Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel • Hacker News Board

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#61

Post by godelski » Fri, Jan 19, 2024, 6:47 PM UTC

MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #38

quartz wrote: post #30

I recently had my credit card stolen which is a great forcing function to audit subscriptions because you have to dig them all up to update the associated payment methods. After combing through my credit card bills to identify all the recurring charges my conclusion was less that I have too many subscriptions but that cost creep is out of control on them. Ex: I stopped paying attention to my storage unit monthly bill…

Same. New York Times always gets me without fail. They always start at something absurd like $3/mo or $5 for six months, and before you know it I’m auditing my statements and see that I’ve been paying $34.99/mo for the last two years. Repeat ad infinitum.

I feel like a great way to solve these is to require confirmations when payments change (maybe with exception of variable rate loans?).

If you work at a bank, maybe pitch a notifications system that detects reoccurring transactions that are in fixed amounts that notifies customers when they change. In fact, also pitch giving your customers a fucking list of reoccurring transactions.

Seriously, how is so much software so bad and so many products lack very basic functionality that would not be very difficult to implement but have high utility? I mean my laundry app doesn't even sort the laundry rooms in alphabetical order, they're just in a random fucking list. It's impressive to me we have systems that are so low value you can hire software engineers that don't know about sort. I don't think AI is going to replace a lot of coding jobs, but I suspect it'll replace these jobs (I just fear it'll also make this type of software more common).

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#62

Post by foobarian » Fri, Jan 19, 2024, 6:47 PM UTC

massysett wrote: post #12

"They recognized that getting a new card is one of the rare times you must actively renew your automatically renewing subscriptions, since you have to update the payment information on file with those companies." This isn't true: I've had subscriptions roll over to the new credit card number - and not just for a month or two. Apparently the bank will continue to process them (I'd rather they didn't.)

Yes, miraculously my EZ-Pass bill is still being paid perfectly successfully even after two replacements for the *original* card expired since, and one was canceled due to theft. Magic!

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#63

Post by crazygringo » Fri, Jan 19, 2024, 6:47 PM UTC

josefresco wrote: post #22

crazygringo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not. It was easy to look at statements when they arrived by mail. But with paperless billing, you've got to conscientiously log into your credit card site each month. If you have four cards, that's four logins. Who's going to do that? Not many. The only reason I review my transactions it's because it's easy through an aggregator like Monarch (was using Mint before it shut down). And the only reason I do th…

> Mint before it shut down This was the best, and only feature I used on Mint. Quick glance a couple times a month was an easy way to find unusual charges etc. I haven't found a replacement.

Yeah, I wound up on Monarch since it was founded by the former product manager at Mint and has a similar modern consumer look.

It's whitespace heavy though -- for people who like something that looks more like an enterprise software dashboard, there's Simplifi.

It seems like Monarch and Simplifi are where the most Mint users have wound up, judging from various forum posts. And they have an extremely similar feature set and interface. But they are both paid.

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#64

Post by wolverine876 » Fri, Jan 19, 2024, 6:49 PM UTC

The blame falls also on businesses which take money for services they don't deliver. They often know, and otherwise often could know, when subscribers are not using the service. If you're a business, you should earn your revenue, otherwise you are frauds. This particular behavior is little better than taking money and simply refusing to provide service. Don't tell me it's unintentional - you know what's happening and could easily stop it.

It should be shame that also falls on them, but somehow we give businesses a pass. No matter how awful or shameful, people say 'it's business' and those magic words absolve every evil. If you took monthly payment from your elderly neighbor to shovel their walk and it never snowed, it would be shameful to keep taking it - people's opinions of you would change negatively if they heard about it. If you said 'well, they have autopay setup and didn't stop it', you would look even worse!

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#65

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 19, 2024, 6:49 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #61

MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. New York Times always gets me without fail. They always start at something absurd like $3/mo or $5 for six months, and before you know it I’m auditing my statements and see that I’ve been paying $34.99/mo for the last two years. Repeat ad infinitum.

I feel like a great way to solve these is to require confirmations when payments change (maybe with exception of variable rate loans?). If you work at a bank, maybe pitch a notifications system that detects reoccurring transactions that are in fixed amounts that notifies customers when they change. In fact, also pitch giving your customers a fucking list of reoccurring transactions. Seriously, how is so much software…

[deleted]

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#66

Post by foobarian » Fri, Jan 19, 2024, 6:50 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #13

blueridge wrote: post #5

I don't understand, do people not log in online to look at their credit card statements? It takes 5 minutes to skim your transactions, look for suspicious charges, get a quick read on where money is going. There are lots of challenges to actually canceling subscriptions, but not knowing that you're being charged for something every month? Seems absent-minded to me.

Absolutely not. It was easy to look at statements when they arrived by mail. But with paperless billing, you've got to conscientiously log into your credit card site each month. If you have four cards, that's four logins. Who's going to do that? Not many. The only reason I review my transactions it's because it's easy through an aggregator like Monarch (was using Mint before it shut down). And the only reason I do th…

Yes and then you log in and see:

Apple $4.99

Apple $1.99

Apple $14.99

Apple $4.99

Apple $2.99

Apple $9.99

good luck!

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#67

Post by zachwdc » Fri, Jan 19, 2024, 6:50 PM UTC

bratsche wrote: post #43

MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. New York Times always gets me without fail. They always start at something absurd like $3/mo or $5 for six months, and before you know it I’m auditing my statements and see that I’ve been paying $34.99/mo for the last two years. Repeat ad infinitum.

They're also difficult to cancel. They gave me a student discount for using my .edu email address, but after awhile I realized I wasn't really using it so I tried to cancel. They work really hard to make that difficult to do.

When I need to cancel something that is hard to cancel, I get a free virtual card from Privacy (privacy.com), then switch my subscription to use the virtual card number, then pause or cancel the card in Privacy.

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#68

Post by mckn1ght » Fri, Jan 19, 2024, 6:52 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #55

nlawalker wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got a great tip here on HN: if your credit card supports email notifications for transactions, set it to alert you on every transaction. On my Citi card the notification is called “Transaction amount exceeds” and is configurable with a dollar amount, which I set to zero. Now I get an email within a minute or two of every charge that includes the amount and payee in the email. It’s a great way to put recurring charg…

This sounds like it can get a bit overwhelming. I absolutely abhor notifications on my phone unless they are things that need my immediate attention. Email is a particular pain where it is difficult to impossible to differentiate spam from legitimate communications. I really do wish banks or visa/mastercard would offer virtual card functionality. It really would empower users to have more control over their money and…

I'm like you in that I hate notifications, but I love this idea at the same time, so I think I'll set up an email filter that sends them all past the inbox, right to a dedicated folder, where I can periodically review them all together. Sounds much better than logging into each CC provider separately, finding the statement area, downloading a clunky PDF, after probably having to change a password and confirm contact info is still the same, etc etc etc.

A CLI to parse all the emails and roll them up into a nice summary would be a neat little project as well!

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#69

Post by JKCalhoun » Fri, Jan 19, 2024, 6:53 PM UTC

ipince wrote: post #52

crazygringo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not. It was easy to look at statements when they arrived by mail. But with paperless billing, you've got to conscientiously log into your credit card site each month. If you have four cards, that's four logins. Who's going to do that? Not many. The only reason I review my transactions it's because it's easy through an aggregator like Monarch (was using Mint before it shut down). And the only reason I do th…

Autopay is evil. I have nothing on autopay. Instead, I have a monthly reminder to pay my bills every month, with a list of all the bills/sites that need to be paid. There's 11 things in the list, but not all of them have a balance every month. I do this towards the end of the month (instead of at the beginning of the month), so that I can include rent in it too, and pay _everything_. It lets me see whether my spendin…

I call it Auto-steal.

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#70

Post by SoftTalker » Fri, Jan 19, 2024, 6:54 PM UTC

blueridge wrote: post #5

I don't understand, do people not log in online to look at their credit card statements? It takes 5 minutes to skim your transactions, look for suspicious charges, get a quick read on where money is going. There are lots of challenges to actually canceling subscriptions, but not knowing that you're being charged for something every month? Seems absent-minded to me.

I have a cheap VPS that I'm not using but I get the bill every month. Every time I see it I think "I should cancel that" but then I think "maybe I'll get around to doing something with it this month" and I let it go another month.