Dark Patterns: How to Escape the Subscription Trap

If you have ever felt like the world is designed to drain your bank account, you are not imagining it. Online shopping and digital services are full of sneaky money traps - known as dark patterns - built to make spending effortless and canceling nearly impossible. This week on Ask the Experts, Jan Verberne, Senior Legal Counsel at Revolut, pulls back the curtain on how these manipulative online checkout tactics work and the exact tools you can use to outsmart them. This episode of Making Cents is proudly supported by Revolut, the card and app for everyday spending in NZ, and smarter money on your travels. Use this link https://get.revolut.com/e9Jc/makingcents7 to try them out, spend, and Revolut will give you $40 to get started.* This episode covers: What dark patterns are and how online retailers use them to manipulate your spending How to escape subscription traps, cancel free trials, and avoid forced cancellation phone calls The hidden cost of drip pricing and checkout fee sneakiness How foreign transaction fees and bad exchange rates make international online shopping more expensive How open banking, AI fraud detection, and fintech security tools protect your personal data How to build a security buffer between your primary bank account and online merchants If you have a letter you’d like us to answer, please send it through to [email protected] and you might feature on our next episode! *T&Cs apply. Spend min $1 to receive reward. Exchange rates will vary. Comparison to major bank rates based on exchanging NZD $1K Mon-Fri, within your plan’s fair usage limits. More info: https://www.revolut.com/en-NZ/nz-fx-substantiation. Revolut Payments New Zealand Pty Ltd. Follow me everywhere! Facebook / https://www.facebook.com/FrancesCookNZ Instagram / https://www.instagram.com/francescooknz TikTok / https://www.tiktok.com/@francescooknz Join the Money Memo newsletter for a free weekly money tip in your inbox each week https://www.francescook.co.nz/subscribe Become a confident sharemarket investor by signing up to the Market Memo newsletter https://www.francescook.co.nz/invest #MakingCents #FrancesCook #MakingCentsPodcast #InvestingPodcast #MoneyPodcast #FinancialFreedom Production and video editing by Lana Byrne Audio engineering by Tash Chittock Filmed by Fanaticals