Elon Musk appeared to quietly change the way customers pay for Twitter Blue in Europe after being accused of breaking rules about how its prices were displayed
- A European Union consumer-protection watchdog told Insider last month that Twitter Blue was breaching price rules.
- That's because it wasn't including taxes in the advertised prices as required.
Elon Musk appears to have quietly changed the way that Europeans can pay for Twitter Blue after being accused of breaking rules about displaying prices.
Insider reported last month that Twitter Blue was violating the European Union's unfair business practices directive by failing to include tax in the subscription price, according to a consumer watchdog in the bloc.
The $8-a-month subscription is Musk's flagship project to make Twitter more profitable and discourage spam, although its use of the verified blue checkmark has attracted controversy over trolls impersonating celebrities.
In EU countries which use the euro currency, Twitter Blue used to be advertised as 8 euros ($8.80) a month on the web app— a little more than the $8 price in the US.
It now varies by country within the EU due to different tax rates, but is broadly around $10.60.
While sales tax is only added at checkout in the US, consumer-protection laws in Europe require companies to display value-added tax (VAT) in the advertised price.
That means Twitter users in Europe wouldn't have previously known the subscription could actually cost an extra $20-a-year before the Stripe checkout page automatically added the tax after a second or two.
Archived webpages from the Wayback Machine suggest that Twitter updated its prices for EU counties on March 23, six days after Insider's report. The subscription price in the UK – where similar laws apply – was apparently amended a few hours later as well.
Insider tested the Twitter Blue subscription process in the UK and, through a VPN, in Belgium, Denmark and Germany.
Previously at checkout, Twitter also appeared to miscalculate VAT percentages by adding 20% in each instance. VAT in the UK is 20%, in Denmark it's 25%, and in Germany it's 19%.
Now, that looks to have been amended. The annual subscription in Denmark was previously advertised at around $87.24 but went up to $104.68 on checkout. It's now correctly advertised as the final price of 737 DKR or $109.
According to web traffic data seen by Bloomberg, about 400,000 people have signed up for Twitter Blue – fewer than 1% of Twitter's 500 million monthly users.
Insider contacted Twitter for comment. The company responded with an automated message that didn't address the inquiry.