Unexpected RingGo parking charges

An extra 10p

Recently, I noticed that I was being charged 10p more than usual for parking when I had to take my car into town. This annoyed me.

I discovered that this fee was for a ‘reminder SMS’, giving me a 10 minute warning that my parking session would expire; I must have accidentally enabled it without realising. This really annoyed me.

I believe that the RingGo mobile app is employing a ‘Dark Pattern’ by hiding the fact that this optional fee is present, and making it hard for users to turn it off. (Also: even having this fee in the first place)

The ordinary payment flow

Here is the end of the payment flow when the user first sets up the app. Note the prominent prompt for the user to enable the (paid-for) SMS reminders:

The payment flow after having ever enabled a reminder SMS

Here is the same part of the payment flow, but after the user has previously enabled the SMS reminders. See how the final price is 10p extra, but there is no indication anywhere that the user has opted in to an additional charge?

Disabling the fees

As shown above, RingGo does not give the user any way to disable to additional fees during the payment flow. This setting is instead buried under Account -> Notifications.

I believe this is unneccessary indirection; in most mobile apps Notifications refer to push notifications (that do not ordinarily have an associated charge) so it is possible that users may not check here when attempting to stop the unnecessary extra fee.

What RingGo should be doing instead

Here are some changes I would make to remove all the Dark Patterns that I see:

1. Don’t charge for reminders. Smartphones allow push notifications for prices that are approximately free to the provider.
2. If you are going to charge this fee, make sure its clearly broken down at the payment summary page
3. If you are going to include an opt-in toggle in the payment flow, make sure you also include the ability to opt-out