Well there's a shady UI pattern

Here's a lovely UX anti-pattern I discovered today.  I encountered this message while trying to uninstall MediaMonkey, which is a Windows-based music/media manager.

Pop-up when running the MediaMonkey uninstaller that asks if you'd like to get the Gold version for free.

The anti-pattern here is not so much with the pop-up asking if you'd like to "get MediaMonkey Gold for FREE" (note the all-caps on "free"), it's the fact that clicking the "yes" doesn't actually do that.  It just takes you to the generic MediaMonkey download page.  That page says nothing at all about getting the gold version for free.  It just has the comparison matrix for the free vs. gold versions and gives you links to download the free version or to buy the gold version.  Not a word about getting it for free.

This is rather disappointing.  Not because I particularly care about getting MediaMonkey Gold (I would have just bought it if I did), but because up until that moment I had a pretty good opinion of MediaMonkey.  It's not that I didn't like it - I was uninstalling it because I just don't use it.  It's actually a very nice app with lots of good features.  It's just that in the past year the only thing I've used it for is ripping a bunch audio CDs to MP3, and apparently that's a feature that's only available during the "trial period" of the free version.  I haven't used the app in about six months, so my trial period has expired and I didn't feel like paying for something that I use maybe twice a year, hence my decision to just uninstall it.

This just seems like a really shady tactic to discourage people from uninstalling the application.  Offering free stuff to people who threaten to stop using your product seems a bit iffy in the first place, but if you're going to do that you should at least actually send them to a place where they can get the free stuff.  Don't say "you want free stuff?" and then redirect them to the main sales page.  That's the kind of thing you'd expect from a dodgy banner ad, not an otherwise respectable, high-quality software package.

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