Have you ever happened to you while browsing in the net, to see on the web page you are visiting, an ad with a discounted price for something you wanted to buy and you were watching the other day in an online store? You quickly enter the site, you see that the price is specially configured for you and you order it.
It’s a happy ending because you still buy something you need.
But there’s another option. Your kid’s playing on your smart phone some game. At some point, you realise that your phone bill has swollen. Turns out some innocent electronic champion was buying boosters for the game. He could not stand the temptation and went shopping. Just EUR 2.5. The same happens the following week, then again, and finally there’s a serious conversation.
Don't scold the kid too much. Sometimes you can slip and buy some gadget you have seen in Facebook. It will appeared on the right, in the advertising wall several times, and you will like it. Meanwhile, they will reduce the price from EUR 27 to EUR 17 and in 3 days it will arrive in your office. Only then, it will turn out you do not need it that much, and on top of that, it’ll be on another site for EUR 15.
Tell your spouce not to scold you too much. This is not because you are an unreasonable user, but because we humans have so-called bounded rationality. We are simply not machines that make only well thought-out decisions based on precise criteria, but we make a holistic choice based on information that we currently have. We have a short period of concentration, opportunities, time, resource, and we use so-called heuristic methods- common rules, based on which we make decisions. However, during our choices, we are rationally bounded by different types of cognitive errors. Here are some of them that we often make as users:
Of course, it is human to make mistakes. The problem is that the professionals who create the smart algorithms of online stores use exactly these errors, and when the software collects information corresponding to a certain behavioural pattern, suggesting that we are prone to a cognitive error, they set small traps for us and make us spend money.
This is not so scary, because after all, the control of this process is in our hands. We make the final decision. We just need to be aware when something like this happens to us, to stop for a moment and think. Only then to make the purchase decision.
Let's not forget that we could make the best use of what artificial intelligence does for us. It saves us endless digging in the web by selecting for us suggestions that we may like. Being informed about the price reduction is a good thing, especially if you have been following the prices of the product you are willing to buy.
But even if you make a mistake, you always have the right and the option to cancel the service or return the goods within 14 days. This right is given to you by the Consumer Protection Law. As long as the product / service is not made especially for you, because it is difficult to re-sell such a thing after the return. If you are hesitant about something after the purchase, you are not satisfied, you feel cheated, you can always file a complaint to the seller. Even if that doesn't help, contact our ADR Centre - NAIS. The NAIS platform will forward your complaint to the trader and invite him to resolve your dispute in it. Mediators will try to help you find a mutually beneficial way out of your situation. If that doesn't work, you can always file a complaint with the Consumers’ Protection Commission- CPC.
In the following articles from the "Consumer Reader", you will learn what situations you can find yourself in, succumbing to cognitive errors. Follow them on the NAIS profiles on LinkedIn and Facebook, as well as on the NEWS page on nais.bg, in order to better protect your wallet and interests as a user.
Published on March 2, 2020. Back in the News