Conflict of interest note: Windscribe is commercial open source VPN service provider based in Canada.
Why is ProtonVPN lying about running price sensitivity testing on their customers?
Their pricing page gives you one of two prices at random. This is A/B testing, but instead they’re saying the price difference is due to remnants of a sale.
Their own code says otherwise.
Price sensitivity testing is when a company quotes different people different prices for the same product to see if sales hold steady at the higher price. Not to be confused with adaptive or dynamic pricing which uses your personal data to adjust prices to you.
People on ProtonVPN’s subreddit noticed they were being quoted different prices for the same thing. ProtonVPN’s General Manager replied that the differences were due to remnants of a recent sale that wasn’t “universally refreshed”.
This was a lie, and we have proof.
That proof is their own code sorting every visitor into a price variant. It’s labeled right in the HTML tag:
ab-test:VpnHpAndPricingVpnPlusSensibility300726
Which in plain English is:
VPN Homepage and Pricing for the VPN Plus plan, Sensibility test tagged 30/07/26.
The price continues to flip-flop as of writing this. Expired sales don’t do this.
Something like a Cloudflare-cached page doesn’t add price sensitivity A/B tests to your HTML code.
Proton, if you want to run A/B tests, at least don’t lie about it to your users.
Another comment by Peterson: https://safereddit.com/r/ProtonVPN/comments/1vhcp0c/proton_vpn_charges_more_when_using_safari_vs/p2qh8wl/#p2qh8wl
This topic went very strange very fast - so let me expand and clarify:
Proton VPN is $9.99 per month or $83.88 per year. We used to have an introductory offer for two years at $4.49 per month. There had been a 2-year intro price of $2.99 per month that had been running for a while on some back-to-back campaigns. That price ended at the end of July, and since then it has been $3.49 per month.
As mentioned above, the $2.77 and $3.23 price points in the screenshots were an unintentional calculation error that should have been fixed on Friday.
At the end of a long-standing sale period, we often try an A/B run of the old and new pricing on the website during the transition to see if anything has changed. As explained to answer the speculation on the Reddit post (and as confirmed by others who independently checked it) there is no “adaptive pricing” - it does not vary by browser, OS, etc and is 100% randomised.
So for the past several days some people will still have seen the old cheaper $2.99 price. I had been of the impression that the A/B was already concluded and there must have been some caching going on, but it is actually due to end on Monday, when 100% of people should be seeing the $3.49 intro price.
There was no denial that we were doing an A/B evaluation of maintaining the lower price - even though it would not have been sustainable to keep the $2.99 price point going in the longer term. Indeed, on Friday I had confirmed to someone commenting on the original post that it was indeed a simple A/B that they were seeing. Unhelpfully, my reply there turns out to have been automodded for linking back to the r/ProtonVPN thread.
They could have simply come out and admitted that it was an A/B test, and most people wouldn’t have cared either way.
Lol, they literally wrote “ab-test” on it and lied about it? It can’t get any more ridiculous
Another one bites the dust.
I think the only problem here really, is the lie about it.
This is a huge problem. When Amazon.com got caught running price tests on their customers, Jeff Bezos himself apologized for the mistake.
How far have we fallen that Proton, a company that needs to be transparent to earn its users trust, can be this opaque… And then when they’ve finally been caught, lie about it?
If I got overcharged and found out later, I would be more than a little upset. In fact, I’ve refunded a Proton plan before due to a similar pricing mixup. And the requirements to refund are borderline draconian, including a bold"Refunds can only be requested once per user"
I don’t like any of this, but A-B price testing is VERY different from individual targeted pricing, which is what Amazon was doing.
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You didn’t not say it, too. ☝🏼
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You said it was the only problem.
Yep. My problem is the crux of the matter. Nailed it.
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The worst response about that whole incident isn’t even the fact they posted what’s in your screenshot.
The worst part is that their official response was to boost an anonymous Medium post that alleged Proton had done nothing wrong… while ignoring the fact the entire message in that screenshot even exists.
better 🗃️
🤣 so much @ð capipropSo, par for the “Democrats”, then. 🙄
Is that really the president of proton’s account on Reddit? lol Jesus
“General Manager” 🫡🤪
Accents you can read!🤣😂 thenks fe d lafs😂
Damn, that’s fucked up. I think they do a good job overall but their entire fucking marketing team needs to be fired. Constant ads, and now this shit? I only use them because they combine a lot of different services under the same subscription but more and more that seems not worth it…
I guess I should switch to Windscribe…
Proton is a non profit which is why I hope they change the hidden price change strategy.
But then again Open AI was founded as a nonprofit which shows how much that label actually matters.
Proton actually has the exact same structure as OpenAI (and Mozilla), where there is a for-profit company, Proton AG, and a non-profit one, The Proton Foundation. Both of which have done a pretty good job of demonstrating why that doesn’t work.
YouTuber Reject Convenience actually believes that Mozilla handles this structure differently and more responsibly than Proton does. I don’t know if I follow their reasoning, or give Mozilla a pass, but the video is at least worth checking out if you’re curious.
I left proton last year after realizing I was putting all my shit into one basket again
If you don’t mind, what did you end up switching to? And what was your experience with the migration? I am asking because I have been thinking the same for some time now.
Peergos.net for distributed, encrypted cloud storage
Posteo.com for email
Windscribe for VPN
Aegis for authenticator
KeePassXC for passwords
Migrating is always hit or miss on ease. I didn’t find it too horrible, but I may not need everything others need.
I scored a lifetime Windscribe Pro plan for a really good price almost a decade ago, and never had any complaints about their service.
It felt like a gamble at the time because I had never heard of them, but it has been great to watch them grow in such a positive direction like this over the years.
I know it’s compelling, but it is not worth putting all your trust in only one location. I mean, you’re here on a decentralised network, so I’m sure you get it. And I hate to bear ill news but many developers of good-willed, for-the-people products so frequently betray their patrons’ trust that it’s also important to keep the ability to move to the next pure initiative.
Ever since I learned that Apple’s ecosystem is designed to keep you in by buying everything with them - mainly interoperability - and given the price vs performance is (or WAS, between generations 1-16 of iPhone and every Mac) much lower than every other competitor, I learned that companies attempting a walled-garden were untrustworthy.
you’re here on a decentralised network, so I’m sure you get it
Yes and much like here, everything I have in Proton I can export and import elsewhere.
I never trusted proton in the first place
I’m with proton, but happy to fly off if needed once subs are due.
Scummy fucks - just begs the question what else is going on that we don’t yet know about?
Um...
A lot. 🤷🏼♂️
I asked on a previous post about this: how is this a conflict of interest? Did you mean it’s shady marketing? By saying something about the competition that seemingly is true?
How something is framed, is different from what it actually is, even if the background is the same.
In this case, there isn’t anything notably shady about running A/B tests or deactivating a promotion using a feature flag that doesn’t reach some instances in time, I personally have run into issues like this many times.
Now, Windscribe is taking a single HTML tag as undeniable proof that Proton is trying to screw their customers. They published their “proof” in four tweets and left it there with no further explanation.
And it’s not like this is the first time they used amplified media to attract users from other platforms. They also published a satirical statement about Mullvad back when the political donation scandal came out, and a They are extremely active on social media, especially Twitter and Reddit.
If this doesn’t look like scary tactics and conflict of interest, I don’t know what it is.
It definitely seems to go against the spirit of how the company is being promoted.
They sell themselves as being user-oriented. There’s a million things these companies could do to make money off of your data, and this one claims to sacrifice all of that for the good of the user.
Now it turns out they are using shady anti-user marketing practices, which is almost to be expected for a for-profit company in this day and age. It does not align with a model that claims to have the user’s best interest at heart though, which is how they promote themselves.
Anyone who trusted them was a dumbfuck.
I feel so fucking vindicated never trusting them every single time I learn something about them.
Which company are you talking about?
Proton
Be aware I dissociate from FHF
By saying something about the competition that seemingly is true?
Correct, a competitor has the CoI of wanting the consumers of a competitor, so the source of the claim maybe in conflict with your actual interest.I have completely claimed to dissociate from all these parties, as my interests lie in darknet proxies.
If the claim is false. Is it?
Or is it because they posted about it rather than a link from a third party about it? The facts are the facts, if they’re valid, no matter where they come from. Even from a competitor.
I think you’re looking too far into this. Does Windscribe have a conflict of interest here? Objectively, yes: Information which is bad for Proton VPN is good for them.
Does that imply their information is incorrect or misleading? No, and I really don’t think OP meant to imply that. OP is just being responsible - it is always more honest to disclose a conflict of interest than to not, even when the information given is objectively verifiable, as it is here (I did do the same incognito test as in OP’s video and it did in fact do exactly the same price swapping for me).
All OP is doing in noting the CoI is being responsible. Knowing a conflict of interest exists doesn’t imply the information is unreliable or even misleading, but it does mean you should be a bit more objective or skeptical than you otherwise might be - that you should go the extra mile to check the information, like checking the code the post talks about or running the incognito test from the video. Or, especially, about any subjective opinions mixed into the facts - like speculations about motives or intentionality, or how “bad” certain facts may be.
And I think that’s especially relevant when talking about companies like Proton or Mozilla, which are often the target of (mostly, not always) undeserved criticism and mistrust on this site.
My own take here is: Yes, the post is objectively accurate. They are clearly doing A/B testing on different discount rates for their VPN Plus plan. And yes the PetersonProton post on reddit is inaccurate, and calling this unintended or accidental is objectively false based on the evidence in OP’s post. And after looking him up, he’s basically the highest ranking employee in the Proton VPN division, so he definitely should have known better. But I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. A/B testing prices at random isn’t inherently bad or deceptive - the only story here is that Peterson either lied about it or was grossly misinformed about his own product, neither of which is a great look. But neither of them say to me that Proton itself is a bad company, especially considering all the genuine good they’ve done overall.
Also just to avoid being a hypocrite: My own conflict of interest is that I use ProtonMail as a free user as my primary (but not only) email provider, and use Proton Authenticator too, though I’m potentially looking to switch away from that one. I don’t use any other Proton products, including Proton VPN, though I used and abandoned Standard Notes in the past. I also believe that the general vitriol toward Proton regarding their CEO is largely a gigantic overreaction that often relies on making incredibly disingenuous or misinformed accusations - like I think there’s exactly 0 basis to consider the company Trump- or MAGA-aligned.
Thank you for a good breakdown of the topic. By all means caveat emptor in this situation, but the openness of where and what the issue is helps in separating this as some other company’s PR move to win over anyone. It helps to be a possible result, but the post is a bit more in depth than “they’re bad, we’re better”. If an informed customer comes over to your product, that’s win-win.
B4 you continue replying to me, read everything I have replied to, esp. the Wikipedia entries I gave you.
It is precisely the fact that no neutral third party discovered this, but a competitor instead, that in lies the conflict. A simple reverse psychology to price fix could be at play here, that I am not going get myself involved in.
This is my third and last warning to dissociate me from their accusations. I only came to show a FHF user how to crosspost when URLs are incorrect, and !privacy@lemmy.dbzer0.comI am not going to educate you on ethics and CoI further. Find someone else to teach you ethics, CoI, and politics.
I’m sure you don’t care, but if you sound like a combination pocket-mulching, militant-vegan, cycling purist, those are the only people who are going to hear what you have to actually say.
That might be your target market, in which case, congrats i suppose.
That level of condescension and pretension is pretty difficult to overcome, especially in a text only format, intentional or not.
…i don’t know what that means?
Looked familiar though, so i looked him up, is there some significance to a picture of hegseth pointing ?
Kinda seems like a reward for more privacy-minded folk that are willing to go the extra mile to investigate this sort of thing.
Am I the only one who doesn’t think this is that big a deal? Its weird to deny it when directly questioned about it, but what’s wrong with market testing pricing changes?
I don’t use Proton, but this looks like different prices for a discount off the normal price. Like handing out $5 coupons at the one supermarket compared to $7 coupons at another.
Yes, its used to A/B test what users are willing to pay, but so what?
Proton doesnt have a great track record when it comes to the truth in general. Since them being a privacy focused vendor, it becomes a point of contention for most sane customers
Them lying about it is just fuel for the dumpster fire that proton is
Yeah, people have a hate-boner against the best of companies all the time.
