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I can’t tell you how many times I will visit a website, read content that indicates it will cost me something, but try in vain to find any prices listed. This isn’t as bad for service websites where the price can vary dramatically, but now I’m even seeing it for websites that are a service unto themselves.

A great example is BlueMoutain.com – a site that many people go to in hopes of creating a free greeting card. When you get there and choose one, you are greeted with a page that talks of a 1-month free trial! But if you want to see how much it costs after that, good luck. I clicked on various pages (including the FAQ) to see how much it would cost. Nothing… nada… zip. They are luring people into signing up and then they’ll show you the price later. Why would they do this? Because they are Shady (that’s slang for ‘unethical’).

Another Shady provider is Microsoft and their MSN online service. I had their MSN Explorer service (I used it for the MS Money Online Budgeting) and finally decided to cancel it. In my software it has a ‘Help/Settings’ page. Seemed simple enough… I clicked the page, selected ‘Billing Details’ and BOOM – page not found. I tried a few more times and even waited a few days thinking that something was wrong on their end. Still, page not found. This started a hunt that lasted 30 minutes and landed me in the Microsoft Knowledge base before I finally got the number/website to call.

The point is… don’t be a shady website. MSN Explorer and Blue Mountain are causing problems and frustration with their actions – and teaching a crop of young web service developers that their methods are ok. They aren’t…