Yeah, Nah Awards: the HelloFresh subscription trap

Dark patterns are deceptive online design practices that encourage consumers to make choices that aren’t necessarily in their best interests – like spending more money or keeping a subscription they’d rather cancel.

During the investigation, we’ve looked at a lot of websites used by consumers in New Zealand.

But one business – meal-box provider, HelloFresh – stood out as particularly painful when it came to cancelling a subscription.

That’s why we decided to make HelloFresh the winner of the ‘Unsubscribe Impossible’ gong in our 2025 Yeah, Nah Awards.

Why HelloFresh deserves this award

As part of our research into dark patterns, we watched as 10 participants recruited from our database navigated a series of online activities: buying tickets to a concert with Ticketmaster, booking flights with Jetstar and a hotel with Booking.com, and cancelling a subscription with HelloFresh.

While our participants were irritated by all their experiences, the ill-feeling toward HelloFresh was a level above the rest.

Signing up for a HelloFresh subscription is easy. Cancelling is much more difficult. In our test, customers had to confirm their desire to cancel several times. Along the way, HelloFresh used a series of deceptive strategies that we think are designed to derail the cancellation journey.

The option to cancel the subscription is always hidden at the bottom of lengthy pages. Consumers are forced to scroll past endless information about what they’re missing out on, or offers of free credit, to find the option they’re looking for. When they eventually find the cancellation button, it is always less prominent than the alternative options offered, such as pausing deliveries or skipping the cancellation process.

Our participants felt HelloFresh was doing everything it could to divert them from cancelling. A couple compared the experience to a bad break up.

Isabelle* expressed it best. “It's not a nice company to deal with. They're not open and honest. If they had a good product that people would like, then they would just keep their subscriptions and if they wanted to cancel, they would just cancel and make it easy to cancel, right?"

The HelloFresh cancellation process

Step 1: Find the cancel button

The first step in cancelling a HelloFresh subscription is to navigate to the account settings page.

Once there, you’ll find some basic information about your account.

Scroll a bit further, and you’ll see information about deliveries; a bit further again and you’ll find payment information.

Finally, at the bottom of the page, you’re offered two options. A big, bold button stating: “Pause my deliveries”.

And below it, a muted transparent button with the option: “Cancel my plan”.

Having navigated to this page, scrolled to the bottom and located the less prominent button, there can be no uncertainty you want to cancel your subscription.

Right?

Step 2: Are you sure you want to cancel?

When you confirm you want to cancel your plan, HelloFresh redirects you to a new page.

At the top it says: “Before you decide to cancel: if you want to take a break, here are your options.”

You’ll be encouraged to join HelloFresh’s reward scheme and told, in no uncertain terms, what you’ll be missing if you leave. “You will lose these benefits forever upon cancellation,” you’re informed.

“That’s threatening, isn’t it!” said Michael*, one of our participants.

Below this, another prominent black button states: “Skip and keep benefits”.

Many of our participants found this button ambiguous, unsure whether selecting it would skip to the end of the cancellation process or end the cancellation process entirely.

In fact, you need to scroll further to find the cancellation button, and as you do, HelloFresh offers you a further discount to stay. If that doesn’t work, it then offers the options of receiving fewer deliveries or skipping a delivery.

Once again, the option to cancel is at the bottom of the page and the least prominent option on offer.

Step 3: Why are you cancelling?

Having just about accepted your decision to cancel, HelloFresh needs some closure, asking why you’re leaving and if there’s anything it can do to help.

It provides a multi-choice range of reasons for leaving to select from, such as “There’s too much packaging” or “I don’t want a delivery every week”.

Underneath, it once again hopes you’ve changed your mind, presenting a bold button stating: “I don’t want to cancel”.

Below this, the option to “Continue” – meaning continue to cancel – is greyed out. You can’t click it until you provide a reason.

In an actual break-up, you have the right to ignore your ex’s messages or promises to change.

With this food delivery service, if you don’t give it an answer, you can’t cancel your subscription.

Step 4: Do you want to subject your friends to this experience?

We told HelloFresh that our reason for cancelling was that the service was out of our budget.

HelloFresh’s solution is not to let us cancel, removing a financial burden, but to suggest referring a friend in exchange for some free credit, or to modify our plan to receive fewer meals.

Again, having offered us the chance to continue our subscription in prominent black buttons, the option to continue trying to cancel is in a muted box at the bottom of the page that says: “Cancel anyway”.

Step 5: Did you cancel by accident?

Finally, having navigated four different web pages and repeatedly ignored HelloFresh’s pleas for just one more chance, your cancellation journey really is over.

You’ll be told your subscription has been cancelled and when your final box will be delivered.

HelloFresh then asks for yet more feedback and, just in case after all that you managed to reach this point by accident, there’s one final button you can click saying: “I didn’t mean to cancel”.

What consumers felt about the cancellation experience

Throughout our research on dark patterns, our research participants had a degree of expectation and acceptance around the use of dark patterns.

As they navigated to the first cancellation button on the HelloFresh website, there was a sense that while it wasn’t as obvious as it could be, it wasn’t shocking. They understood that HelloFresh is a business trying to make money, so it’s not going to put the cancellation button in pride of place.

As the process wore on, however, our participants got increasingly irritated by the experience. In the end, many considered it a deliberate strategy to derail the cancellation process for financial gain.

Cancellation process is poor on purpose

Amelia* believes that HelloFresh has made cancelling difficult on purpose.

“They don’t want you cancelling. They want to put as many barriers in between you continuing to pay them money, and you no longer paying them money,” Amelia said.

James* agreed. “They’re doing everything they can possibly think of to divert your attention and stop you cancelling and think maybe you have cancelled.”

HelloFresh is the worst of a bad bunch

By the time our participants reached the HelloFresh website, we’d already asked about their general awareness of dark patterns, and observed their experience negotiating dark patterns on Ticketmaster and Booking.com.

Yet even with all this prior exposure, HelloFresh stood out as a particularly bad example of deceptive design.

We asked Jane* if she’d experienced anything like the HelloFresh cancellation process before. She said, “No. I’ve not had to go through four different pages. In my experience of these subscriptions, this is the worst I’ve seen.”

HelloFresh’s cancellation process is bad for its reputation

HelloFresh’s cancellation experience left a very bad taste in the mouths of our participants.

“I don’t normally do this but if someone asked me, ‘Hey what do you think of HelloFresh?’, I’d say that their website’s a dog and I wouldn’t go there,” Phil* said.

“I wouldn’t touch that business with a bargepole,” Joan* said.

Deceptive design thought to improve HelloFresh’s bottom line

All of our participants had a negative experience cancelling a HelloFresh subscription, and many said the experience had damaged their perception of the brand.

HelloFresh is clearly very keen to gather feedback from its cancelling customers, so it must know the process is unpleasant for consumers. So why does it still do it?

In Amelia’s opinion, the cancellation process is a carefully calibrated calculation that disregards customer experience in favour of potential financial gain.

“We’re pretty far down the track with this business strategy, and this technology. They know exactly what they’re doing,” Amelia said.

“Do you really want your customers to have this lingering feeling about your business … My assumption is that it must be working.”

What HelloFresh said

We put our claims – based on research undertaken in August – to HelloFresh.

A spokesperson told us: “HelloFresh New Zealand acknowledges the feedback from Consumer NZ. We are committed to providing excellent food and service to our customers, and strive for the highest standards of compliance and customer care.”

“Earlier this month (October) we introduced a new and improved pause and cancellation process as part of our continued focus on simplifying the customer journey to enhance the overall experience when using the app or website. Given this update to the customer pause and cancellation process was introduced in October 2025, it appears not to be reflected in the Consumer NZ research conducted in July-August 2025.”

We’ve taken a look at HelloFresh’s new cancellation process.

Yeah, nah. There’s no major improvement.