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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

#161

Post by Alupis »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #149
Alupis wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. This is a poor perspective to have, and the purpose of government is to protect its citizens from predatory behavior. You're entitled to the opinion, but I vote for people who protect citizens, because that is where the greatest value is in aggregate im…

[flagged]

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

#162

Post by HumblyTossed »

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

Next time you're in a well trafficked area, ask 20 people if they know they can do this.

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

#163

Post by izzydata »

wjnc wrote: post #116
izzydata wrote: post #105

Sounds like a multi-million dollar business opportunity for a relatively cheap monthly service that automatically cancels services you don't use.

This is my dream. A company in between me and all kinds of service providers (energy, insurance, internet, mobile, let’s go crazy and add: mortgage, mobility) and just regularly switches me to the best offer while I retain service. They could get probably get away with a 10% fee and still deliver, because they can reverse auction their portfolio and get massively better deals than usually available. They can do KYC a…

Sounds pretty awesome albeit vastly more complicated than what I had imagined. The idea of customers collective bargaining to force competition is neat.

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

#164

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#165

Post by tehjoker »

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…

Well that's a dismal way to look at it. Regulations should be in place to prevent these kinds of business practices. For example, if a user doesn't use a service, perhaps they should get a refund for those months.

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

#166

Post by matwood »

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 love getting charge alerts. In restaurants I'll normally get the alert on my watch before the waiter gets back to the table. Though the SO sometimes gets annoyed when I text her about buying something before she's even left the store :D

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

#167

Post by jimt1234 »

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…

I interviewed a bunch of "financial hardship" people a few years back for an app my company was working on. The lack of financial knowledge was pretty disappointing to me, but the big thing I remember is that all the people I talked to were good people. They all had decent, yet low-paying jobs (nurses, care-givers, teaching assistants, cashiers, etc.) I was expecting a bunch of jerks or bungling idiots, and there was some of that: many people don't know how interest works on a credit card until it's too late, or other people are completely apathetic to their finances. But, honestly, the thing that stuck with me the most is that most of them were very trusting people, and ultimately that's what got them to where they are (broke). They trusted blindly: "[credit card company] wouldn't double my interest rate just because I missed one payment.", "The guy who sold me the car seemed nice. Why would he give me a 29% interest rate on my car loan?", and "The credit card companies can't do that; there's got to be laws that prohibit that." Lots of statements like that really stuck with me. I felt bad. It's like I wanted to give a TED Talk that would've lasted about 30 seconds: "The banks and credit card companies are not your friend, don't trust them. Once you fall into debt with them, you're never gonna get out. The law offers very little protection for you, if any at all."

And, thankfully, the app was never released. It was basically just an app for pay-day loans.

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

#168

Post by idopmstuff »

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

Use a temporary credit card number that's only authorized for one payment. When it doesn't work the second year, they'll let you know you need to pay.

Sign up and immediately cancel/turn off billing, so you aren't charged again next year (again, they'll send you a bunch of notices ahead of the end of your service).

Put a calendar reminder in for 11.5 months out from when you sign up.

In Slack, /remind me in 11.5 months to cancel X service.

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

#169

Post by hunter2_ »

Algemarin wrote: post #136
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 cover…

Most subjects taught in K-12 tend to be ancient: language, math, history, science, music, etc. with occasional modern electives.

Obviously personal finance is also ancient on some level, but I wonder how long it's actually been so complicated and critical as to warrant consideration for being taught in school. I'm no expert, but I think the complexities like payment cards, insanely complex tax code, etc. are quite modern. On the other hand, the same could be said for driver's ed which is pretty common.

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

#170

Post by mikestew »

b112 wrote: post #27
mfwit wrote: post #11

And when you do try to cancel, you have to chat or call somebody. I'm looking at you SiriusXM.

Thanks for the heads up. I will never try them (buying a new car soon).

We bought a new car last April. We also had XM radio about fifteen years ago. Much like GP comment, we will never sign up for SiriusXM ever again, so much so that we didn't even bother with the "free" six month subscription with new car purchase...because I don't want to do deal with canceling, or deal with anything to do with SiriusXM. I'll sing a cappella at the top of my lungs before I'll be so desperate as to turn on SiriusXM.

That's right, SiriusXM can't even give us their service, that's much they poisoned that water well.

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