what I think is the worst dark pattern:

Having no option not to tip at all. Instead requiring that the customer press "Custom" and manually entering "0.00"

These days it pays to aggressively demonstrate that you are price sensitive and will delay or cancel transactions at the slightest whiff of additional expense.

I only ever tip off-platform or cash even if I pay with card. Also that helps to enable my gift to go only to the service provider. It fucks me on some platforms but I find that an acceptable cost to not get algorithmically spitroasted. Besides, it also helps to eliminate predatory platforms from my ecosystem.

Available to watch here: https://www.tvseries.video/series/the-x-files/season-11-epis...

Mobile offers a speed boost for taps but heavy nerf to text entry tasks.

I was thinking in sending this link to my family but probably the timer is really fast for them but I think they could used your app as "training" so they know how to spot a dark pattern in the future

Wild how we're back in popup hell now just like we were back then, even though the method for web popups is different now.

"Just the tip"

How many of these are real dark patterns? The "new entry suddenly prepended to the list" one I have seen before.

(My draft specification of Computer Payment File is intended to avoid many kind of dishonesty when paying by computer (it is not needed or useful when paying in cash), including this kind; one of the things it requires is that the buyer calculates the payment amount from the information (such as the catalog) that the seller provides; they cannot charge you any other amount of money.)

and are these California prices? It's totally bonkers.

But these UI's are occasionally slipping into a countries where tipping is not expected.

This leads to a strange situations like "transaction isn't approved by me because instead of ApplePay and walk away, I need to solve some quiz on a payment terminal or payment will not pass".

Every time this happens, it annoys me a lot which affects my wish to visit this place again.

Somehow, employers of these establishments convinced the staff that it's the customer’s fault that their wages are inadequate and that they should go after the customers to get the difference. I would much rather pay a higher price and not hear anything about the tips.

souls-like

Is bill-paying UI also a guilt machine? If you don't pay, you feel guilty! How about holding the door for elderly people? Going to your kid's event? Not running people over in the crosswalk? Saying please and thank you? Buying birthday presents? It's all so unfair - to me!

As a practical example let's say you take a date to your local trendy sushi place. You both get gold-leafed deep fried Wagyu fatback tuna rolls and some Yuzu duck fat-washed 50-year-old whiskey highballs. The final bill is $100 (I'll use round-ish numbers for this example). The bartender comps you 30% because you all are cool and discuss your shared experience bartending or jetskiing or whatever. Ordinarily your tip would have been 20% for a total of $120. In this case your bill is now $70 plus your newly selected gratuity. Take the difference between the original bill with tip and your current bill without tip and divide it in two. This is the floor for your new tip, in this case (120-70)/2 = $25. This is indeed something like a 35% gratuity but they hooked you up and made that custom drink for your charming new beau. As a matter of fact you should round up from this number because they have side work to do and you make pretty decent money as a software engineer/LLM tickler/product sorcerer. Just make it $30 for a nice round hundo.

If you're friends with the manager and they comp your dinner to do you a solid and impress your date then you should tip 50% of what the bill would have been minimum. This is why you should keep cash in your pocket - shake the waiter's hand on your way out and palm it to them. If that's not possible then go to use the restroom and talk to them on your way back so they can run your card through the POS on a blank check to give them said tip.

This is how you do things with class. This is what I wish somebody had explained to me when I was 20 and kinda broke (i.e. eager to save money that I would have spent anyway) before I embarrassed myself by failing to do such. If you are similarly unaware then now you know too :-)

As an addendum this also applies to coffee and pizza places but the numbers become coarser. Buying them the equivalent of a beer at your local dive ($3ish) is customary.

Learn to make your own coffee. You shouldn't have to pay more than a couple of bucks for coffee with perhaps some milk in it. An espresso machine and a grinder will quickly pay for themselves.

While you are at it, cancel all those streaming subscriptions, and stream for free in the high seas or YT ad-free with uBlock.

The above "tips" will save your thousands of dollars each year, and most likely also save you time. There are also things like DIY car maintenance that can be fun to learn and save you a lot of money, but you need space (a house) and some tools to get started.

I recently bought my mom flowers for her birthday. Despite the price showing no delivery fee, the final price included $15 delivery charge, $8 service charge, taxes, and then asked me for a tip.

I chose no tip, expecting the delivery and service charge should cover everything.

The flowers were left on her front porch in below-freezing weather, they didn’t even knock or ring the doorbell. Luckily my mom happened to open the door and saw them before they completely froze.

So was the delivery person incompetent, or acting out because I didn’t add additional tip?