I am not one to complain about people optimizing their websites for adsense, or the seas of research being done in how close they can get an ad to a place you may click by accident.  For many websites this is a revenue stream. I understand how a website like plentyoffish.com offering a free service needs to fine tune an important revenue source.  However what about when big name business, and even government agencies try to trick their traffic into signing up for or participate in things the original user has no intent to do.. Is that going too far..?

Here are some examples of instances where I think it has gone too far:

TransUnion.com

Trans Union is a credit bureau and one of 3 major ones in the USA and 2 in Canada.  Being Canadian, I have used transunion.ca in the past (the Canadian version). When I moved to the USA, I was blown away at the difference between the 2 countries.

You pay $14.00 a month to have access to a profile, and credit scores. This is the same in both countries. In Canada there is no advertising or external content on the whole site. Only relevant and important personal information.

That’s why I was shocked to see the flow in the USA goes a little like this:

So you dodge that, and land up on your home page that looks a little something like this.

Some entire sections of the site are designed to get you to do something complete irrelevant that will in-turn give them PPC or commission based income.

This is absolutely insane.  A company that you pay, to see your own information, then subjects you to more credit card offers than a college cafeteria. In no way are the relative or even handy. This is  a company ignoring its users real needs to pad it’s bottom line with our confusion, and frequently  soliciting products that are actually the opposite of what is being sought out.

But wait.. Just when you think no one else would do something like that to us.. A system we are supposed to trust and follow even more than an international credit bureau has done worse.. I present..

The United States Postal Service.

If you have tried to forward mail in the USA in the last year or so, you will have used this new system.. If you try to do it in the post office, they say.. No, No, do it online, if you cant get it to work then fill out this form.  Why is that..?  Easier, more efficient, and secure, of coarse.  However they also got really sneaky with step 5.. “Catalog Forwarding.”

After you enter your credit card information which is needed to confirm your identity at your previous address. You get to this step, it will ask you to “select the magazine subscriptions you would like forwarded.” and present you with a list of magazines.  Hmm, I didn’t know I was  subscribed to these..? or.. they are free? or.. meh whatever lets click a few. I have to to get to the next step..

And there you missed the really small text link at the bottom that says “your mail forwarding is already complete”. They use the credit card you supplied to confirm your identity, to sign you up for magazine subscriptions.

The last 2 steps are purely for you to be tricked into signing up for new subscriptions in attempt to reach the end of the process. Uncle Sam, you douche bag.

I very firmly believe that these practices are wrong. We have come to understand that the internet is full of tricks, and IQ tests that the results just need to be text messaged to you.. But that doesn’t mean government agencies and the paid standardized services need to jump in. In the case of USPS there new elegant interface and easy 6 step process, could have been a 4 step process.  When your job is to provide a service to allow something to happen, confusing those users into a path they didn’t intend for your own profit is just wrong. In these cases the systems are taking advantage of us because they know we have no other options, and are in a trusting state of mind, and that is going too far.

Thoughts..?