The ticketing trap: don’t let the curtain fall on your donors’ trust

An arts organisation, disability support network or similar small entity that wants to sell tickets or take donations might find itself using a platform with “dark patterns” functionality that pushes customers into paying for extra donations, even for entirely different organisations.

Keys’ warning came on the cusp of Scams Awareness Week, led by the National Anti-Scam Centre.

Of ticketing dangers, Keys said, “These small organisations might not have the skills in-house or might have brought in a volunteer to run the ticketing. They don’t know their online systems well enough to realise that there are these dark patterns. The one that I’ve seen a lot is where the consumer, when they’re purchasing a ticket, doesn’t say they want to donate any money; it just automatically gets added to the total at the end of the ticket. It’s often a small amount, so there’s a high risk that the consumer doesn’t even notice that it’s been added to their bill, or they just think it’s something like an administrative fee. It’s been added to that total amount.”

Another easy-to-miss dark pattern is one where the customer is signed up to making regular donations, rather than the single donation they had intended to make.

“The one I see most commonly is a one-off charge and it’s usually quite a small amount like $5,” Keys said. “The issue for the consumer is more they’re feeling that they have been tricked than the actual loss of money, but it can also be if it’s a subscription. It may be that they want to donate, say, $20, and they don’t realise that when they sign up, then in the fine print, they’re actually agreeing to an ongoing commitment to provide money for that charity.”

Reputational damage potential

For charities and similar well-meaning organisations, the reputational damage from such platform functionality can be much more significant than the benefit of any extra money raised, assuming the money does go back to them.

“A lot of the organisations I see, their core focus isn’t necessarily how to go about funding and they might be small, which means that they may not have the skills in-house to develop the online platforms that they need, particularly for ticketing. They might be relying on expertise that they bring in as a volunteer, just trusting that that person is making the right judgments. They probably don’t ask and don’t even think to look,” she said.

“Because their focus is not on those online ticketing systems or an online subscription for fundraising that they use, it means that the people responsible for developing those things, whether an outsourced organisation or somebody in-house, is not someone who’s actually escalating the issues to the board. It becomes such a norm in some settings that they don’t think to even question it. It doesn’t get escalated to the board because they look around them, and they say, oh well, everybody else is doing this, so it must be okay.”