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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

#151

Post by cptskippy »

bombcar wrote: post #84
wolverine876 wrote: post #64

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…

The way I see it, if they can register if you're using it, then after a year of disuse (or getting close to it) they should send a "we will cancel this for you" type notices. If it's business to business, that's more on both sides.

This is what Credit Cards do. They're shady AF but have no problem cancelling your card due to inactivity.

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

#152

Post by ToucanLoucan »

Alupis wrote: post #128
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…

What's wrong with people putting on their adulting pants and actually being responsible? Why outsource personal responsibility to a third party? That seems, absurd. "Frazzled and overloaded" is not an excuse for not looking at your bank account one time in 6 months or longer. That's just plain old fashioned irresponsible. If you are at a stage in life where a $10 subscription is hurting, then it stands to reason you…

People don't cancel shit because they don't know it's charging, they don't cancel shit because businesses make it artificially hard to do so, oftentimes requiring you to connect with a representative over chat or phone and having them argue with you and try to re-sell you the product. Almost every subscription I have right now was started with a free trial with a few buttons, but canceling? Canceling is usually a 20+ minute task of sitting somewhere on a computer or on a phone (or worse, both) when it could be EXACTLY as many buttons.

And we know that, because Apple basically mandated it with App Store subscriptions. Cancelling subscriptions there takes seconds. And we also know that the various subscription companies absolutely hate it.

The one that specifically burns me to no end is I recall hearing from a friend that they were on the phone with a representative from one of those meditation apps trying to cancel their subscription, and just, your product literally is made for people who struggle with mental health issues and especially anxiety, and making that base of customers jump through social hoops of fire, and argue with another person and make them stand their ground on wanting to cancel, is a SUPREMELY CLASSLESS MOVE.

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

#153

Post by Alupis »

slaymaker1907 wrote: post #145
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…

As someone with ADHD, that's a lot to ask. However, in my opinion what we really need is a common standard for banks to handle recurring payments for subscriptions. Asking me to review every single thing on every account is a ton to ask, but it would be a lot more manageable if recurring stuff had its own section and that I could cancel stuff from my bank app directly. Sure there are a lot of complexities, but it's n…

Go into your banking/credit card app and enable purchase notifications. Now, every time your card is charged, you get a notification directly on your phone.

Don't recognize the charge? Deal with it immediately. Get a charge for something you need to cancel? Deal with it immediately.

ADHD is not an excuse to hold zero personal responsibility. Find a way to manage your life that works for you. You're not the only person with ADHD... don't let it be a crutch for mismanaging/neglecting your life.

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

#154

Post by rectang »

gedy wrote: post #142
rectang wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rapacious corporations agree with you — no matter how deceptive or even illegal their practices are, no matter how much R&D money is brought to bear in designing innovative user interfaces and bureaucratic frameworks which systematically exploit human weaknesses (particularly those of vulnerable populations such as less-tech-savvy elders) to bleed the populace dry... it's all the fault of the individual victims w…

I think you are misrepresenting OPs point. We all know many people who are extremely sloppy with their personal finances, and sign up for things they can't afford, debt they are unlikely to pay back, etc. Am I sad for companies who take in these people as customers? No, but let's not canonize people who are reckless with their spending, even when warned.

Let's not pretend that the only people getting ripped off are those who are 100% irresponsible and entirely devoid of any redeeming financial virtue.

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

#155

Post by tshaddox »

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…

> Ultimately it is your money and your problem. No one is looking out for you.

This is true, but it doesn't mean that collective solutions cannot exist or should not be desired.

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

#156

Post by k2enemy »

nlawalker wrote: post #26
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 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…

I do this as well, but with Chase, and use a filter to stick them into their own folder so they don't hit my INBOX. I use maildir for my local email and have shell scripts built on top of easy filesystem access to my credit card purchases.

Oddly, I get emails for everything except gasoline purchases. I'm afraid to contact support because in the extremely unlikely event that it gets forwarded to the correct people, the attempted fix would break something in my workflow.

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

#157

Post by notaustinpowers »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #135
darth_avocado wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Not entirely. Most places don't accept cancellations over email, or require certified mail for cancellations, which just means now you have to go to the post office between 9-5.

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

Most places have segments in their contract that state if you do a chargeback or block a payment, they will terminate your account, and payment providers can block that card from being used on their service in the future.

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

#158

Post by boredtofears »

rectang wrote: post #144
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Unpay for it. This is the utility of credit cards. That's a facile answer. You're extremely well educated on this matter and know full well the downsides of "unpaying". EDIT: see sibling comment from "notaustinpowers" for an explanation of the downsides (thanks!). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39060260

What are the downsides of disputing a charge?

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

#159

Post by bonton89 »

daxfohl wrote: post #141
bruceb wrote: post #50

Alternative headline: People who actively use their subscriptions are being subsided buy those who don't. If you use the gym a lot be grateful people are paying that don't. If they did, the gym would have no room. While bits based subs are not quite the same, still holds that if people who don't need that sub any more cancelled then others would probably pay more.

IDK if that holds. If pricing is such that people would probably pay more, then the business will raise the price. The fact that they're getting free money from zombie subscriptions doesn't really change things. Though perhaps you could say businesses then actively reduce pricing to keep things just under the zombie radar, but that's even more effed up: it means the pricing strategy is such that zombie accounts are a…

I think it does. The amount of effort people will put in and outrage that will ensue is going to scale up with the price of the service. So there is probably a careful identified max here.

But they also use the "only $2 for the first 6 months" thing to get you hooked first and then wait for you to become complacent and forget about it.

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

#160

Post by vdaea »

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…

>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.

I've seen it first-hand how those with the biggest financial problems earn as much money as anybody else, but they simply can't handle it. And the rest of us are supposed to bail them out of course.

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