Contributed by: kellyseal on Wednesday, March 20 2024 @ 08:15 am
Last modified on Wednesday, March 20 2024 @ 08:21 am
Dating app Tinder has agreed to provide more transparency about its pricing for premium services to users in the EU. The agreement follows a probe from the European Union’s consumer watchdog agencies when complaints surfaced from daters who were charged different fees for the same service.
According to Reuters[*1] , Tinder agreed to better inform users about its pricing, specifically the personalized discounts it offered. Users who showed little interest in purchasing one of the dating app’s standard premium services were later offered personalized discounts to get them to pay for Tinder. It was also disclosed that the app was using automation to identify these users and to personalize the prices for them.
In fact, a study in Sweden in 2022 showed that Tinder was offering 36 different “personalized” price levels, ranging from about $3 U.S. to as much as $36 per month for the same premium service, which prompted the investigation.
According to news site Yen[*2] , the European Commission said in its statement about the matter that it found "found that Tinder applied such personalised prices without informing consumers, which is in violation of EU consumer law.”
There was a two-year long discussion between Tinder and the Consumer Protection Corporation Network (CPC), the Swedish Consumer Agency, and the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets in order to come to an agreement, according to Reuters.
Tinder agreed to inform users that the discounts they are presented with are personalized and determined by automated means. They also agreed to disclose to the consumers why they are being offered the discounts.
The company acknowledged the news and told Reuters: "Personalized discount offers are applied to customers evenly across the board and offered based on a variety of factors, including for example to customers that have indeed already purchased or otherwise indicated an interest in premium offerings.”
This agreement comes in the wake of Tinder’s recent struggles to attract new customers to its app, after the company experienced a decrease in new downloads during the past few quarters. However, revenues have managed to stay up thanks to pricing for premium features and its new VIP service.
The agreement extends to users in the European Union, whose watchdogs said they will monitor the company’s commitment to transparency and fine them if it doesn’t keep its end of the agreement.
"Personalisation techniques nullify the possibility to compare prices, effectively disempowering consumers in their purchasing decisions," EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders said in a statement, according to Reuters. "This is why EU consumer law now requires that traders disclose whether their price is personalised through automated means," he said.
For more on this dating service, check out our Tinder app review.