Look around you and ask yourself: is this the type of futuristic life that you thought you’d have? For some of us, that answer is a definite ‘no’ because it strays too far from the idealized things we’ve seen in our favorite sci-fi movies and shows. In real life, there’s too much friction, bad design, and annoyance compared totechnologicalawesomeness. In short, some tech corporations are less than friendly toward their valued customers in their pursuit of profit and never-ending growth.User u/cutypatotie sparked an interestingdiscussionon r/AskReddit after asking everyone to share their opinions about the biggest techscamsthat have been widely accepted. We’ve collected the most interesting insights to share with you, from how God-awful subscriptions can be to the scourge that is planned obsolescence.We wanted to learn more about user-(un)friendly companies and product longevity, so we reached out to marketing psychology speakerMatt Johnson, Ph.D., for comment. Johnson is the host of thebrandingandhuman natureblogs. You’ll find the expert insights he shared withBored Pandaas you read on.This post may includeaffiliate links.
Look around you and ask yourself: is this the type of futuristic life that you thought you’d have? For some of us, that answer is a definite ‘no’ because it strays too far from the idealized things we’ve seen in our favorite sci-fi movies and shows. In real life, there’s too much friction, bad design, and annoyance compared totechnologicalawesomeness. In short, some tech corporations are less than friendly toward their valued customers in their pursuit of profit and never-ending growth.
User u/cutypatotie sparked an interestingdiscussionon r/AskReddit after asking everyone to share their opinions about the biggest techscamsthat have been widely accepted. We’ve collected the most interesting insights to share with you, from how God-awful subscriptions can be to the scourge that is planned obsolescence.
We wanted to learn more about user-(un)friendly companies and product longevity, so we reached out to marketing psychology speakerMatt Johnson, Ph.D., for comment. Johnson is the host of thebrandingandhuman natureblogs. You’ll find the expert insights he shared withBored Pandaas you read on.
This post may includeaffiliate links.
“We have changed our terms of service. Click here to accept and continue using our services.”IamShellingFord:Forced arbitration and changing the terms of service after the product has been boughtwhen i bought my device, i had an understanding of what i was buying. it makes my skin crawl knowing that companies can change that after i paid for something and i can’t hold them accountable for that.it’s like i bought a pizza with some toppings.after i buy it with the terms being i can eat the toppings as well, they take away the toppings from the rest of the pizza as soon as I’ve had a couple of slices.feels absolutely disgusting to me.
According to marketing psychology speakerJohnson, companies that aren’t user-friendly aren’t in the long-term loyalty game. It’s not a priority for them. “Instead, they often prioritize factors like cost cutting, technical limitations, industry norms, and corporate culture over user experience. Cost considerations might lead them to cut corners in research, design, and testing, while technical constraints, particularly in highly regulated industries, can make creating user-friendly interfaces challenging,” he explained to Bored Panda via email.“This also comes up a lot in industries where usability isn’t traditionally a priority. Here, companies may focus more on functionality and reliability. Corporate cultures that value other aspects of business, like engineering excellence or speed of delivery, may also contribute to the lack of emphasis on user-centric design practices,” Johnson explained.However, those aren’t the only considerations. Some companies might fundamentally lack the understanding or the resources for effective research and testing when it comes to user experience. Not only that but their short-term goals or market dominance may make them less likely to invest in user experience in the first place. Put simply, there’s a lack of resources, know-how, or urgency.
According to marketing psychology speakerJohnson, companies that aren’t user-friendly aren’t in the long-term loyalty game. It’s not a priority for them. “Instead, they often prioritize factors like cost cutting, technical limitations, industry norms, and corporate culture over user experience. Cost considerations might lead them to cut corners in research, design, and testing, while technical constraints, particularly in highly regulated industries, can make creating user-friendly interfaces challenging,” he explained to Bored Panda via email.
“This also comes up a lot in industries where usability isn’t traditionally a priority. Here, companies may focus more on functionality and reliability. Corporate cultures that value other aspects of business, like engineering excellence or speed of delivery, may also contribute to the lack of emphasis on user-centric design practices,” Johnson explained.
However, those aren’t the only considerations. Some companies might fundamentally lack the understanding or the resources for effective research and testing when it comes to user experience. Not only that but their short-term goals or market dominance may make them less likely to invest in user experience in the first place. Put simply, there’s a lack of resources, know-how, or urgency.
Non-replaceable batteries.
Apple. The entire company. The entire product range. The whole thing is a scam from top to bottom. Paying double what the stuff is worth for a subpar operating system and the privilege of being locked into their ecosystem and their predatory app store. Their anti-competitive business practices are disgraceful and I hope the SEC/DOJ burns them to the ground. What they did to the USB-C ports on the new iPhone is a new and special level of s****y. Seriously people, stop buying Apple’s overpriced and poorly made garbage.
“Overall, a combination of financial, technical, cultural, and market factors drives companies that aren’t user-friendly to prioritize other considerations over creating intuitive and accessible products and services,” Johnson said.
Bored Panda was curious about what could convince companies to invest more into improving their products' longevity. After all, many of us feel like we have to replace or upgrade many of our tech gadgets quite frequently. (When’s the last time you had to get a new smartphone because your old one was on its last legs?)
Johnsonsaid that, ultimately, this comes down to changing the organization itself so that it adopts long-term thinking with respect to their customers. This means instilling the belief that the company will be rewarded with “the goodwill and repeat patronage of their customers” if they create “high-quality, long-lasting products.”
Trapping customers with subscriptions.
Replacing physical controls and digital displays with in built tablets in cars. I can no longer safely operate the climate control, media player or any of my other car systems without having to physically stare at a massive f*****g touchscreen with s****y touch response and laggy ui that gets worse with every patch.
“Secondly, adopting modular design principles allows for easy repairs and upgrades, extending the usefulness of products over time. Smartphone manufacturer Fairphone, for example, designs its devices with modular components, enabling users to replace individual parts rather than the entire phone. Additionally, offering software updates and support for older devices can help maintain functionality and security, as seen with Apple’s long-term support for its iPhones and iPads,” he gave some examples where companies are more consumer-friendly.
Intentionally downgrading older models of just about anything so you’re forced to upgrade.
Physical banks fees on everything digitally executed.You want to move your money : transaction feesYou want to keep your money : account management feesYou want to withdraw your money : fees againSeriously, everything works on its own with technology, no human intervention 99% of the time. Banks already make money from loan interests while giving us back s****y return interest to borrow our money to go make millions of profits.Having to pay for basics and automated operations is a ripp off.
Printer cartridges.
In an ideal world, most companies wouldn’t just go for the biggest profit and maximum growth. They’d also prioritize theuser experience, ethical business practices, and providing the best quality products and services that they can realistically create (not just get away with).
However, we do not live in an ideal world. While profit-seeking isn’t good or bad in and of itself (it’s how businesses survive and thrive), it can lead to some serious problems if it’s always placed ahead of the customers’ wants and needs.
Subscription with ads. Ads was only widely accepted because “we had to maintain our work somehow”. Ads ruined the internet.Then subscription came along, fine a paid version to get rid of those pesky adverts.But hey ho, let’s get more money from both sides.Also, premium content.All content use the same platform.They are forced to do extra work to separate content in the delivery and choose which content is premium.It’s a scam on top of their subscription scam.
Hippity hoppity your data is now my property… or something along those lines.
Everything needs an app. Especially physical devices. I don’t want your cheap buggy app to use my thermostat, scale, battery, lock, or light bulb. Ship one if you want, but devices should conform to standards-based, documented protocols so I can control them however I want. I also don’t want to install an app just to do something that works just fine on a website. Also requiring Internet connectivity is cr*ppy design. I don’t want basic functionality depending on your servers being up (and requiring accounts and giving you unknown data). My whatever should not stop working because you decided to stop spending money on the servers. This is bad with software but egregious with hardware and unacceptable with household devices (my water heater should never depend on outside servers). I’ve been in tech a long time. While greed and control and access to sellable data drives lots of things, there is also an attitude surviving from the 90s and 00s that the lifespan of anything is a few years. This attitude infects product design even in fields where lifespans are decades and replacement costs are high as we add compute to everything (which can be a great thing). USB was successful not because it had one (ish) plug, but because it standardized the protocols devices used. All mice speak one protocol, so anything that knows it (hci class) can handle any mouse. Zwave and ZigBee tried to do this for household stuff, but instead we got vendor proprietary, Internet connected, phone-home, WiFi devices. Rant done.
From our personal perspective, some of the worst things that the modern internet has introduced include weird subscriptions to newsletters we never signed up for, spam and scam emails, and YouTube’s recent policy of bombarding us with ads. To be perfectly frank with you, it’s exhausting, and it makes you want to step away from the screen (which, ironically, can be a good thing for everyone’s physical and mental health).
Unsubscribe button not being honored. Tactics include:1. It takes 15 days to unsubscribe but 1 min to subscribe.2. Sometimes link does not exists at all.3. Sometimes it takes you to a non existent page.4. Sometimes it asks you to login but you never had an account.5. Sometimes they will randomly send emails even after unsubscribing , especially around holiday season. Like out of the blue they will email, I think they got a new incompetent marketing guy.6. Them not realizing that they product they sell is not something I buy or need on a regular basis. Eg: indochino , how frequently do you think I buy a new suit.7. The whole marketing email is an image and not an html. Clicking on it just opens the image or takes you to home page (mostly sites from India )8. Somehow referencing the canspam act and sending it to their privacy email stops all the emails suddenly. But the. Point 5 happens.
No SD card slot in cell phones. This straight pisses me off. I don’t want your b******t cloud storage or whatever. I want my own storage in my own hands, k thanks.
Having to subscribe to your car. Yes that’s right, you’re buying a brand new car for 75grand. and they make you pay for extras on a monthly basis instead of just having a base model and a premium model, it’s just 1 model and you pay for the extra s**t.AND PEOPLE JUST ACCEPT THIS!! They think that coz they’re saving money on fuel they’re okay with spending it on the subscription!
But from a more objective point of view, something that hurts users and the environment isplanned obsolescence. When you think about how short various tech products’ lifespans are, it really boggles your mind.Sure, you don’t have to upgrade your smartphone every two or three years, but there is a noticeable drop in battery life and a rise in lag the longer you use the device. Having to charge our phones every day is not the bright and brilliant future we imagined!
But from a more objective point of view, something that hurts users and the environment isplanned obsolescence. When you think about how short various tech products’ lifespans are, it really boggles your mind.
Sure, you don’t have to upgrade your smartphone every two or three years, but there is a noticeable drop in battery life and a rise in lag the longer you use the device. Having to charge our phones every day is not the bright and brilliant future we imagined!
Selling AI “art” programs as alternatives to hiring creative professionals. And now there are these bs posts I see from people taking commissions to type words into a text to image generator for you. Come on, seriously, can this whole AI art thing collapse so that we can turn these bots toward calculating taxes or some s**t?
Crypto. Magic internet money with a community of people all just trying to get other people stuck holding the bag.
A new iPhone being released every year and Apple convincing people it has a ton of improvements.
Ads after subscription.
Accepting cookies.Just to continue on a site they’ll say accept or reject cookies. It’s easier for everyone to just accept. However, we’re selling our data to a host of companies who package it sell it to advertisers
You don’t actually own anything, you just own a license to view/listen/play it… and it can be revoked/edited at any time without consequence.
Here’s a new product! (Uber! DoorDash! Amazon!) It’s so cheap and easy!One year later: Sorry! We had to raise prices! Sorry, you have to pay for a membership now! Sorry, we had to make the app really confusing so you’re not really sure what you’re buying! Sorry, you have to wade through 1 million ads to find what you’re looking for!Sorry, not sorry!
“I accept your 1000 page privacy policy and terms of service”
Selling our data. It’s even so bad that our phones that use GPS track where we are and send our driving habits and check-ins to companies. Facebook sells our data as well. Who we’re friends with, height, weight, medical info we post, etc.Everything about us is sold. The only way to avoid that is to basically NEVER be online. For anything. VPNs are a joke and don’t do s**t. If they did what they advertise, we would have a lot more tech crime.Remember: If you do not pay for it, you are the product. Not the customer.
Ticket surcharges, Uber flex fees, etc.Basically everything that has enabled greedy people to further reach into your pocket.
Subscription Traps: Makes signing up easy but canceling difficult, often hiding the cancellation process.
I can’t believe I don’t see this in here, but the fact that most tech companies use their end users as testers is wild. Tons of the time you get something released that like, half works, and the end users or customers are used to find and fix bugs. It’s everywhere man.
Extended warranties for electronics, which are rarely worth the cost given the low chance of a malfunction that would fall under the warranty terms, and often overlap with the manufacturer’s warranty.
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Data caps, literally not a technical reason for it. Throttling may make sense if they get overloaded but caps are literally just money grabs.
Paying for storage on iPhones.
McAfee - who in the hell actually needs it?
Calling something “Full Self Driving” and releasing it years before it’s ready all while it blows through stop signs and violates speed limits without care.
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Tenuous link but BMW’s subscription service.The options are already in the car but you have to pay a monthly fee to unlock them.
Needing wifi to play single player videogames. Yeah like 5 people are complaining about it but ain’t no one doing any meaning protests to stop it.Unfinished products being sold for full price, everyone hates it but guess we all consume. Like I can guartee you that Rockstar will rush the f**k out GTA 6 and it will be leaked with everyone saying “It’s bad” “Literally impossible to play” and yet everyone’s gonna buy it.
Convenient fees when paying with credit cards. Like what, want me to send a physical check that you have to go cash then?
Having to buy the same game multiple times to play it on a different platform.
People preaching learning programming is the golden ticket to a lucrative career.While it’s true that programming skills can open doors in various industries. These people are heavily promoting their coding courses and bootcamps. The reality is that the market is oversaturated.
Spam emails and calls/texts being free for scammers to take advantage of.
Selling phones without chargers. Deprecating features to cross sell counter products.
“Free” services like Google and Meta, they say it’s free but it’s not, you’re paying with your privacy.It’s like if they put free-to-use toilets in an airport but they put those toilets right in the middle of the floor in the waiting areas with no stalls or walls, you just gotta sit there and take your s**t with everyone watching.
Trapping customers in eco systems. Having non upgradeable hardware. Only have a limited time with security updates. All focused on optimising long term profits.
MS Windows.It’s an operating system. Get out of my way, stay out of my way, and know your place. Stop being a greedy attention whore with your ads and endless updates and beta testing in the marketplace BECAUSE WE CAN, and your obsession with, “I am too worthy of attention from you every damn month! And hey, you need to give me a new computer every few years because I’m high maintenance.“And why the hell do I need a third-party driver update app? Because you don’t update the drivers with your updates. Never have, never will.Most of us wouldn’t tolerate that sort of self-centered behavior in a human. Why do we put up with it from Microsoft?I remember the old joke that if Windows were a car, you’d have to frequently shut off the engine, run around the car twice, then start the engine again to keep it running. That joke is at least 30 years old, and it still applies.
Automatic non refundable renewals -»>My kiddo bought an annual sub from “awesome tuts” and it auto renewed for $144. The guy would not give me a refund even though I contacted him within 24 hrs of renewal. Had to go back and forth a dozen times, and then write a letter to the CC vendor to get a refund.
Pretty much the whole AAA video games industry:- Releasing bugged games- Making games with DLC in mind or cutting content to sell it to you- Endless sequels, no more risks, creativity or originality- Microtransactions, gambling and subscriptions- Online single player games- You don‘t own games anymore and can‘t sell them- Quality of hardware (especially controllers) has gone done significantlyI don‘t know if it‘s accepted but people really have no other choice but to take it.
Various smart phone apps that reward users with little perks like McD’s deals, or fuel apps saving you 18¢ per gallon, etc but are really tracking your location, spending habits, hobbies, general details about you.Built in cameras and mics on smart phones, ring and alexa that are covertly recording you.
Apple/Google taking a 30% cut of the entire mobile software market for doing little more than hosting files.
The way expansions packs work with games now, or at least a lot I play. It seems like it used to be that an expansion meant essentially almost a new game with lots of unique material, but now I feel lucky if any singe one is noticeable at all. Not to mention day one releases.
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