This should be marked as the solution.
To be honest I have to agree with @approvalcartridge. A/B testing objectively isn’t adaptive/dynamic pricing nor price discrimination. This is effectively the same as a targeted or limited-time sale.
Also, in my opinion the Proton manager was clearly replying to the claim that Proton VPN charges more when using Safari vs Firefox Focus like the title of the original Reddit post said. That claim was completely false, and he said so.
That he didn’t take the time to explain every possible reason you might be paying more or less than someone else is very plausible. I mean, he probably did know what was actually happening in the screenshots, and explaining what it was would’ve been helpful yeah, I’m just saying I understand why he focused on responding to the most pressing/immediate seeming question at hand (whether browser choice affected pricing) and maybe assumed (apparently wrongly) random A/B testing wouldn’t be a huge controversy.
You’re almost never paying the same price for a subscription as other people, I’m sure I’m paying less for Proton than a lot of people just by virtue of having an older account/subscription.
I am curious whether the price in checkout matched whichever offer you selected though.
12 Likes
Thanks for that, I hoped to not be insane. 
The third quote I mentioned directly aligns with your last sentence, where PetersonProton said (emphasis by me):
In hindsight - yes indeed, taking the time to say what it was, rather than just what it was not would have saved a lot of hassle.
That was what made me take a closer look at the wording.
3 Likes
who would be 11 angry man a who is one just?
who would be 11 angry man a who is one just?
Jonah is the just man versus the all rest of us who are many-more-than-11 angry men.
I’m mostly joking, but only mostly.
Also, in my opinion the Proton manager was clearly replying to the claim that Proton VPN charges more when using Safari vs Firefox Focus like the title of the original Reddit post said. That claim was completely false, and he said so.
This makes a lot of sense. It’s a common behavior for a busy person to respond to the most important part and then move on. It’s good this was clarified since lying is a very serious accusation that should not be thrown around without clear evidence.
At the same time, if they used consistent and transparent pricing policy like some others, there would not be this type of misunderstanding in the first place. A grandfathered in price is not the same as an AB price, one time new user only sale price, etc. Plus how they try to make the discount for subscribing multiple months look like a sale, even folding actual sales into the percentage.
This type of behavior in a less serious situation will lead to many being inclined to assume the worst in a more serious one.
Off topic: While I was at it, I also took a look at the claim that Proton called Monero a shitcoin.
Here is my comment from the other thread that came to be after this one.
TLDR: I did not see any evidence of Proton calling Monero a shitcoin ever. They replied to a tweet that mentioned “shitcoins” and merely reused the word. Publicity might have came from Techlore’s video, possibly not intentional.
1 Like
It always surprises me when I come to this site and see people pushing/falling for the algorithmic rage bait that melts the brains of Reddit users.
People are claiming to base their decisions on something as important as privacy over an alleged $6/year price difference from a promotional offer. Most companies are continuously running promotional offers to acquire new customers, some are better than others.
In June Proton ran a promotion for Duo for $138/year, which is less than Unlimited at $13/month. Did I go on an internet rampage about price discrimination? No, I took advantage of the savings and went on with my life.
I think some people are just addicted to outrage.
6 Likes
Sure, people made it bigger than it was, but the crux of it was surely that (after Windscribe just claimed it) they assumed Proton lied about it.
(They did not. For anyone curious: my reasoning above)
1 Like
Lying and deceiving are different things. That comment that there was no dynamic pricing was not a lie, but was deceptive. The literal English-language definition of “dynamic pricing” is actually what was going on. One should assume that outside specialist spaces, the majority of readers do not know industry-specific lingo and will interpret such phrases literally. In that context, the comment was deceptive, especially since the Proton rep did not follow up with any real attempt to explain what was going on. They were happy to say, “no dynamic pricing,” but apparently couldn’t also say, “actually AB testing.” They weren’t worried about the use of industry lingo, clearly, so they could have simply left it at that. I find the phone typing excuse to be pretty weak as I’ve also been typing out these messages from my phone while on vacation 
1 Like
Glad it turned out as standard A/B testing, even if price increases are rarely easy to love.
Off-topic; on the tone in this thread
I don’t think there’s any need to make sweeping generalizations or create hyperboles, especially about the users you share this forum with.
This seems contrary to a forum, which by its nature invites discussion. As you can tell by this thread, the wording from Proton had room for misinterpretation. Surely people are allowed to be concerned at what appears as deceptive practice to them.
We can agree or disagree about whether or not the tone of some users appropriately matches the topic’s severity, or if you see a trend of this forum overreacting, but:
This is just needlessly demeaning. The original post was made in good faith and out of personal concern, even providing documentation to show their reasoning. If you want to lessen “outrage”, educate and equip people, and set the example for what appropriate concern looks like. Build community rather than tear it down.
2 Likes
I think the implication of the excuse was not physically typing on the phone, but casually responding on a social network while traveling.
I believe they did not mean to deceive, but did not want to type a long explanation. They only addressed it was not adaptive pricing, which was the most important thing to address.
Also, Peterson apparently did say it was A/B testing before it blew up, if we don’t assume forging of screenshots now as well. One user guessed it was A/B testing and Peterson responded that this was correct.
The whole A/B thing was then explained in Peterson’s first clarification comment afterward.
1 Like
If the previous poster who said the code looks like it is assigning a/b pricing at random is accurate, then it could be coincidental that the logged-out price was lower. If I remember when I have a little free time, I’ll hop through different VPNs and clear my cookies each time for several checks and see if it fluctuates up and down “randomly” or if I can find a pattern.
He used the words “adaptive pricing” though, and the pricing was not being adapted to anything.
Oh, forgive me. I was typing on my phone while on vacation 
I must have just substituted the general industry term for what is, essentially, pricing discrimination because that’s what people were actually complaining about. Adaptive pricing is actually not what people were complaining about. Adaptive pricing overlaps but isn’t as simple as dynamic pricing. He was correct that Proton wasn’t using adaptive pricing, but dynamic pricing based on signals like what browser one uses or whether or not they’re logged in is actually dynamic pricing and not adaptive pricing. Either way, his response sucked and was highly misleading to the general public.
Adaptive pricing is not what people here are complaining about, but it was what people were complaining about in the Reddit thread he responded to, that’s my point.
No, the opposite. From your source: “adaptive pricing is a strategy where a business adjusts the price of a product or service in response to […] signals about the individual buyer.” Signals such as the browser you use.
The biggest issue here to me is the attempt to lie about it. A/B testing sale prices clearly indicated as a sale anyway isn’t really a big deal, but clearly it’s something Proton believes they shouldn’t be doing, as they lied about it, and yet they did it anyway.
1 Like
IMO They did not, though, as I have outlined in this comment.
They said it was not adaptive pricing, and instead random A/B testing at the end of a sale, which user reports here and on Reddit confirmed (different prices when signals were constant).
The alleged lie was:
Proton saying there was no adaptive pricing, while the evidence provided was random A/B testing, which is a completely different thing. (Peterson even clarified that they missed to say what it actually was, see last quote of my pinned comment.)
People just fell for the false narrative that gained traction by Windscribe’s tweet.
The whole situation was misconstrued due to this.
Imagine this:
People see a red ball and a blue ball.
They say they see two different balls depending on the weather.
Proton says it is not because of the weather.
People say Proton is lying because one is red and one is blue.
You see, Proton never said they were not red and blue. They only said people seeing different balls is not because it started to rain.
But it was not based on any signal. People here and on Reddit reported different outcomes on the same browser and when logged in or not. Proton themself confirmed they do random A/B testing for sales performance.
So it is technically dynamic, because they are random, but it is not really adaptive, because the signals seemingly had no influence.
4 Likes
Adaptive pricing is not really used when it’s only about customer characteristics. That’s my point. If you are fiddling with prices based only on a very simple heuristic like browser or session, most everyone would call that dynamic pricing and not adaptive pricing. Adaptive generally implies some algorithm that takes into account more macro factors.
1 Like
My point is that Proton wasn’t doing either of those things! 
1 Like
Yes, and there messaging about what they were doing, and which people noticed, was terrible due to being deceptive. Whether that was intentional or not, it was bad.
1 Like