Anybody who has used LinkedIn knows that they push their premium LinkedIn accounts constantly. But did you know that they hide their less expensive premium account options from you?

We’ve all seen LinkedIn’s efforts to get you to upgrade. They read something like:

“Want to know if a potential business partner, sales lead or hiring manager is interested in you? With your extended Premium list of Who’s Viewed Your Profile you can see more of who’s looked at your profile in the past 90 days, and never miss another opportunity.”

And look something like:

If it’s an email solicitation, there is a link for you to click on; if you are logged in to your LinkedIn account, you can upgrade by clicking the upgrade link:

Now, in at least some cases, when you follow an “upgrade” link, LinkedIn does not show you all of the premium account options. For example, you may be taken to this premium account options comparison (this is actually what happened to us, which is why we are writing this article):

Note that we were using a free account, and the least expensive option that LinkedIn is offering us works out to $47.99 a month!

“That’s crazy!” we thought. “Surely there must be something between $0 and nearly $50.00 a month!”

But clearly LinkedIn doesn’t want us to know about it.

So, we did some research. And we did some searching. And sure enough, we eventually found this LinkedIn page, which details all four levels of premium accounts.

That’s right, four levels. Note that there are only three premium account levels that we were offered above. The cost for that omitted fourth level?

It works out to $23.99 a month. Half the cost of the lowest level that LinkedIn offered us.

So, what do you think? Deceptive business practices? Or good business?