Mega sale will start tonight at 12 o’clock: E-commerce companies play with your mind with 10 clever tricks, your pocket will be cut with the slightest mistake.

As soon as the festive season has started, the bugle of mega sale has been sounded on the major e-commerce platforms of the country. Mobile screens are filled with glittering advertisements like ‘Sale live tonight at 12’, ‘Biggest discount of the year’ and ‘Up to 80% off’. Consumers think that they are getting the cheapest deals by using their intelligence and fingers, but the reality is quite the opposite. E-commerce companies do not just sell goods, but they also take the help of invisible patterns of consumer behaviour, neuro-marketing and digital design, which are called ‘dark patterns’ in the language of technology. When you open the app at 12 o’clock in the night in a sleepy state, your logical mind is a little slow and the algorithms of the companies are fully active. If you have not already understood these 10 psychological and technical tricks, then your hard-earned money is sure to suffer unwanted expenses.

The moment the sale starts, the screen flashes red—’Only 15 minutes left until deal ends’ or ‘Only 2 pieces left in stock’. This technology triggers human psychology’s ‘Fear of Missing Out’ (FOMO). The reality is that thousands of units are stocked in warehouses and a new timer starts as soon as the countdown ends. This artificial urgency does not give the customer a chance to think, compare or read reviews, leading to panic buying of unnecessary items.

You see a great offer of ₹999 on a product and add it to your cart, but when you reach the final payment gateway, the bill is ₹1,180. This is technically called ‘drip pricing’. In this, initially only the basic price is shown, while later items like ‘Platform Fee’, ‘Secure Packaging Fee’, ‘Convenience Charge’ and ‘Delivery Charge’ are added piecemeal. Since the customer has spent a lot of time and mental energy in selecting the product, he hesitates to cancel the order at the last moment even after seeing the additional fee of ₹100-₹200.

When you go to checkout, many times the checkboxes for Accidental Damage Protection of ₹49, Charity Donation of ₹10 or 1 Year Warranty are already ticked in the cart. If the customer does not check the final summary of the bill carefully and makes the payment directly by entering the OTP, then these unwanted services are automatically added to his bill. This is called ‘basket sneaking’, through which companies make additional recovery of crores of rupees from lakhs of customers.

The human brain takes the data it sees for the first time as context, which is called the ‘anchoring effect’ in behavioral economics. A few weeks before the sale, the maximum retail price (MRP) of many products is increased on paper. For example, the MRP of a headphone whose normal market price is ₹2,000 is shown as ₹6,999, it is crossed out in red and it is written – ‘Sale only at ₹1,999 (71% OFF)’. The customer thinks he is getting a historic savings of ₹5,000, when in reality the product is being sold at its normal price.

When an additional warranty, membership or combo offer pops up on the screen, the ‘Yes’ button is in large, green or blue bold letters. The option to say ‘No’ instead of the usual ‘No thanks’ is written – ‘No, I don’t like saving money’ or ‘No, I want to risk the security of my phone’. This ‘Confirm Shaming’ technique creates guilt in the subconscious mind of the customer, which leads to weak-willed people taking up unwanted subscriptions.

At the bottom of the product page, it’s written in small print – ‘540 people bought this in the last 1 hour’ or ‘Rahul from Delhi just booked this item’. This technique takes advantage of the ‘herd mentality’ of human nature. One thinks that when so many people are buying it, the deal must be profitable. In many cases these figures are pre-written coding loops rather than live data, meant only to cause panic within you.

Everyone gets attracted after seeing the advertisement ‘Bring old phone and get flat discount of ₹15,000’. But as soon as you enter the IMEI number of your old phone and point out a slight scratch on the body, the exchange value jumps to ₹2,500. Additionally, ‘no-cost EMI’ is not actually completely free. In this, the interest charged by the bank is reduced in the form of discount, but the 18% GST on that interest and the EMI processing fee of ₹ 199 to ₹ 299 is directly added to the customer’s credit card statement.

In some apps, Prime or VIP membership is designed on the checkout page in such a way that it seems difficult to proceed without selecting it. This is called the ‘roach motel’ pattern—where getting in is a click, but getting out becomes a maze. You take a trial for fast delivery for ₹ 99, but after the sale ends, it gets auto-debited and starts deducting ₹ 999 every month. When you go to cancel it, the cancellation option is hidden after 10 internal pages in Settings.

Everyone likes the glitter of ‘10% instant discount on credit card of such and such bank’. But to avail this offer, a condition of ‘minimum cart value’ of ₹ 5,000 or ₹ 7,500 is often imposed. Suppose the goods you need are worth ₹4,200. In order to get the card discount of ₹500, you add unnecessary items worth ₹1,000 to the cart. The mathematics came out that in the greed of saving ₹ 500, you lost ₹ 500 extra from your pocket.

Instead of ‘7 Days Returnable’, ‘7 Days Service Center Replacement Only’ is written in very fine letters at the bottom of many electronics and lifestyle products sold during the sale. This means that if the product turns out to be defective or you don’t like it, your money won’t be refunded. You will have to visit the company’s service center or get the product replaced. In the excitement of the sale, customers forget to read this fine line and later regret it.

• Use price history trackers: Before purchasing any large electronics or expensive item, use tools like ‘Keepa’ or ‘PriceHistory’ to see what the actual lowest price was in the last 3 to 6 months.

• Follow the Wishlist strictly: Before the sale starts, make a list of only the things you really need. Don’t click on any pop-up deals outside the list.

• Read the checkout summary line-by-line: Before proceeding for payment, check that there is no delivery fee, handling charge or donation box ticked in the final breakdown.

• Adopt a 24-hour cool-off rule: If you like any non-essential item, add it to the cart and leave it for 24 hours. In 90% of the cases, the impulse to buy goes away on its own by the next morning.

• Know the rules of Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA): The Indian government has imposed a legal ban on the use of these deceptive ‘dark patterns’ on e-commerce sites. If you are cheated on any platform, you can lodge an online complaint on ‘National Consumer Helpline’ (NCH 1915).