I did an online test that required filling in dozens of answers on several pages, but when I click to get my results, they tell me it costs a few dollars to get them. There’s no mention of this expense until this point. In other words, they tricked me into spending the money after I did all the work, at which time throwing the work away is a greater expense than the charge is. Obviously this is not acting in good faith, and I doubt I would have begun this exchange if I had known.
I wasn’t tricked into paying. I was tricked into going through the whole process on the expectation of a result. I chose to pay because of the effort I was already tricked into investing.
Reminds me of a Medicare-provider site. After finishing the lengthy questionnaire, including a detailed medical survey, it was rejected because I didn’t have a middle name or initial. It didn’t even give me a chance to make one up.
You have just validated and further encouraged the very business model that you are complaining about.
In answer to your GQ, i guess the closest you’ll get to a name is something along the lines of “Bait and switch.” You went into the exercise assuming that your efforts would yield “free” (i.e., no actual monetary cost) results, but then you were required to pay money at the end.
I don’t think this is the textbook definition of bait and switch, but it’s pretty close. Instead of being baited with one product and switched to another, you’ve been baited by the implication of free results, and then switched to a paid model after you’ve done the work.
My first thought was Bait and switch. Some might say that it is technically not “bait and switch” unless they actually claimed the results would be “free”. But I have two answers to that: (1) It could still be ethically wrong even if the technical definition doesn’t apply. (2) See the “politics” section in that Wiki link, which shows how bait-and-switch is done even in a non-commerce setting.
Instead of doing the rational thing, you double down and pay the money because “otherwise its all wasted effort.” Actually, the effort was wasted whether or not you paid the money. Paying the money did not “redeem” the effort. It just meant the company hooked another rube.
I don’t follow this. Is this because of how you value your time spent answering the questions? Because of some value to the results they offer (and if so, what is that, please)? I would be sorely tempted to tell them (think it to myself, actually) to stuff the fee along with the results up where the sun don’t shine and find some other way to get what I wanted. Why is paying more attractive than giving in to this deception?
You can change the landscape by threatening the site with a bad review . Then when someone Googles them before doing all that work ( which is a good idea anyway) your bad review comes up. They don’t like that.
Value of knowing the results=X
Value of effort expended=Y
Value of the payment to obtain the results=Z
If you fail to pay and get the results, then Y being greater than zero, the exercise has been a net loss. (-Y)
So long as X>= Z-Y then you are better off paying.
A couple of things come to mind:
In this scenario, the value of Y is probably close to zero. If you are just screwing around on the internet, your time wouldn’t have likely been used for any other productive purpose.
In the sunk cost fallacy, the value of X is likely to be negative or poor, but the person lets the value of Y influence their thinking that they MUST contribute Z or else there is some sort of waste. In other words, X is very likely to be less than Z-Y but you soldier on because you just hate to lose Y.
RE: sunk costs fallacy. Because I used to work on engines in the Army, people come to me for car advice a lot. One thing I tell people thinking of buying a used car is to take it to a mechanic an invest the $50 or so, in having it checked over for maintenance it needs. What I discovered was that a lot of people, after doing that, felt they’d put money into the car, and were under even more pressure to buy it. So now I add that they shouldn’t think of the $50 as an investment in the car they are having inspected, but in the car they eventually do buy.
The OP should have chalked the time spent taking the test up to a lesson learned (and a good one), and from now on read the fine print, as well as the reviews before taking such tests in the future.
Is this one of those tests that finds the right college for you, or the right course of study? Or was it about government insurance?
WTF? I don’t have a middle name and that has never mattered. We had one student (from Indonesia) who didn’t have a second name and got slightly miffed if you asked for one. I assume that Megawati Sukarnoputri just added a patronymic for public purposes. I know that Sukarno was her father. But there are forms that insist on two names, but they usually put an asterisk on any required fields.
Icelanders, with few exceptions, do not have family names, but will use a patronymic when required.
As for the OP, I would have gotten angry and refused to pay. Hell, I have left sites that purport to do IQ testing and then won’t give you the results unless you give your email address. More spam I don’t need.
Hmm, this is interesting. Now I’m questioning exactly what it was that I was tricked into (if trickery is involved at all).
I was interested in doing an online self-test, and found many sites with online tests. I did tests on the two sites that Google offered first, and the results were interesting, then did this site, the third Google suggested. After putting the effort in, I got hit with the request for payment.
Based on the time it took, my effort was worth about $15 and the payment would be $9, so my choices were to pay and get the result, or go elsewhere and repeat the effort and get the result there. Given that the effort at this site was already spent, these options cost $9 and $15, respectively, assuming that the next site did not ask for payment (like the first two did not). If, however, the next site did ask for the same payment, these options would cost $9 and $24. In both cases, choice #1, making the payment, seems like the logical best choice because it gives the same result for the least investment. I don’t think the sunk cost fallacy applies, does it?
But there was trickery, because the site in question looked like the others, which gave results without payment. If I knew about the payment when choosing which sites to use, I would not have chosen to put the effort and payment into this site, but would have skipped over it instead.
Similarly, suppose the SDMB suddenly requested payment, if you were participating in a thread and had typed out a long reply. The SDMB might figure that if posting that reply was worth all that effort, it would also be worth a payment once it’s a given that you invested the effort to type the reply. It would stink, though, that they’d put you in that position after you had invested your involvement.
By the way, I officially offer to leave the SDMB if they start doing this based on my analogy.
Of course you were tricked, by your own admission and by a very rudimentary ruse. That is par for the course online, or even IRL. Even if it took you some extra steps, you were a rube and you bought the trick hook line and sinker.
Most people, if they even get that far, figure it out and exit. You are a special snowflake whose results are amazing so you made the choice to grimly persevere because your precious time is Just That Valuable…and then you compounded the gullibility by paying! For an online survey! That you agreed to pay for!
I really cannot comprehend the level of gullibility and stupidity that completing this act requires. And to compound it, you are spending even more of your valuable time questioning this on message boards. Truly, the mind, it boggles, and wonders if you are also spending energy procreating. Because that will truly scare me.
You are exactly the mark that site was looking for, and got.