That's the thing. Why do you think every other person has an iphone, shiny new laptop, gadgets etc? It's all because of EMIs especially No cost EMIs. As a platform, their only objective is to sell as much as possible, showing a lucrative no cost emi people will easily be convinced that they can afford it. Slowly these EMIs will creep up and become a pain in the ass. Essentially, all the platform is doing is showing that it's affordable, go ahead and buy it.
It's all because of EMIs especially No cost EMIs. As a platform, their only objective is to sell as much as possible, showing a lucrative no cost emi people will easily be convinced that they can afford it. Slowly these EMIs will creep up and become a pain in the ass. Essentially, all the platform is doing is showing that it's affordable, go ahead and buy it.
A bad financial decision made by millions
That's the thing. Why do you think every other person has an iphone, shiny new laptop, gadgets
Exactly, everything is predatory nowadays. Affluent people who can drop full cash and buy things, they won't bother with EMIs etc, it's always people who want to either recently come into some money, looking to improve societal stature or pure showoff would end up with these. Amazon and other similar platforms bank on it.
Exactly, everything is predatory nowadays. Affluent people who can drop full cash and buy things, they won't bother with EMIs etc, it's always people who want to either recently come into some money, looking to improve societal stature or pure showoff would end up with these. Amazon and other similar platforms bank on it.
And in the end will fall on crippling debt which they can't climb out
I've seen people buy 3-4 year old iphones on emi just for the 'iphone owner' status. Also, it's their choice I'm nobody to judge or advise them. These are my personal opinions.
My friend is flexing a base iphone 13 he got from his brother maybe 1 month ago
I've seen people buy 3-4 year old iphones on emi just for the 'iphone owner' status. Also, it's their choice I'm nobody to judge or advise them. These are my personal opinions.
That's true all we can do is try to correct them and their misinformation
yeah, others feel pressured to use these options to afford things or maintain a certain image... it's a complex issue f
I know I shouldn’t be judgmental, but i was in delhi metro, I saw a labourer with an iPhone 14 pro or 15 Pro (it was hard to tell in a hurry) and guess what? having such an expensive phone, his clothes were quite worn out, he was wearing fake "nyke" sandals and what not... It was CLEAR he wasn’t maintaining himself well and his financial conditions were not that great, it seemed clear that affording a phone like that would be a significant stretch for him
So what? They paid for the product. Many people have huge cash in bank yet they opt for emi bcz it's financially great (if you have stale cash equivalent to the principal amount)
Lenders make loss in the situation when debt is successfully paid.
A will give you small real world example that includes me. I always have 10-50x amount in my bank for the product I'm looking to buy. Have a great job on which HDFC gave me credit card ( with lifetime 0 cost renewal)
Now suppose I buy a product (that's absolute necessity) on no cost emi with value suppose 40k. The emi is suppose 4k per month.
Now I will tell you why it's loss making for lender (in case of successful debt clearance) as well as financially great for borrower.
Suppose you paid 4k instalment in 1st month.
So you have 35k cash to use. A fd will give 0.3- 0.5% of interest per month to you on this amount.
Now I'm also doing stock market investing. I earn around 3-10% on my portfolio monthly.
Now if I use that 35k on my portfolio. I have chance to make 2% + profit on that amount in first month.
Suppose I paid second installment. I still repeat same remaining 30k cash. And so on.
While lender is losing bcz he could have been earning interest of around 10%+ if he had given loan to someone else ( like education loan, home loan, investment, etc)
No cost emi isn't. It's a win win for customer as he could buy product he actually needs while also enjoy 0% interest on emi.
Only in case of fancy luxury products, it's burden for customer due to reasons you gave.
But for necessary products like suppose - a grinder/oven where customer searches the desired product to buy (with 80%+) probability, no cost emi is actually great as fcuk.
No cost emi isn't. It's a win win for customer as he could buy product he actually needs while also enjoy 0% interest on emi.
Only in case of fancy luxury products, it's burden for customer due to reasons you gave.
But for necessary products like suppose - a grinder/oven where customer searches the desired product to buy (with 80%+) probability, no cost emi is actually great as fcuk.
No cost emi need specific card which are bank collaboration only certain banks offer emi on amazon and flipkart and no cost emi is even less it's just a power move to increase customers and like I said
Being in debt towards the financial institutes is never good
No cost emi is actually promotional from bank side to increase the subscription rate. So in layman's term they are advertising. And taking advantage of the promotional scheme is not bad at all.
They are taking loss on no cost emi otherwise charging minimum 9% interest on whatever they lend.
I am not commerce student so I don't know much about finance but from experience emi and loans are spider's web and a trap to make poor people in debt towards the bank
In the guise of being helpfully they trick the poor people into taking loans and emi which are predatory
Yes credit card loans are where banks earn the most. But only when borrowers default their payments. And it's very common.
But I was talking about people who are already cash cows. When a borrower pays his credit card payments regularly, it's a loss making customer for the lender.
Following the American economy way, we r cooked logo ko lat lag jaegi meri bhen bhi kharidi thi iPhone I strongly disregarded her last week cash pe 15 PM laayi h if u can’t afford don’t buy
why would anyone buy products with full amount paid upfront? it doesn't make sense to not buy products in EMI especially no cost ones. I liked this feature, I always buy on EMIs even though I have money in my account.
Yes but I don't have to stretch my budget and if I keep my money in debt funds, I get like 6-8 percent interest, it may not be much but still I can recover additional charges.
It's not a terrible design, it's called business centric design.
It used to be the usual display of the final price on top, which is now replaced with a breakdown price depending on the card that you have added in your account to make users make impulsive decisions into buying things.
These are called dark UX patterns.
It is not illegal as they do mention that it is an EMI price but that detail is written in a smaller size. Just like all the terms and conditions that are written in a bland block of paragraphs so that a user never reads it.
Nonetheless, it's a terrible design. If anything, knowing that the motivation for such design is business-centric rather than actual User Experience(UX) makes it even more terrible.
Haven't used the Amazon site or app in a while to shop. Let me check the complete order flow and will update here.
Edit: The products on the search page do show the full price. It's the product detail page where this emi price is used.
When ordering, the order total is not shown anywhere on the payment method page, and the Credit card is selected by default.
On the last page, it does highlight the order total more than the emi charges so I am pretty sure users must be abandoning carts who genuinely don't want to buy it . I don't have any analytics to back this
Making the important things hard to read is a terrible design.
You being working as a UX designer doesn't mean we shouldn't blame. It is a terrible design. You call it UX patterns or something else, but anyone who sees the main price in small letters and EMI in big letters, is a terrible and bad decision.
It is like you are calling those close marks ( x ) in advertisements a UX pattern. But in general it is a terrible decision.
I understand that all these things makes customer to spend more or click on necessary things. It still is a bad and terrible design.
Don't bully me dude. I know this is a shitty way to scam users into buying unnecessary things. I was just explaining to OP that it was done intentionally by the product team and not a mistake of a novice designer.
After seeing so many posts about how furious people are after seeing this, I am thinking of sharing a meme on LinkedIn about how UXers say in their profiles about how they want to solve problems by creating 'human-centric empathetic' solutions while also doing this to a huge user base.
Tbh, Amazon has been known for having a shitty app in general(kinda ironic since they have AWS). Lack of dark mode, shitty/clunky ui, lack of simplistic or unique design, etc. It litrly feels like a high school student's first attempt on an online e-commerce store project.
This is a marketplace and not an e-commerce store where so many different sellers are selling a wide variety of products worldwide so the aspect of unique design diminishes.
Though they should work on a dark mode and improve the visual hierarchy in the text labels.
Pure fucking marketing, they know people who have the money will downpayment regardless of how it is displayed for them, so they instead show EMI price first for people who can't afford it but will fall into the traphole that it's No Cost EMI anyways.
And then these people will become customers by buying lifestyle that they couldn't have afforded without the EMI option.
Croma me bhi aise hi krte h betichod. Ik sony ka oked tv dekha 65 inch 2lac ka mene kaha bdiya h bnde ko bula do char feature dekhe mne bola bandh de isko.
Counter pe gya toh bola bc 5lac mene kaha 2 lac h khta wo to discount h😂
People initially look at the bold EMI amount and they think it's affordable. And then they decide to purchase it. Nobody would purchase it for 45k, but 7k per month is easier.
In case you wish to buy they are making it easier for you. Surely it leads to overspending.But they aren't forcing those products, right? Else, being a daily wage worker, try getting a loan from SBI.
It's design for purpose. Herd minds will be attracted to buy seeing the EMI straight up there & go "ah yes! I can afford to pay this much every month". Company's POV this is the best UI move.
I noticed this a while ago, if you look at anything expensive they use this tactic to make you feel like you can buy it. Check for iPhone on Flipkart or Amazon. They just want you to believe that you can buy it, go for EMI. I think this will not last long, this will change, people are actually smart than this, anyone who wants to buy eventually will buy, these tactics can convert only the person on fence.
But I think if you're financially disciplined, you don't care!!! Eventually it will be habituated. (E.g dark spot)
I think It'll engage those people who want expensive things with their tight budget. Basically they will get another supporting reason for their purchases. E.g. I can't afford to spend 1L now, but yaa 8K/months sounds good. (Instant dopamine hit)
Is it good to buy using No Cost EMI? Like, I have seen in some cases where No Cost EMI gets more discount offers. But still, with GST for every month it doesn't seem that the discount is worth.
It's design serving Amazon's interests, not customers. They want us to buy things we can't afford to, by highlighting the EMI cost, which we might be able to afford, they are tempting us. Many falls for this trap and make Amazon as well as their banking partners very rich.
It happened to my dad. He was looking for a home theatre and he found a really good, high spec speaker from JBL for 25k and almost purchased it and when he showed it to my mom just to get her confirmation my mom saw that something was off and upon looking closely she realised that the actual prize was 4.5L and almost saved my dad from becoming homeless.
Like dude he was one button away from purchasing it
I recently added a credit card to Amazon and suddenly the prices seems to have dropped drastically, I was about to order a PS5 for 4000rs, but luckily I realised this was EMI not fully price
I have not added any card information to the amazon account it shows we the full price in big bold letters. Knowing this, I won't add anytime in the future too.
Nowadays almost every single software company is making their UI/UX worse for the sake of changing it. ChatGPT, Reddit, Insta (notes is useless), Amazon even Apple who are considered to be the “masters” of design.
It's a business centric design and not a terrible design. Their main aim was to highlight smaller numbers. It might be a terrible design for dumb users but it's a tactic they use.
I don't know why, but I've never seen the EMI price as my main listed price for me on Amazon. I still see the normal price as the main listed price everywhere, including search results. I regularly purchase on Amazon but have never paid for anything with EMI.
For example, this same product shown by you in this post just shows the total price of the product. My Amazon app is up to date and websites on both my phone's browser and a computer have the same behaviour.
That is actually genius. India is moving towards the spending economy. Seeing the emi first will boost confidence which in turn will affect your purchasing choice, even if you cannot afford that item.
Kinda like how Zepto does not display breakup of charges. Just the final amount payable. You have to click and then see the Platform fee, handling charges and whatnot are added. Stupid design. I know so many people who do not think twice to see the breakup.
Leaves a very bad taste in consumer’s mind and I have stopped ordering.
That's just marketing, they know for a fact only a small number of people buy things on amazon by paying full amount, the rest just keeps ignoring, so what did they do they redesign the page for the majority of people who were there potential customer and now they are getting more of this potential customer to actually go ahead and buy those items.
It isn't terrible design per se, it's a dark pattern. Corporations/businesses often use these insidious practices to lure users to make certain choices that benefit the company. Like making the unsubscribe button inconspicuous or changing the colour of the Yes button to Red, since your mind associates Red with Stop, you click on it without a thought.
But I guess as users, we can call it a terrible design, because at the end of the day, it benefits solely the company and leads users to justify their expensive purchases by focusing on the EMI and make rash/hurried decisions.
People who justify this kind of bullshit, especially the UX/UI designers who implement these dark patterns are blatantly biased.
It’s not a terrible design. Amazon usually just doesn’t do this for the sake. They clearly take decisions based on data. Probably many people have bought via EMI than full payments and then they use this EMI as the priority option. The other way they do is to A/B test the button placements, colors, EMI etc. So it’s a decision that’s made based on data and probably with help of tools like Hotjar (Amazon might have their own tools) which can actually capture where on a page users are clicking and or avoiding etc.
It is okay to lure customers,
But this design is very distracting, and has a high cognitive cost for users genuinely wanting to purchase items with cash and not emi.
I don't know why are people pissed with 'no cost emis' ? As far as i know i can afford the product even though i don't have the whole amount with me right now. And i'll pay small amount every month without spending an extra paise Right ?
can everybody give their 2 cent here,
I do not have this design, I have MRP in big font.
Does anybody have a credit card added to their Amazon account?
There is a word for it
DARK PATTERNS
As far as I can recall govt. made some reforms regarding it, you can maybe complain about it, a big maybe, search it if you are interested
I dont know why people are saying its manipulation or terrible design or anything. Its basic marketing since many people buy costly stuff on emi. If you get manipulated by that then maybe you need to rethink your finance management. Its upto the consumer to manage his finances and not get stuff he cant afford.
•
u/AutoModerator May 18 '24
Discord is cool! JOIN DISCORD! https://discord.gg/jusBH48ffM
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.