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Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

wsj.com

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

#131

Post by darth_avocado »

paxys wrote: post #106

It's bizarre to me just how many people in this country ( especially the ones who can least afford it) simply do not take charge of their financial health. Even in this very thread you can see all kinds of excuses ("it's too hard to log in and check credit card statements every month", "they make you call or chat to cancel so I don't bother", "they should cancel subscriptions automatically if you don't use them", "it…

Some of these are valid issues though. I'd consider myself in top 1% when it comes to financial health and I still pay for stuff I forgot to cancel. Some of the reasons:

> They make you call between 9 am and 5 pm, and hold for hours to cancel, sometimes even disconnect forcing you to start over, while not offering a callback option. Sometimes there are weeks I absolutely cannot afford to do this because of work.

> You buy something, and they tag a "3-4 months free" of another service, which you can't opt out of even if you want to, and then suddenly charge you that extra money on the 5th month. You obviously cancel it, but you still overpaid for a month.

> Services that charge you once a year. You forgot to cancel the Xbox subscription because you bought a PS5, got charged a year later. Now you cancel it, but you paid for the year.

> Services that make you use or forgo credits that you already paid for if you cancel. (Audible) You want to cancel, but you put it off for another month because now, you need to figure out 5 ebooks to buy. Next month, you end up in the same situation and now you need to figure out 6 ebooks to buy.

The point being, you could check all your statements weekly, and still end up spending money on something you forgot about.

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

#132

Post by jjeaff »

eropple wrote: post #120
Alupis wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I disagree. I routinely go months in between using some of my various subscriptions - be it Netflix, Hulu, Audible, etc. I would be very upset if they cancelled o…

I don't really see how this follows. A perfectly reasonable option that doesn't affect your use case at all would be "don't charge a customer who didn't use the service during that period." AWS doesn't charge me for an empty S3 bucket, Netflix shouldn't charge for zero minutes of video watched that month. Simple as! The downside, of course, is that this does mean you can't ride the Personal Responsibility bicycle and…

this is exactly what Slack does (or did, I don't know if they still do). they only charge you for employees that have used slack during the month. though I don't know what "use" entails.

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

#133

Post by dustincoates »

rwbt wrote: post #24
marcrosoft wrote: post #3

Use virtual credit cards and privacy.com. It really helps with peace of mind that you can really have a free trial and not worry about it.

How does one get virtual credit cards? I remember some banks like Discover offered them, but I don't see them anymore.

Wise offers them: https://wise.com/gb/virtual-card/

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

#134

Post by bonton89 »

sneak wrote: post #31
xerxesaa wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My strategy here is disable all auto pays and make it a manual ritual to pay my bills at the start of each calendar month. Doing it once a month is easy enough to remember (or put a calendar invite, if you're not able to) and forces me to do a quick validation. In my 20 years of working and being independent, I've never accidentally paid for a subscription longer than one month.

Things I don’t have on autopay frequently get shut off when I forget (or delay) paying for them.

I sort of have a compromise solution for this. I use my banks autopay whenever possible which is a push instead of a pull. That way I can just shut it off instead of finding some weird website I haven't used in a million years or call and wait on hold for 20 minutes. I started using it mostly so I didn't have to buy checks but I saw it had some advantages beyond that.

It doesn't work well with variable bills though because I can't schedule an amount I don't know yet to be paid. I'm stuck using a pull for my power bill for instance.

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

#135

Post by JumpCrisscross »

darth_avocado wrote: post #131
paxys wrote: post #106

It's bizarre to me just how many people in this country ( especially the ones who can least afford it) simply do not take charge of their financial health. Even in this very thread you can see all kinds of excuses ("it's too hard to log in and check credit card statements every month", "they make you call or chat to cancel so I don't bother", "they should cancel subscriptions automatically if you don't use them", "it…

Some of these are valid issues though. I'd consider myself in top 1% when it comes to financial health and I still pay for stuff I forgot to cancel. Some of the reasons: > They make you call between 9 am and 5 pm, and hold for hours to cancel, sometimes even disconnect forcing you to start over, while not offering a callback option. Sometimes there are weeks I absolutely cannot afford to do this because of work. > Yo…

> They make you call between 9 am and 5 pm

This is customer service. A written notice of termination works for any consumer contract.

> but you paid for the year

Unpay for it. This is the utility of credit cards.

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

#136

Post by Algemarin »

paxys wrote: post #106

It's bizarre to me just how many people in this country ( especially the ones who can least afford it) simply do not take charge of their financial health. Even in this very thread you can see all kinds of excuses ("it's too hard to log in and check credit card statements every month", "they make you call or chat to cancel so I don't bother", "they should cancel subscriptions automatically if you don't use them", "it…

> This discussion is about subscriptions but the general idea applies to so much more – basic budgeting, retirement savings, not paying random fees, not paying interest, moving spare money to investment accounts every month, rebalancing your investments every quarter, negotiating rents, negotiating your salary.

I think it's one of the major failures of the education system. Why is there no class in school which covers taxes, savings, budgeting, etc? People are seemingly just expected to know this on their own.

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

#137

Post by jjeaff »

rockooooo wrote: post #124
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People tend to act shocked when I tell them my finance app requires me to enter transactions manually and doesn't magically categorize everything. You spend a third of your life working for that money, surely you spend 5 minutes at most tracking how you spend it.

sure, but when there's a dozen apps that will do it automatically, why?

if the app automatically categorizes things, you don't ever have to look at it. doing it yourself requires that you review every transaction individually.

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

#138

Post by barbazoo »

darth_avocado wrote: post #131
paxys wrote: post #106

It's bizarre to me just how many people in this country ( especially the ones who can least afford it) simply do not take charge of their financial health. Even in this very thread you can see all kinds of excuses ("it's too hard to log in and check credit card statements every month", "they make you call or chat to cancel so I don't bother", "they should cancel subscriptions automatically if you don't use them", "it…

Some of these are valid issues though. I'd consider myself in top 1% when it comes to financial health and I still pay for stuff I forgot to cancel. Some of the reasons: > They make you call between 9 am and 5 pm, and hold for hours to cancel, sometimes even disconnect forcing you to start over, while not offering a callback option. Sometimes there are weeks I absolutely cannot afford to do this because of work. > Yo…

Two of those can be fixed with a simple calendar entry. We do that with subscriptions but also with things like AirBNB bookings where you can cancel up to x weeks in advance.

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

#139

Post by grotorea »

marcrosoft wrote: post #3

Use virtual credit cards and privacy.com. It really helps with peace of mind that you can really have a free trial and not worry about it.

Potentially stupid question: if you cancel the virtual credit card, can't the company then send your debt to collections resulting in a bigger headache?

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

#140

Post by bongodongobob »

jjeaff wrote: post #132
eropple wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really see how this follows. A perfectly reasonable option that doesn't affect your use case at all would be "don't charge a customer who didn't use the service during that period." AWS doesn't charge me for an empty S3 bucket, Netflix shouldn't charge for zero minutes of video watched that month. Simple as! The downside, of course, is that this does mean you can't ride the Personal Responsibility bicycle and…

this is exactly what Slack does (or did, I don't know if they still do). they only charge you for employees that have used slack during the month. though I don't know what "use" entails.

Use means account is in an "active" state, so no, not really what parent is talking about.
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