Meetup.com account creation
meetup.com is a platform where anyone can join different groups of people and make new connections.
The account creation involves a dark pattern to drive new users to subscribe to Meetup+ instead of choosing the free plan. To create a new account, the user first fills out their personal details, including their email address. After clicking on the link in the confirmation email, the user follows two more steps before being shown the "Join Meetup+" page.
The "Join Meetup+" page contains two big buttons labelled "Try $2.99/month" and "Try for free". The latter does not create a free account, but starts a free trial of the Meetup+ subscription. There is no mention of how long the trial lasts. Only when clicking on "Try for free", the user is forwarded to a payment page that prominently shows an amount of "$0/month", and below it, a smaller text "Free for 7 days". By default, the subscription is set to "Monthly", which according to the refund policy is the only subscription for which a refund cannot be requested:
Meetup will issue refunds for renewal payments if requested within 30 days of the subscription’s auto-renewal. This does not apply to monthly subscriptions.
To create a completely free account without subscriptions, the user instead has to click on the inline link "Continue with free plan", which is overshadowed by the much bigger Meetup+ subscription buttons.