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Why can a scam company raise $40 Million Series C + $76 Million Series B?

1065 pointsby wenxunover 11 years ago
Just learned from Venturebeat &amp; Techcrunch that JustFab closed $40 million in a Series C round of funding [1][2].<p>It kept me wonder why a company with very questionable (I will try to avoid using the word &quot;fraudulent&quot;) business model was able to raise big money. Didn&#x27;t the VCs have to do the due diligence?<p>I didn&#x27;t have any direct experience with JustFab. The victim was my girlfriend. Back in January 2012, one of her friends emailed her a link to JustFab, then she bought a pair of shoes from www.justfab.com and never visit the website again. Then 8 months later, in September 2013 she finished her Master study in the US and returned to her home country. She was appalled to find out that her credit card has been charged a $39.95 fee for the last eight months. Yes, $39.95 for 8 months, without getting anything from JustFab.<p>I then did a bit research on the internet. It turned out my girlfriend wasn&#x27;t the only victim. Apparently JustFab works like this: once you buy something from their website, you become their &quot;VIP member&quot; without your knowledge. Then you will have to log into their website between the 1st-5th of each month and click “Skip This Month”. If no action is taken (either skip this month, or cancel your account), they just charge you a $39.95 fee every month.<p>According to article published on BusinessInsider, JustFab &quot;generate about $100 million this year&quot; in sales, I wonder how much of this $100 million are from people like my girlfriend who simply didn&#x27;t read their entire 2,500 words Terms of Service and were unaware that they were charged $39.95 a month for nothing.<p>[1] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;venturebeat.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;09&#x2F;26&#x2F;justfab-sews-up-40m-to-become-global-fast-fashion-empire&#x2F;<p>[2] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;09&#x2F;26&#x2F;justfab-has-raised-another-40m-led-by-hong-kongs-shining-capital-to-take-its-fashion-subscription-commerce-model-to-asia&#x2F;<p>ps. This is a re-post of my last year&#x27;s post [3], hoping it will get upvoted to the frontpage of HN so that more people get to know the shady business JustFab does. Apparently VCs don&#x27;t do due diligence any more, as long as scam companies like JustFab can bring them money.<p>[3] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=4592778

62 comments

abaloneover 11 years ago
Every single person who has been misled into signing up for a recurring charge should do this one thing:<p>Dispute the charge with their credit card company.<p>You&#x27;ll get your money back and it will issue a bunch of chargebacks to JustFab, which will penalize them financially. If enough people complain their penalties will escalate and their credit card processing rates will go through the roof. This is how the credit card system weeds out crappy businesses like this.<p>Unfortunately the very people who this model is designed to exploit are the least likely to know about their consumer protections.
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cs702over 11 years ago
JustFab is not a &#x27;scam company&#x27; (in the sense that they may not be doing anything technically illegal), but they are using DARK DESIGN PATTERNS[1] to trick at least some people into doing things they don&#x27;t want to do.<p>The checkout page[2], in particular, seems designed <i>specifically</i> to trick people into signing up for recurring monthly charges. Any person who adds merchandise to the cart and then clicks the big &#x27;Continue Checkout&#x27; button -- without stopping to read all the surrounding text -- will unintentionally sign up for the $39.95&#x2F;month &quot;VIP&quot; plan.<p>My mom, who is trusting by nature, would <i>never</i> stop to read all that surrounding text, because she has been conditioned by years of online ordering to add items to a cart and then find and click the big checkout button. She would be tricked into signing up for recurring charges.<p>--<p>[1] See <a href="http://darkpatterns.org/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;darkpatterns.org&#x2F;</a><p>[2] <a href="http://imagesup.net/?di=15138026329215" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imagesup.net&#x2F;?di=15138026329215</a> -- this was posted by one of the company&#x27;s investors elsewhere on this thread. It&#x27;s a canonical example of a dark design pattern.
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tonywebsterover 11 years ago
This sort of thing is infuriating. Nowhere on this page does it say &quot;we will charge you every month.&quot; <a href="http://i.imgur.com/ctMDiCJ.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;ctMDiCJ.png</a><p>I just went through the whole checkout process to see how bad it really is. There were upsell interstitials at least four times, they did the 20-minute countdown clock thing to add a little pressure, and the checkout page looked like I was getting boots for $19.95. If you look on the right side in pretty small grey text it says that you&#x27;re activating your VIP membership. You have to read down several paragraphs to figure out what they&#x27;re trying to get away with, and nowhere does it actually say in clear terms &quot;we will charge you every month.&quot; Entering in your shipping and payment information and it again completely fails to indicate there&#x27;s a monthly fee — just a little checkbox &quot;I accept the terms...&quot;<p>All the state attorney generals should join together to sue them and get their victims&#x27; money back. At least we know they have the cash to pay the settlement now thanks to RHO, Matrix, and TCV.
cortfmover 11 years ago
Heh, yeah. There&#x27;s a class action against them filed in 2011, though not being a part of it I haven&#x27;t heard anything since.<p>I wonder sometimes if the corporate shield isn&#x27;t too strong -- that is, if someone (say, Adam Goldenberg or Don Ressler, the co-CEOs (that always goes well) of Justfab)) is executive of a company which conducts deceptive practices, why shouldn&#x27;t they be personally responsible? Where, exactly, do we draw the line? I would argue that once the Notional Reasonable People learn about the fraud, we have not only a responsibility but a duty to admit justice. More specifically -- if you know about this deception, but you do nothing, you are complicit. You are now responsible. It&#x27;s not a matter of choosing to ignore it -- as a participant in the venture economy, you have an obligation. And it would be entirely legitimate to punish you for failing to live up to it.<p>Specifically, the executives and funders of the VC companies that invested in JustFab should be held personally accountable. The people who reveal the names and home addresses of the executives of those companies will be fulfilling their obligation and doing the world a service -- permitting these individuals to hide behind layer after layer of legal protection is tantamount to personally committing that fraud. Individuals must fear the punishment for them and their families that comes after the commission or effective endorsement of fraud; they must know that we, the technical community, will not protect their abandonment of ethics.
wenxunover 11 years ago
Some people asked why it took her 8 months to find out [3]: she was studying for her Master degree in the US, didn&#x27;t have a SSN, was using a credit card issued by a bank in her home country, her father paid the bill for her at home and didn&#x27;t notice anything unusual until she finished her study and came home to look at the credit card bills.<p>[3] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4592778" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=4592778</a>
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kokeyover 11 years ago
What worries me is that the what is probably one of the major credit check agencies in the UK and some other countries is also running business the same way. Experian offers a service where you can check your own credit score online for around £6, but actually also signs you up for a £13&#x2F;month service after that which is also easy to miss in the small print. You also can&#x27;t cancel this online, you have to phone them. The whole phone call covers two things, one is that it&#x27;s another method to retain you by letting you update your personal information and then letting you check within a day or two if the updates brought you more information about your credit score. The other is that the personal information helps them have better information about you to give to their customers who use them for credit checks.
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Erwinover 11 years ago
In DK (possibly EU) we have laws that mandate the actual total minimum cost to be prominently shown when you buy something and companies are regularly fined by the marketing board for misleading information there.<p>So if you buy a $1 cell phone, but it requires you to sign up for a 12-month $50&#x2F;plan and oh, there&#x27;s also several $5&#x2F;month fees in small print -- then that&#x27;s the total minimum cost you pay must be shown<p>For loan type products, the effective yearly percentage cost for the loan must be shown. So if you look at one of those typical &quot;quick loans&quot; like <a href="https://folkia.dk/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;folkia.dk&#x2F;</a> where everybody can get a loan..., well you an see that borrowing 3000 DKK for 30 days is going to cost you a yearly effective interest of 987% if you asked a bank for it.
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drakaalover 11 years ago
Most of you are too young to remember, &quot;Buy now and we&#x27;ll send you CD&#x27;s each month for just $9.95 per month, keep only the ones you want, cancel anytime&quot;<p>This is the same thing. It may feel scuzzy, but they do tell you this up front, and while they hope you forget, it isn&#x27;t a scam, it is just preying on the uninformed.
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baneover 11 years ago
Thanks for the post. My wife shops online <i>a lot</i> and has a new sites checkout process almost in muscle memory. After looking at the site and the screenshots here I can say that she would absolutely fall for this scam and we&#x27;d end up dealing with the hassle of cancelling things and reversing charges and all that.<p>Total and outright scam. I bet in a class action, the plaintiff could even make a decent RICO case out of it and triple the damages.
mrtronover 11 years ago
Clearly indicated on:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JustFab" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;JustFab</a><p>Obviously the VCs did diligence - however they must have considered the shady business as an acceptable risk factor.<p>I think the answer to what you are asking is many businesses start in the grey zone. Recently many folks made huge bank with recurring billing with no notice. Ring tones and internet games both went that path. Justfab seems to be breaking into a new industry with that same business model.<p>You should consider that most people consider this nonsense the fault of the purchaser, &#x27;buyer beware&#x27;. Gym memberships are a classic example of this.
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unclebucknastyover 11 years ago
The company&#x27;s tactics have been thoroughly eviscerated here, as they should be. This is clearly misleading and I don&#x27;t think I can add much there.<p>But, here&#x27;s something else that I find funny: the membership fee is $39.95&#x2F;month, which then entitles you to buy a pair of shoes for an additional $39.95&#x2F;month. They state that this price is &quot;<i>up to</i> 50% off&quot;. So, if you only buy one pair of shoes in a month, and the discount is anything less than 50% off, then you actually <i>lose</i> by being a VIP member.<p>And, even given the maximum discount of 50% off, you would have to buy at least <i>two</i> pairs of shoes each month to come out ahead vs. just breaking even.<p>I am sure that there are people who buy shoes at this rate, but I am willing to bet that many do not consider this in their calculus, and the company knows it. I would guess that many assume they are getting a deal, as long as they &quot;use their memberships&quot; and buy at least one pair of shoes each month. And, almost certainly, none of them think think they could actually <i>lose</i> as a VIP, so long as they make one purchase.<p>This is not as overtly deceptive as their site design, but it underscores that their primary business model relies upon their customers&#x27; lack of understanding in one way or another.
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stickydinkover 11 years ago
Just checked out their UK fan page for Facebook, 20k likes.<p>Of the most recent 15 &quot;posts by others&quot;, all in the past week, 5 of them are people that appear to be furious about being tricked into subscribing.<p><a href="http://i.imgur.com/NDVZbHM.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;NDVZbHM.png</a>
farrelover 11 years ago
Because VCs aren&#x27;t interested in building a sustainable business, only something they can dump on a greater fool in 3 - 5 years for 10x return.
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jdhover 11 years ago
I&#x27;m the Series A investor in this company.<p>We in fact have done plenty of due diligence, and you will be pleased to know it is not a scam company. In fact, the company has very high customer satisfaction ratings, including an NPS that is in the ballpark of Amazon, and a very high customer retention rate. More than half of the people who subscribe to the service are still subscribers after two years, which is unusually high for a subscription service.<p>I obviously cannot speak to your girlfriend&#x27;s experience. With nearly a million subscribers, there are certainly people with bad experiences -- same is true with any service. Netflix is great but I am sure there are a number of people who have had a bad experience.<p>I would encourage the HackerNews community to consider the opposite: if we assume the investors in this business do perform due diligence, is there another possible explanation? Is it possible that this case is not representative of the average case?<p>But hey, we don&#x27;t have to be he-said-she-said here, anyone can just go to the site and verify if this claim is true. In essence, the claim is: &quot;The site tricked me. I went to buy a single pair of shoes, and in doing so, they actually started taxing my credit card every month, and no one warned me.&quot;<p>Folks are right to be skeptical -- a lot of businesses have done this, tried to hide the fact there would be future charges. Does JustFab?<p>I just went to the site -- you can do this -- picked a random pair of boots and put them in my shopping cart. I then clicked checkout, and here is what that page looked like:<p><a href="http://imagesup.net/?di=15138026329215" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imagesup.net&#x2F;?di=15138026329215</a><p>&quot;I wonder how much of this $100 million are from people like my girlfriend who simply didn&#x27;t read their entire 2,500 words Terms of Service and were unaware that they were charged $39.95 a month for nothing&quot; -- Seriously, please look at the link above to the checkout flow and tell me that&#x27;s how you see it, that you have to read the 2,500 word TOS to figure out that this is the case.<p>Seems pretty clear to me. You can get the boots for $39 if you join the VIP program. &quot;With this purchase, you will be activating your VIP membership&quot;<p>Under &quot;How VIP Membership Works&quot;, it explains: &quot; If you do not take action between the 1st and the 5th of the month, you will be charged $39.95 for a member credit on the 6th. Each credit can be redeemed for 1 JustFab item, so use it to shop later!&quot;<p>It&#x27;s in plain English, and in the same font size as everything else on the page. Over 800,000 people can manage their subscription account every month without racking up credits. I&#x27;m sorry it didn&#x27;t work for your girlfriend, and I recognize she is not the only one who has not grokked the subscription element and been surprised -- but it&#x27;s a tiny minority, and the information is quite clear on the site.<p>Finally, one may ask: why subscription at all? Well, $39 for a high quality pair of boots is a really, really good deal. Most e-commerce merchants have to reacquire their customers for every transaction. By asking members to commit to come back to the site once a month, the company doesn&#x27;t have to constantly pay google or other traffic sources to acquire members, and to have prices like this you have to keep costs low. That&#x27;s the deal. There are plenty of higher priced places to buy shoes if you don&#x27;t want to subscribe.<p>Double finally: credits never expire. If you have 8 credits in your account, you can go get 8 pairs of shoes.<p>Justfab is an awesome company and is creating and H&amp;M or Zara experience online: fast fashion at great prices. I&#x27;m not sure HN is the target demographic, but it&#x27;s a great service and customers love it, and VCs have poured money into because of that.
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akrymskiover 11 years ago
Just Wow, what a clever scam. Hardest thing must have been getting a merchant account for this - does anyone know who provides them with a merchant account &#x2F; credit card processing? And how do they manage to tolerate the chargeback rate without being shut down by Visa etc?<p>Lots of these operations around, but usually remain small due to credit card companies shutting them down quickly. JustFab has been around for a couple of years. How did they manage to stay under the radar of credit card companies? And&#x2F;or keep their chargebacks under the limit?
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pbreitover 11 years ago
It&#x27;s not quite that bad. The 39.95 ends up being a credit that can be applied to a future purpose. And they are pretty upfront about how it works without one needing to &quot;read the entire 2,500 word&quot; TOS.<p>I don&#x27;t love the model but I don&#x27;t think &quot;scam&quot; or &quot;fraud&quot; is accurate.
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shivenover 11 years ago
It is because of websites like these, I love my credit card&#x27;s Virtual Account Number generator. It gives me a new CC number every time, with &#x27;Dollar amount&#x27; and &#x27;Valid until&#x27; limits. I always use a new number to sign up for all sorts of &#x27;trials&#x27; etc. Never ran into problems with zombie billing.<p>That said, scammy company is very scammy!
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mehwootover 11 years ago
Because it&#x27;s not technically illegal what they are doing and they&#x27;re doing it successfully. If there are people who think it&#x27;s ethically ok to run a website that way, then there are probably people who will invest in it.<p>To me, it seems borderline.
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javertover 11 years ago
&quot;The company&#x27;s business model and credit card practices have been criticized as deceptive. In October 2011 a national class action lawsuit was filed against Just Fabulous, Inc.&quot;<p>- Wikipedia: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JustFab" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;JustFab</a>
limejuiceover 11 years ago
I&#x27;ve never heard of this site before, but looking at their page &#x27;How it works&#x27;, it seems clear it me it&#x27;s a shoe-of-the-month club, and works similar to things like Disney Movie club, Harry and David Fruit of the month club, or one of various Book Clubs.<p>The only scummy part would be if they still charge $39.99&#x2F;month if you don&#x27;t cancel &#x2F; skip &#x2F; select a shoe, without sending you anything. Compare to Disney Movie of the month club where if you don&#x27;t make a selection or skip that month, you get sent the &quot;Featured&quot; title for that month. Maybe justfab should send you the shoe of the month if you don&#x27;t make a selection, or maybe they should send a &quot;beauty gift basket&quot;.<p>Otherwise, it looks legit, if you like this sort of thing.
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prileyover 11 years ago
This website should definitely be part of the Dark Patterns UX Library. It&#x27;s sad how people compose UX (and investors invest in) shady user experiences designed to trick people.<p><a href="http://darkpatterns.org/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;darkpatterns.org&#x2F;</a>
tuananhover 11 years ago
Ah, I still remembered your old post.<p>To me, trying to mislead people (on purpose) is equivalent to scamming. the purpose is the same, just a different method of doing thing.
seferphierover 11 years ago
Wow, they have a lot of negative reviews.<p><a href="http://www.consumeraffairs.com/online/justfab.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.consumeraffairs.com&#x2F;online&#x2F;justfab.html</a>
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ericdover 11 years ago
Huh, sounds like a rebill scam with the lent legitimacy of VC funding.
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rdlover 11 years ago
I&#x27;d expect Amex to charge back the full amount (including the cost of the shoes, actually). If it didn&#x27;t, I&#x27;d be inclined to go for small claims court action against the company, as it&#x27;s unlikely they&#x27;d send an employee to defend $39.95.
gozmikeover 11 years ago
Frank and Oak (frankandoak.com) does something similar to JustFab. They just raised a large Series A.<p>I&#x27;ve been burned by this personally, but ultimately it&#x27;s really a case of buyer beware so I can&#x27;t really hold a grudge - even if the tactic is sleazy imo.
nutancover 11 years ago
This is the reason in India the central bank does not allow companies to store credit card information. In such a case, the consumer has to authorize every transaction, so scammers cannot get away by taking the credit card details once.
twistedpairover 11 years ago
RoadRunnerSports has the same model. I got VIP on checkout (actually the agent on the phone gave it to me) four years ago for free shipping. It them autorenewed for $25&#x2F;year the last three years, despite no interaction on my part with the company.<p>The reason it annoyed me is there was no billy email telling you you&#x27;d been renewed, no disclosure that this would happen, and even your billing and purchase history when you logged into the site had no mention at all of the charges. Clearly an effort to prevent you from noticing. Also a reason they&#x27;ve got a heap of BBB complaints. Quite sad that this remains a business model.
goshxover 11 years ago
Funny thing... this post just disappeared from the home page.
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ttt_over 11 years ago
Business such as this is what makes us have to raise our consumer shields up 100% of the time.<p>I&#x27;m so very fucking tired of this.
baneover 11 years ago
Lots of speculation about how hard this is for people to navigate, here&#x27;s some examples of people bitten by this<p><a href="http://www.elkgroveonline.com/forums/topic/105057/beware-online-rip-off-quot-ju/view/post_id/866160" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.elkgroveonline.com&#x2F;forums&#x2F;topic&#x2F;105057&#x2F;beware-onl...</a><p>and the text of the class action filed in 2011<p><a href="http://www.scambook.com/blog/2011/10/justfab-com-justfabulous-class-action-lawsuit/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scambook.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2011&#x2F;10&#x2F;justfab-com-justfabulou...</a>
sgustardover 11 years ago
Their &quot;how it works&quot; page explains this, with far fewer than &quot;2500 words&quot;, though it could be clearer.<p><a href="http://www.justfab.com/how-justfab-works.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.justfab.com&#x2F;how-justfab-works.htm</a><p>They have 2 million likes on Facebook. Were all these users scammed?<p>The &quot;monthly subscription&quot; has recently been a hot e-commerce category. Other sites with a similar model are shoedazzle.com, fabkids.com, musthave.popsugar.com and so on. See: <a href="http://www.quora.com/E-Commerce/What-are-the-most-interesting-eCommerce-subscription-businesses-going-on-right-now" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;E-Commerce&#x2F;What-are-the-most-interestin...</a><p>So a question is, what&#x27;s the tradeoff between transparency &amp; making it easy for the customer to cancel at any time, versus locking them in? Lots of businesses make money off of customer inertia where the easy path is to keep paying. Netflix, Tivo, your cable service, phone service, could all plausibly have much worse retention rates if they actively asked you each month if you want to continue paying. Additionally, my cable company certainly isn&#x27;t going to tell me when my one-year promotional rate is expired and my rate suddenly doubles. Does that make cable service a scam?<p>Beyond that, you are labeling the business a &quot;scam&quot; because you assert they are hiding the recurring payments from their users. Maybe so, but it would help to have data, rather than &quot;wondering&quot; how many users were unaware of the payments. When they become aware, does the company refund their money? Do they a&#x2F;b test their signup process to optimize signups versus the later cancellation rate? I would certainly expect they do, and that they have a pretty specific idea of what their dissatistfied customer rate is, what the acceptable (non-zero) rate is for them, and how to avoid skyrocketing it while increasing their signups.<p>It&#x27;s not a pretty business on those terms, but it&#x27;s real, and plays on human behavior, both positive -- people like to receive new stuff in the mail every month, it&#x27;s an addictive cycle for many -- and negative -- people sign up for stuff online without reading the fine print, or bothering to check their credit card statements.
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benologistover 11 years ago
Leeching money off people this way is a time honored tradition - record, cassette, cd and book clubs etc, arguably AOL dialup, any &quot;free trial&quot; that discretely rolls over into indefinitely charged accounts till you realize and go back and cancel that service you barely tried once.<p>They can raise money because it works, it&#x27;s legal if not ethical or tasteful, and in their particular case ... they&#x27;ve figured out how to scale enormously.
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mktgthewebover 11 years ago
Hey HN- I am an insider to this business and in the subscription commerce space and know these companies well. Here are a couple high level insights about this business:<p>Dark Pattern: of course, but we call this conversion optimization. We try to make the checkout process as easy as possible to minimize friction. Give customers a great offer, get the credit card, and they will opt-in to the subscription and forget tomorrow.<p>Negative Option: The billing model is one in where you purchase, or get a free trial, and you are automatically enrolled until you cancel. Think about the old Columbia House DVD club or BMG (if you are old enough to remember). We call this &quot;breakage&quot;. This is what makes the model work. If every customer picked out shoes every month, or they automatically shipped every month, they would lose money. This is because the cost of the shoes + shipping doesn&#x27;t leave to much room for margin. This also allows them to front load their marketing dollars and scale - spending $50+ to acquire customers, which eventually become profitable as customers continue to get billed month over month.<p>Tricks &amp; FTC Compliance: I do notice on the billing screenshot that they have an opt-in checkbox to the VIP club (subscription terms). However, these are behind a link, which is against the FTC guidance on negative option marketing. The FTC and Visa &amp; MasterCard require any subscription to have an opt-in box which the customer agrees to the amount, billing frequency, and customer support info to cancel. They clearly are not doing this, and apparently haven&#x27;t been caught since it &quot;looks&quot; like just typical ecommmerce.<p>eCommerce vs. Subscription: Interestingly, JustFab recently acquired ShoeDazzle, who was their primary competitor for years. That was, until ShoeDazzle decided to move away from the subscription model, and go to a retail model. Pando Daily did a whole series about this, and the CEO they brought in to lead it. Guess what? The pure e-commerce model didn&#x27;t work, ShoeDazzle struggled, returned to subscription, but eventually sold the company for a deep discount of the valuation to JustFab.<p>Bottom line, they shoes they sell are cheap and fashionable. In fact, they lose money on a unit basis. Yes, there is a small percentage of the revenue from customers that love the service, pick out shoes and pay monthly, but a a majority of the revenue is coming from consumers who just wanted a deal on one pair of shoes.
Nitrampover 11 years ago
Never invest in a company that doesn&#x27;t provide a genuine profit to its customers (and other stakeholders). Businesses are cooperative relationships between stakeholders, if a business just exploits its customers, it won&#x27;t be a business very long.<p>Whether the checkout page is deceptive or not (and it is!): does anyone actually <i>want</i> to get a 40$&#x2F;month minimum 1 year membership? Who would <i>want</i> to buy all their shoes on this one particular website, an willingly enter a contract where they have to click a button once per month or get a 40$ penalty? That&#x27;s just bogus, all of the conditions are so strongly in favour of the vendor that it&#x27;s clearly not a business - it&#x27;s just exploitation&#x2F;a scam.<p>You might be able to make a quick win and run away with something like this before the business falters, but more likely you won&#x27;t be that lucky.
tyangover 11 years ago
Most VCs delegate diligence to 22 year olds that don&#x27;t really try the site or startup of the startup they invest in.<p>This should not be surprising.<p>VCs deliver risk-adjusted returns way below the S&amp;P 500Most<p><a href="http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/02/venture-capital-returns.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.avc.com&#x2F;a_vc&#x2F;2013&#x2F;02&#x2F;venture-capital-returns.html</a><p><a href="http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/institutional-limited-partners-must-accept-blame-for-poor-long-term-returns-from-venture-capital.aspx" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kauffman.org&#x2F;newsroom&#x2F;institutional-limited-partn...</a><p>And VC&#x27;s subtract value from the startups they invest in.<p><a href="http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/11/vinod-khosla/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;09&#x2F;11&#x2F;vinod-khosla&#x2F;</a>
yashgover 11 years ago
I think it is definitely fraudulent on the website&#x27;s part, but I am intrigued by the fact that you girlfriend did not notice the charge on her card for 8 months? May be she was away from her home and busy with her studies but didn&#x27;t keep a tab on her finances? Where the money is coming and where it is going? Didn&#x27;t she get her credit card statement in email or she can&#x27;t see it online on her card issuer&#x27;s website?<p>I really don&#x27;t understand how can one fail to notice a monthly charge, month after month after month. I think this kind of gross financial negligence on part of the customers is what bolsters these fraudsters and their business model of charging a monthly subscription.
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jacquesmover 11 years ago
This thread and it&#x27;s companion thread about the class action suit against justfab have just been pushed right off the homepage. Too bad, it seems like it is a thing that can&#x27;t be spread far and wide enough.
Pxtlover 11 years ago
See, this is why PayPal manages to skim off the top of everybody&#x27;s purchases and make bank - I no longer trust any online purchase company with my credit card information, because credit card companies don&#x27;t do a great job at preventing this stuff except for after-the-fact chargeback mess (which is bad for both consumers and vendors).<p>Paypal et al force this kind of agreement to be properly explained up-front. Paypal&#x27;s monthly recurring thing is clumsy and half-broken, but it&#x27;s not unclear and can&#x27;t trick you.
protezover 11 years ago
What an innovative company that wraps up a questionable practice into an yet another good looking shop with &quot;amazing growth.&quot; The VCs might have taken that as an innovation.
dleskovover 11 years ago
This is why I keep the balance on the debit card I use online at $1.xx, trading the inconvenience of having to transfer funds to it before each transaction for peace of mind.
stef25over 11 years ago
She didn&#x27;t check her credit card statements in 8 months?
rmsover 11 years ago
They must have unusually low chargeback rates. It doesn&#x27;t seem like they are that bad of a deal in the scheme of purchasing clubs like this, right?
fartfaceover 11 years ago
this has the potential to be much worse than a shady checkout screen. for every vip charge they aren&#x27;t even shipping a real product. they give credits. if a company files bankruptcy those credits and gift cards will be worthless because it is considered a liability. so they don&#x27;t even have to keep a real inventory (which would be an asset with real value).<p>(1) get funding (2) ? (3) bankruptcy (4) profit
Tichyover 11 years ago
I think it&#x27;s a scam, however I&#x27;d like to point out that by virtue of being honest, it could be avoided. If you are honest, you&#x27;ll think &quot;this is too good to be true&quot;, and rather than thinking &quot;ha ha, fools, they&#x27;ll make a minus on this and I get cheap shoes&quot; you&#x27;ll look closely for a catch.<p>That&#x27;s not an excuse for the company at all, of course.
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tzsover 11 years ago
Interesting that I don&#x27;t see these kind of complaints at this level about book clubs.<p>The most popular book clubs all use a negative response model, where when you sign up you get a certain number of books at a great price, and agree to buy a certain number of additional books at the regular club price.<p>They send you a monthly list of books available that month, with one marked as that month&#x27;s featured selection.<p>If you do nothing, you automatically receive the featured selection and are charged for it at the regular club price. If you do not want the featured selection, you tell them via a return card or their website.<p>An example is the Science Fiction Book Club [1]. The front page has a link to a &quot;how it works&quot; page [2]. Note that the &quot;how it works&quot; page doesn&#x27;t actually tell you about the negative response aspect. It tells you to read the membership agreement for complete details and links to the agreement [3]. It is in there that you get the details of automatically receiving the featured selection.<p>(Things are similar for the Book of the Month Club, the Scientific American Book Club, and a whole bunch of others--because they are all actually run by the same company, and are using the same template for their web sites. The Columbia House DVD Club too).<p>Compare this to the JustFab page. That too has a &quot;how it works&quot; page [4], which is linked to from the front page. That page tells you about the negative response part.<p>The front page of the book club does say, when touting the initial book offer, that it is &quot;with membership&quot;, so it is clear on the front page that you are going to probably have to sign up for some kind of membership to get that deal. The JustFab page does not make it clear that you must become a member to purchase.<p>With the book club, if you fail to make your negative response, you get a book not of your choosing. With JustFab, you get a credit that you can use on an item of your choosing. My guess is that the vast majority of JustFab&#x27;s customers buy several times a year, and so they are able to fairly quickly put the credit to use.<p>So why does JustFab draw so much more fire, when the seem ostensibly quite similar to the book club? I wonder if the fact that their subscription if for credits makes a big difference? The book club pushes a featured selection each month, presumably something they have made a volume deal for in order to get a good price. For this to work, they really need their featured selections to sell well. With JustFab, the credit is generic. If they need to push some specific item in order to support a good price for it, selling credits does not help. Would people find JustFab more acceptable if instead of a credit, they actually sent you an item once a month?<p>[1] <a href="http://www.sfbc.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sfbc.com</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.sfbc.com/howitworks" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sfbc.com&#x2F;howitworks</a><p>[3] <a href="http://www.sfbc.com/membership-agreement" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sfbc.com&#x2F;membership-agreement</a><p>[4] <a href="http://www.justfab.com/how-justfab-works.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.justfab.com&#x2F;how-justfab-works.htm</a>
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thenewoneover 11 years ago
Here&#x27;s the Form D for the latest JustFab raise: <a href="http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1531017/000153101713000002/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sec.gov&#x2F;Archives&#x2F;edgar&#x2F;data&#x2F;1531017&#x2F;0001531017130...</a><p>Confirms JH (see above..) sits on the Board and represents Matrix
useflyerover 11 years ago
I will never accept venture funding from anyone who has invested in JustFab. Investors are the gatekeepers, and in this case have failed their moral obligation.<p><a href="https://twitter.com/rleshner/status/383675138153017344" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;rleshner&#x2F;status&#x2F;383675138153017344</a>
purpleDover 11 years ago
While it seems to me like this is a scam, the bottom line is that everyone&#x27;s interpretation of the communication of the terms of service is subjective.<p>The site could stay exactly as is and not be a scam if they let you at any time &quot;return&quot; your $39.95 shoe credits for a full refund, no questions asked.
brianmcconnellover 11 years ago
This is why I have my credit&#x2F;debit cards cancelled and re-issued once or twice a year. I can&#x27;t be bothered to spend several hours on the phone trying to cancel scumbag&#x2F;parasite operators like this (AOL was notorious for this back in the day).
cicloonover 11 years ago
I don&#x27;t see this different from what MS used to do with Xbox Live subscriptions in summer... at first the charged $1 for one month, but you have to cancel the subscription before the month ends in order to not being charged again.
alain94040over 11 years ago
Taken straight from Matrix Partners&#x27;s website (investor in JustFab): &quot;Don and I are aggressive guys, and Matrix approaches our business the same way. - Adam Goldenberg, JustFab&quot;<p>Choose investors that match your ethics I guess.
zbyover 11 years ago
How can I short this stock?
mattsfreyover 11 years ago
Nobody seems to have mentioned the fact that a well known celebrity, Kimora Lee Simmons, is the president and creative director of this company, no doubt a huge factor in attracting VC attention.
mkr-hnover 11 years ago
This will be a great sample for the study a few years from now that tries to identify the source of the next boom and bust. I hear the real estate market is heating up globally.
batemanesqueover 11 years ago
guess it&#x27;s time for HN to wise up to the fact that investors aren&#x27;t just benevolent gods handing out opportunities from above
ethanazirover 11 years ago
meetup.com misled me into a recurring charge. i thought I would need renew the next month. guess i didnt read the fine print right.
guillocheover 11 years ago
voted up the topic and let more people be aware of it to avoid traps.
calimacover 11 years ago
Pay attention. There is no solution to this dark design short of caveat emptor. I agree, justfab.com are using deceptive design practices; dark design frustrates me as well as many who understand that it is designed to take advantage of the less sophisticated consumers.<p>Why did your girlfriend not look at her credit card bill for 8 months?<p>Godaddy.com was one of the first to cross the line to unethical dark shopping cart design. what about their domain registration privacy product. It is free for the first year but impossible to cancel.
contextualover 11 years ago
Let&#x27;s face it, the owners and investors of this scam are likely engaging in criminal behaviour and should be charged. Have the police been notified?
onurozkanover 11 years ago
launder all the moneys!<p>just kiddin.
ds_over 11 years ago
Amazon do basically the same thing with their prime membership, although they do refund if you notice and complain early enough (offer a free month and then start charging unless you opt out, whilst making it far from obvious that you have to do so).
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