Dark Patterns, Fake Reviews and Hidden Charges: The New Era of Consumer Accountability

Aashok F&C Advisory

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ARTICLE 61 OF 100 | MEDIUM EDITION | ECOMMERCE, UX, CONSUMER PROTECTION, MARKETING, STARTUP

Amazon agreed to pay $2.5 billion over Prime sign-ups and cancellations. Regulators everywhere now treat manipulative design as a legal risk.

By Aashok Kumar Sharma · Founder, Aashok F&C Advisory

Growth teams everywhere have used the same tricks: pre-ticked boxes, countdown timers, fees revealed at the last step, cancellation buried five screens deep. For years it worked.

Regulators have caught up. India issued guidelines on dark patterns in 2023, and the US, EU and UK have all taken action. If you sell online, your customer journey is now a compliance document.

In September 2025, Amazon agreed to pay US$2.5 billion to settle a case brought by the US Federal Trade Commission. The FTC had alleged that Amazon enrolled millions of customers in its Prime subscription without clear consent and made cancelling difficult — through a multi-step process the agency said was internally nicknamed after Homer’s epic poem The Iliad.

The settlement included a US$1 billion civil penalty and US$1.5 billion in refunds to customers.

The product was popular. The service was valued. The problem was the path — how customers were moved in and kept from moving out.

The design of a sales funnel is no longer just a marketing choice. It is a legal one.

The quiet tricks of digital selling

Most people have met them:

• A countdown timer that resets when the page reloads.
• “Only 2 left!” when there are hundreds.
• A pre-ticked box adding insurance or a donation.
• A low price that grows at checkout with “convenience fees”.
• A free trial that silently becomes a paid subscription.
• A “Cancel” button hidden behind five screens and a guilt message.
• Five-star reviews written by the seller’s own staff.

In 2010, the British designer Harry Brignull gave these tactics a name: dark patterns — user-interface designs that trick people into doing things they did not intend.

For years, they were treated as clever growth hacks. Regulators now treat many of them as unfair trade practices.

A lesson from history: the baker’s dozen

In 13th-century England, the Assize of Bread and Ale regulated the weight and price of bread. Bakers caught selling short weight could face fines or public punishment.

Many bakers began giving 13 loaves for every 12 ordered — the “baker’s dozen” — to make sure they were never accused of cheating.

The lesson is 750 years old: when the law watches how you measure, the honest margin of safety is the cheapest insurance. Today, the measuring scale is your checkout page.

The law has arrived

India

• The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 created the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) with powers to act against unfair trade practices and misleading advertisements.
• On 30 November 2023, the CCPA issued the Guidelines for Prevention and Regulation of Dark Patterns, listing 13 specified dark patterns, including false urgency, basket sneaking, confirm-shaming, forced action, subscription traps, interface interference, bait and switch, drip pricing, disguised advertisements and nagging.
• The Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020 require transparency on sellers, prices and returns.
• The Bureau of Indian Standards published IS 19000:2022 on online consumer reviews, setting principles for collecting, moderating and publishing them.
• In 2025, the CCPA advised e-commerce platforms to carry out self-audits to identify and remove dark patterns.

Elsewhere

• In the United States, the FTC’s rule on fake reviews and testimonials took effect in October 2024, allowing civil penalties for fake reviews, buying reviews and suppressing negative ones.
• The European Union’s Digital Services Act and consumer laws prohibit manipulative interface designs on platforms.

If your growth depends on customers not understanding what they agreed to, your growth depends on a future regulator not noticing.

Why businesses use them — and why it backfires

Dark patterns often work in the short term. They increase sign-ups, basket size and retention.

But they create:

• Refunds and chargebacks when customers discover charges.
• Complaints to consumer forums, regulators and social media.
• Regulatory action and penalties.
• Loss of trust — customers who feel tricked do not come back and warn others.
• Weak data — “retention” that is really failed cancellation tells you nothing about genuine loyalty.

A trick can win a transaction. It cannot win a customer.

The uncomfortable part

Most dark patterns are not created by villains. They are created by teams with conversion targets, tested in experiments, and kept because the numbers improved.

Nobody asked the question that matters: “Would the customer agree to this if they understood it?”

The Fair Funnel Test

Before launching any page, flow or campaign, check it against six questions:

1. Price truth: Is the full price, including all mandatory charges, shown at the start?

2. Choice truth: Are all add-ons opt-in, not pre-selected?

3. Urgency truth: Are scarcity and countdown claims real and verifiable?

4. Review truth: Are reviews genuine, from real customers, with paid or incentivised reviews clearly disclosed and negative reviews not suppressed?

5. Exit truth: Is cancelling, unsubscribing or returning as easy as joining?

6. Language truth: Are buttons and messages neutral, without shaming or misleading the customer?

A “no” to any question is a design defect — fix it before launch.

A worked example (illustrative)

Consider an illustrative online travel startup that adds three features to lift revenue:

• A “₹199 convenience fee” shown only on the payment page.
• Travel insurance pre-selected.
• “Only 1 seat left at this price!” on most flights.

Conversions rise 9%. Within six months:

• Complaints on consumer platforms increase sharply.
• Refund and chargeback requests rise.
• A consumer group cites the site in a complaint about drip pricing and basket sneaking.

The Fair Funnel fix:

• Convenience fees are included in the first price shown.
• Insurance becomes an opt-in choice with a clear description.
• Scarcity messages appear only when seat inventory confirms them.

Conversions fall 3% from the peak. Refunds and complaints fall by more than half. Repeat bookings rise. Net revenue improves, and the business stops building a case file against itself.

Fair design that still sells

Fairness does not mean weak marketing. You can still:

• Show genuine urgency — real sales ending at a real time.
• Offer add-ons clearly and attractively.
• Highlight genuine reviews and respond publicly to negative ones.
• Make it easy to pause a subscription instead of cancelling.
• Ask for feedback when customers leave — once, politely.

The best funnels persuade with value, not confusion.

How you’ll know it’s working

Fair design shows up in customer behaviour and complaint data:

• Refunds and chargebacks fall.
• Complaints about hidden charges, subscriptions and misleading claims fall.
• Cancellation steps equal or are fewer than sign-up steps.
• Repeat purchases and genuine reviews rise.
• Self-audits of all customer journeys are completed at least once a year.

Where this is heading

Regulators are using automated tools to scan websites and apps for dark patterns, and consumer groups publish rankings of manipulative designs. AI shopping assistants may soon compare not just prices but fairness of terms. Honest design will become a ranking factor, not just a legal safeguard.

What to do on Monday, by role

• Founder: ask the team to list every add-on, fee and timer in your checkout flow.
• Product team: run the Fair Funnel Test on your top three customer journeys.
• Marketing team: check that every review and testimonial is genuine and disclosed correctly.
• Legal or compliance: schedule a self-audit against the CCPA dark-pattern guidelines.

“But…” — the best counterargument

The objection: “Every competitor uses these tactics. If we stop, our conversion rates fall and we lose market share.”

The answer: Some short-term conversion may fall. But regulators have begun acting against exactly these practices, and penalties and refunds can wipe out years of extra margin — as Amazon’s US$2.5 billion settlement shows. More importantly, honest funnels build repeat customers, lower refund costs and stronger reviews. Being the business customers trust is a competitive advantage in a market full of tricks.

Questions people ask me

“Are discount countdown timers illegal?”

Not if they are true. False urgency — timers that reset, or stock claims that are not real — is the problem.

“Can we pay influencers for reviews?”

Paid endorsements must be clearly disclosed. India’s advertising guidelines and endorsement rules require disclosure of material connections.

“Is it wrong to make cancellation require a call?”

If joining is online and leaving requires a phone call or many steps, regulators may treat it as a subscription trap.

“Do these rules apply to B2B sales?”

Consumer laws mainly protect consumers, but misleading practices can still create contract and reputation risks in B2B.

Where things stand (October 2026): India’s CCPA Guidelines for Prevention and Regulation of Dark Patterns (30 November 2023) apply to all platforms offering goods or services in India, alongside the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 and E-Commerce Rules, 2020. The US FTC rule on fake reviews has applied since October 2024. Regulators in many countries continue to act against subscription traps and drip pricing.

Mistakes I see most often

• Hiding mandatory fees until the last step.
• Pre-ticked add-ons and donations.
• Fake or manufactured urgency and scarcity.
• Writing, buying or selectively publishing reviews.
• Making cancellation harder than sign-up.
• Shaming language such as “No, I don’t want to save money.”

One-page checklist

• Full price shown at the start of checkout
• No pre-ticked add-ons
• Cancellation as easy as sign-up
• Reviews genuine and disclosed

Try this in 30 minutes

Ask someone outside your team to buy your product and then cancel or return it — while you watch silently.

Count the steps to buy and the steps to leave. Note every moment they hesitate, frown or ask, “Wait, what’s this?” Each one is a fairness gap and a future complaint.

The short version

• Dark patterns — false urgency, hidden charges, pre-ticked boxes, subscription traps and fake reviews — are now named and penalised.
• India’s CCPA issued dark-pattern guidelines listing 13 practices in November 2023; IS 19000:2022 sets review standards; the US fake-reviews rule took effect in 2024.
• Amazon’s US$2.5 billion FTC settlement in 2025 shows the scale of the risk.
• Apply the Fair Funnel Test: price, choice, urgency, review, exit and language truth.
• Honest funnels lower refunds and complaints and build repeat customers.

Design every screen as if the customer — and the regulator — will read it closely. Because both now do.

Before you go

Walk through your own sign-up, checkout and cancellation as a customer would. If any step would embarrass you in front of a regulator, change it before someone else points it out.

Further reading

• US Federal Trade Commission, press release on the Amazon Prime settlement (25 September 2025). ftc.gov
• Central Consumer Protection Authority, Guidelines for Prevention and Regulation of Dark Patterns, 2023 (30 November 2023). consumeraffairs.nic.in
• Bureau of Indian Standards, IS 19000:2022 — Online Consumer Reviews: Principles and Requirements for their Collection, Moderation and Publication.
• US Federal Trade Commission, Trade Regulation Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials (16 CFR Part 465), effective 21 October 2024.
• Harry Brignull, Deceptive Patterns: Exposing the Tricks Tech Companies Use to Control You (2023). deceptive.design

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A version of this article first appeared on ComplianceCalendar.in.

I’m Aashok Kumar Sharma, founder of Aashok F&C Advisory — a finance, accounting and compliance practice working with founders, SMEs and finance teams in India and abroad. I write about the numbers, rules and decisions that quietly decide whether businesses last. Follow me here on Medium for the rest of this 100-part series.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or investment advice. Rules change; check current provisions or speak to a qualified professional before acting. Examples labelled illustrative are composites.