Money Suckers
The cancel button is three menus deep, and that is a design decision
Nobody accidentally builds a cancellation flow that takes nine clicks and a phone call. Every step in it was measured.
Money Suckers
Subscription creep, junk fees, and the charges that appear after you have committed.
13 articles · updated August 11, 2026 · page 1 of 2
Money Suckers
Drip pricing: quoting a number nobody will ever actually pay
The headline price is engineered to win a comparison, not to be paid. Everything else arrives once you are already three screens in.
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Money Suckers
The card machine asks whether you want to be charged in your own currency
Saying yes hands the exchange rate to whoever owns the terminal. The helpful-sounding question is the entire product.
Money Suckers
The free trial that needs your card is not measuring your interest
It is measuring how many people forget. A trial that requires payment details is a subscription with a delayed start.
Money Suckers
Loyalty is priced as a penalty, and the new customer gets the discount
Staying put on the same contract is a decision to accept the highest price the seller believes you will tolerate.
Money Suckers
The tip screen has rotated toward you and it is suggesting twenty-five per cent
Payment terminals turned tipping into a public interaction with defaults, and the defaults have quietly climbed.
Money Suckers
The ticket costs what it costs, plus the fee for selling it to you
Booking fees, service fees and delivery charges on an emailed file are the clearest example of a price split into pieces that…
Money Suckers
Nought per cent finance, paid for by everybody who misses a payment
Interest-free instalments are not free to provide. Someone is paying, and the structure tells you fairly precisely who.
Money Suckers
The bundle contains four things you use and eleven you have never opened
Bundling raises the average price paid by making the individual prices unknowable. That is the feature, not a side effect.
Money Suckers
A fee for a paper bill, and a fee for not paying the way they prefer
Charging for the ordinary way of doing something is a discount on the preferred way, described in reverse.
Money Suckers
Declined, and then charged for being declined
Fees for insufficient funds land on accounts that by definition have no money in them, which is the part that has attracted…
Money Suckers
The price changed because of the phone you are holding
Personalised pricing uses what a seller knows about you to estimate what you will pay. It is legal in many places and hard to…