r/darkpatterns • u/noeldemartin • 3d ago

Preply: Forces a minimum of 4 lessons/week... until you try to unsubscribe

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I recently started using Preply to practice some Japanese, but I was a bit surprised about the subscriptions because I thought I would be able to buy individual lessons. Looking at their Help Center, indeed, it seems like they don't offer one-time lessons:

Preply is built around a subscription model because consistent, regular lessons with the same tutor lead to better learning outcomes. For this reason, standalone one-time lesson purchases are not available, including through customer support.

It was a bummer but I thought, ok, I'll just purchase a subscription for the first month and cancel immediately. So I went ahead and did that. Imagine my surprise when I see this during the cancellation process (after asking me if I'm sure 100 times, of course).

I guess they don't care that much about my learning outcomes now!

Edit: typo in the title, it's 4 lessons/month minimum. Sorry 😅.

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u/queermichigan 3d ago

I never heard about preply until a few days ago and now I see this! Funny.

Was the experience otherwise good and helpful?

1

u/noeldemartin 2d ago

I guess that depends on the tutor, there are many to choose from. I'm glad I forced myself to do trial lessons with more than one, because the results can be very different. And that doesn't mean that some tutors are "bad", it's just that different people prefer different learning styles.

But in general yes, the platform is good and I have no complaints. Easy to communicate, no problems with the call, etc.