Platinumlist — the price you see isn’t the price you pay
Making price and refund terms visible at checkout for a live ticketing platform — unsolicited, solo.
UI | UX
Product Design
Redesign
Project Overview
Client
Platinumlist (concept redesign, unsolicited)
Timeline
1 week
Role
Product & UX Designer — solo
Tools
Figma, Claude
The problem
Platinumlist is one of the UAE’s main ticketing platforms. When I tested checkout on a live event, the listing, the pass card and the bottom bar all showed AED 80. On the final payment summary the total was AED 87.26: a pre-ticked Refund Guarantee (AED 6.40, 8% of the ticket) plus a AED 0.86 service fee that appeared there for the first time.
Neither is a bug. The checkout works and the fees are real. The gap is that the product doesn’t say what you’re paying, or what you’re buying, until the last step.
My Role
Self-initiated: no brief, no client, no team. I tested the live checkout across ticket prices, read Platinumlist’s own Refund Guarantee terms, and designed before/after screens against the current site. Every decision is mine. The aim was narrow: show the real price early, and make the guarantee understandable before it’s bought.
Research & Discovery
No formal research budget. I used three sources: my own testing of the live checkout (Oct 21 to 29, 2026) on events priced AED 60, 80 and 150; Platinumlist’s published Refund Guarantee terms; and Trustpilot reviews of Platinumlist.
The evidence
Across three tickets (AED 60, 80, 150) the guarantee was a flat 8%: AED 4.80, 6.40 and 12.00.
The service fee varied by event. None showed on the AED 60 event. On the AED 80 and AED 150 passes it was 1% of ticket plus guarantee: AED 0.80 without the guarantee and 0.86 with it on the AED 80 pass. It first appeared on the final summary.
The Refund Guarantee was pre-ticked. Unticking it opened a modal with an alert icon, a filled “Add refund protection” button and a plain-text “Skip this step”. The modal showed no price and no coverage. X and Skip both closed it with the box unticked.
On a second event, a AED 1 “send tickets via SMS” add-on was also pre-ticked, although its own text says PDF tickets are free.
Platinumlist’s terms cover event cancellation, a physician-certified accident or medical emergency, and a direct family member’s death or serious illness. Change of mind is excluded. Refunds go up to the ticket’s face value within 21 working days, usually to a Wallet. The guarantee fee is non-refundable.
Three inconsistencies between the checkout card and the full terms: the card says Wallet-only, while the terms allow another method on request; the card says add-ons are refunded, while the terms cap refunds at face value; the USD 600 cap appears in an AED checkout.
Process
Rule I set: change disclosure, not policy. Every fee and refund rule stays. Only when and how people see them changes.
01 — Show the all-in price early
The listing, pass card, Order details panel and bottom bar all showed the ticket price only. I updated every one to the price including mandatory fees: AED 80.80 for the 1-Day Pass and AED 151.50 for the 4-Day Pass. Mandatory fees go in. Optional extras stay out.
Before: live, Oct 29, 2026. Ticket price only
After: proposed. All-in price (incl. fees)
Note 1: All-in price includes mandatory fees only. Optional extras are excluded.
02 — Make the guarantee readable before it’s bought
The live card is collapsed, shows no price, and keeps its terms in a long list. I put the price in the header, added a one-line coverage summary with a chevron, and split the expanded card into four rows: Covered, Not covered, Refund and Claims. The copy is paraphrased from Platinumlist’s own terms. I added and softened nothing. Any real wording would need Platinumlist’s legal team to approve it.
Before: live. Collapsed card, no price
After: proposed. Price and coverage in the header
Note 2: The service fee is AED 0.80 without the guarantee and AED 0.86 with it. On this event it’s 1% of ticket plus guarantee.
After: expanded. Covered, Not covered, Refund, Claims
03 — A fairer opt-out
I kept the reminder. It’s a legitimate business tool. I changed how it argues: no alert icon, the price and coverage shown at the decision point, and neutral wording (“Continue without”). The buttons are equal in size, with primary emphasis kept on Keep Refund Guarantee. X behaves like Continue without, as on the live site.
Before: live. Alert icon, filled button, plain-text Skip
After: proposed. Price, coverage, equal-size buttons
What I didn’t change
The pre-ticked default and the SMS add-on stay as they are on these screens. Making them opt-in is a revenue decision, so I’d propose it as an A/B test, not a redesign.
Final design
Opt-out modal
Checkout (guarantee collapsed)
Guarantee terms (expanded)
Proposed redesign, Oct 29, 2026
Note 3: The Pay button appears only once card details are entered, so it isn’t shown.
Outcome
This is a concept, so the outcome is argument quality, not shipped metrics. I have no Platinumlist data. If shipped, the hypotheses are: fewer refund-related support contacts, a smaller drop-off at the payment screen, and a clearer view of guarantee uptake.
Metrics to track: listing-to-checkout rate, guarantee attach rate, revenue per order, support contacts about refunds. Trade-off: clearer exclusions may lower the guarantee attach rate. The upside is fewer refund complaints. I’d test this with an A/B experiment.
Reflection
Same lesson as Talabat Pro, different product: transparency is rarely a new feature. It’s information the product already has, shown one step earlier. I’d still validate two things with real users: whether buyers read the Covered and Not covered rows, and whether showing the price and coverage changes guarantee uptake.
I also dropped a different topic, a ride-hailing case study, after testing it live and finding the problem already fixed. It taught me to verify the problem before designing anything.