Need to know
- Derila's website is a minefield of 'dark patterns' – coercive web marketing techniques designed to trick online customers into making choices they don’t intend to
- One Derila customer ordered one pillow but received six, and was automatically charged $165 extra
- When CHOICE ordered a single Derila pillow, we were taken directly to a checkout page where four pillows were pre-selected instead of one
Ending up with extra things in your online shopping basket can be more than just frustrating, especially when you're charged for the unwanted goods and sending them back would cost way too much.
When the business appears to be local but is actually based overseas – in this case Lithuania – the red flags really start flying.
Many people have reported having such an experience with the website for Derila pillows in recent months, so we decided to investigate.
Is Derila pillows a scam?
Derila's website is a minefield of dark patterns, a coercive marketing technique designed to trick online customers into making choices they don't intend to.
Dark patterns can include 'scarcity cues' such as countdown timers or warnings of low stock or expiring discounts. Or they can be 'activity notifications', where you're told with a sense or urgency, for instance, that someone just bought the item you're considering.
Derila's dark patterns feature all of this, but they also include a more sinister tactic – automatically adding items to your shopping cart that you have to deselect if you want to get what you intended to order and nothing more.
CHOICE is focusing on Derila as part of our ongoing campaign against unfair business practices, and such dark patterns are a prime example
For one customer we heard from, ordering from Derila entailed receiving six pillows when they'd ordered two and being automatically charged $165 extra. Others have ordered a single pillow and their order has been automatically bumped up to four pillows.
The only way for these customers to get a refund for the extra charges was to return the pillows in a very tight timeframe – all the way back to Lithuania.
The ACCC says people who receive products they didn't order don't have to pay for them, as long as they let the business know they don't want them. The business then has a month to collect the extraneous items at their own expense.
But that doesn't seem to be an option with Derila.
CHOICE is focusing on Derila as part of our ongoing campaign against unfair business practices, and such dark patterns are a prime example. When it comes to unfair trading, many of these practices slip through the cracks in the legal system. While Derila may not legally be regarded as a scam, many customers say they certainly feel like they've been scammed. There are no specific laws against many of the practices Derila employs, but it's clear that there should be.
Dark patterns at work: Frank's story
Another customer we spoke to, Frank*, says Derila dominated Google search results for the word 'pillow'. And when promised a 70% discount, he added a single pillow to his shopping cart.
"The pillow was $69 minus 70% – equals about $22," Frank says. "But once it starts, there's no turning back. You can only go forward on their website. You can't check what's in your cart. You are then bombarded by page after page, all with large buttons saying 'add this special to order'. Underneath and extremely close to these large buttons in extremely small print, is 'no thanks'. To click on the 'no thanks' without touching the large 'add to' buttons is almost impossible."
Frank thought he had navigated the minefield, but when he finalised his order for a single pillow he instantly received an email saying he had paid $165 for four pillows.
Once it starts, there's no turning back. You can only go forward on their website
Derila customer 'Frank'
Spooked by the unwanted charges, Frank cancelled his credit card and changed passwords, worried that he had given his credit card details to a scammer.
Prohibitive cost for returns
The pillows in the cases we've documented were delivered from Wetherill Park, a suburb in Western Sydney, but in all cases, when the customers sought to return the unwanted pillows, they were told they had to be returned to Lithuania – at a cost that would dissuade anyone from doing that.
Aside from the people we heard from directly, many others have reported that they'd been stuck with a bunch of pillows they unknowingly paid for and didn't want.
The customer who ended up saddled with six pillows (after ordering two) eventually got their money back after lodging a complaint with PayPal, which had facilitated the transaction through an automatic payments system (more on this below).
But others have had orders for a single Derila pillow automatically changed to four and had to wear the extra cost. Sending the extra ones back was not a viable option.
CHOICE investigates: What happened when we placed an order
When CHOICE ordered a single pillow, we were taken directly to a checkout page where an order for four pillows was preselected.
To find out for ourselves, CHOICE placed two separate orders for a single Derila pillow using first a credit card, then PayPal.
When we clicked on 'order now' with the credit card order, we were taken directly to a checkout page where four pillows were pre-selected instead of one. We were on the lookout for dark patterns, so we took the trouble to deselect the order for four.
When we placed an order for a single pillow via PayPal, it was preselected to two.
Derila's preselection tactic may explain why so many customers thought they ordered a single pillow but ended up with four. For the record, our pillows were also shipped from Wetherill Park.
While we didn't end up with pillows we didn't mean to order, we were treated to a veritable onslaught of dark patterns. No less than four add-on offers appeared that we had to manually deselect before we could complete our order. Had we not de-selected, we would have inadvertently bought these items.
CHOICE campaigns and policy adviser Yelena Nam says this kind of stuff is really not on.
It should be illegal for businesses to design online shopping sites to trick customers into making choices they don't mean to make
CHOICE campaigns and policy adviser Yelena Nam
"Apart from the potentially misleading or deceptive tactics, Derila employs a number of business practices that are unfair. It should be illegal for businesses to design online shopping sites to trick customers into making choices they don't mean to make."
Unauthorised PayPal transactions
In an added twist to this story, many Derila customers are wondering how their money was instantly deducted from their PayPal accounts with no verification checks. These customers say they hadn't set up automatic payments with Derila or authorised the increased purchase amount.
Another Derila customer we spoke to, Gary*, confirmed to CHOICE that the extra charges came out of his PayPal account before he could do anything about it.
"The way it works is that you go on to their website and order one pillow, and then somewhere in their software they change that to four. And then that goes straight through to PayPal without any review, and they charge your credit card. The first thing you know about it is when PayPal lets you know there's been a payment made. The feeling of powerlessness in this situation is not good."
While we're not suggesting that PayPal is knowingly partaking in anything illegal, the company does seem to be partnered with a manifestly dodgy retailer.
The first thing you know about it is when PayPal lets you know there's been a payment made. The feeling of powerlessness in this situation is not good
Derila customer 'Gary'
We first contacted PayPal about this on 11 April, asking about the automatic payments, refunds, and whether PayPal would sever ties with Derila given the many complaints about the business and the experiences of our case studies.
PayPal Australia, as well as the company's head office in San Francisco, both acknowledged the issues we flagged and said they were looking into the matter, though it would take some time.
On 8 May PayPal Australia finally responded, saying, unhelpfully, that "PayPal is dedicated to ensuring a safe and seamless payment experience on our platform, and our teams work tirelessly to protect our customers from any potential activity that violates our policies."
PayPal suggested that people who have a problem with a transaction should contact its customer support team. The Derila customers we've heard from say that doesn't really help.
Many Derila customers have reported ordering a single pillow and being charged for four.
Customer service nightmare: The wheeler-dealer bot
For disgruntled customer Gary, things got weirder, and worse, when he tried to resolve the issue with Derila directly.
In the back and forth emails the Derila customer service responses read like a hyper-friendly chatbot that's also a wheeler-dealer. This suspiciously machine-like Derila employee first offered Gary a free 'Huusk Limited Edition Cookbook', 'Nuubu Detox Guide' and an extended warranty for all Derila goods if he withdrew the request to 'modify' his order.
With no takers, this was followed by the offer of a 15% discount on the extra pillows if he kept them, later increased to 30%.
Gary was told that if he kept and paid for the extra pillows, Derila would donate four pillows to hospitals in the Ukraine
With these offers turned down, the it's-gotta-be-a-bot became unreasonable: Gary was told he couldn't change his order because the pillows had been shipped.
Then the final straw, as others have also reported, came when Gary was told that if he kept and paid for the extra pillows, Derila would donate four pillows to hospitals in the Ukraine.
After strenuous efforts, and no luck getting a refund from Derila, Gary's request for a refund from PayPal was denied too. "Of course I can't prove that I didn't order four items," he says.
Manipulative marketing tactics can include reviews and testimonials that probably aren't real.
Who's behind Derila pillows?
The Lithuania-based company behind Derila pillows, UAB Ausica, also sells a number of other products, including Hiloi nasal strips, Synoshi scrubbers, Tvidler earwax removal, Klaudena cushions – and possibly many others.
There is substantial anecdotal evidence that the issues many customers encounter when ordering a Derila pillow are also a problem on some of the websites for other UAB Ausica products – CHOICE hasn't specifically looked into that yet.
UAB Ausica is based in Kaunas, Lithuania. (UAB is a Lithuanian abbreviation for a private limited company.) Its Australian Business Number has been active since June 2023, but reports of the pillow flimflam predate that.
And there are other worrying things going on with this business.
There is substantial anecdotal evidence that the issues many customers encounter when ordering a Derila pillow are also a problem on some of the websites for other UAB Ausica products
We did a search for 'derila pillow scam', for instance, which returned a slew of articles that reference a scam in the headline but then go on to enthusiastically promote the product, an apparent search engine optimisation (SEO) trick.
Then there's the small army of online influencers hyping up Derila pillows on Tiktok and YouTube.
There appear to be considerable resources behind this operation. Derila's international website is well-designed, and the extensive product descriptions promising better sleep are competently written. It's easy to see how people could be taken in.
A bedtime story that has customers losing sleep.
The CHOICE verdict: Steer clear of Derila pillows
The Derila T&Cs say customers have just 30 days to return the pillows and get a refund, but then go on to say customers actually have to let Derila know about returns and mail back the pillows within 14 days. All the way back to Lithuania, that is.
Other hallmarks of unfair trading and dark patterns came up as we placed our orders, including hard-sell tactics such as claims of 'low stock', 'only 12 left', '70% off', 'last chance' and a 'don't-miss-this-deal' countdown timer that continually resets.
And we were treated to a barrage of pop-ups saying 'Ben from Sydney purchased 2 pillows' and the like.
Derila also claims that its pillows have CertiPUR-US certification, yet neither UAB Ausica nor Derila is listed on the CertiPUR-US database.
We contacted Derila through its customer support email to give the business a chance to address the issues customers were experiencing, since no other contact details were available. We gave the business 48 hours to respond. Eleven days later Derila got back to us, saying the issues we raised "have been resolved".
"We are diligently updating our digital system to guarantee that all orders are accurate and free from technical issues," the spokesperson said, adding that "any Australian customer can now return unwanted products to our warehouse located in Australia".
Many businesses take advantage of a gap in the law that allows a raft of unfair business practices to go unpunished
CHOICE campaigns and policy adviser Yelena Nam
If accurate, it's a change of policy that's been a long time coming. Gary's take on having to mail the unwanted pillows back to Lithuania to get his money back is firmly in line with the views of the many other Derila customers who have called out the company. "That's just unacceptable," Gary says.
Our take on the unfair trading practices deployed by Derila and other businesses operating in Australia is the same.
"Unfortunately, Derila's not alone when it comes to these practices,' says CHOICE's Nam.
"Many businesses take advantage of a gap in the law that allows a raft of unfair business practices to go unpunished. That's why CHOICE is calling on the government to introduce new fairness laws to ban unfair business practices like these for good."
CHOICE has lodged a complaint with the ACCC about Derila's unfair trading tactics.
*Names have been changed to protect privacy.
Stock images: Getty, unless otherwise stated.
