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Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
221–230 of 677 posts
Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
#222It'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…
Whenever I get a free trial of Prime, I immediately set a reminder on my phone to cancel it in a month. It's really not that hard.
You can also immediately go to settings and choose not to renew. It'll still be active for the rest of the month.
Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
#223It'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…
Yea, most people assume the best in others I think. They assume others will not break the law for personal gain. In real life, those folks get taken advantage of. I know because I used to be one but now I don’t trust anyone. The moral degradation of society isn’t in the extra drugs and sex we have, it’s in the way we accept merely to follow the letter of the law, and find as many loopholes as possible otherwise. You see that in VC funded startups constantly, in politics, and everywhere else.
Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This is exactly the problem I am talking about. Why is the first instinct to always externalize blame? Why is big government the default solution to everything? How about – if you are not getting value out of a subscription (that you signed up for), go and cancel it. And if you choose not to, don't blame the rest of the world for your money problems.
Bluntly, we live with individuals who just suck at finance (this extends to other now-necessary skills too). I want to live in a world where they aren't constantly taken advantage of. Consider it a mental disorder if you need to; we don't have to punish people for being dumb.
Besides, regulation of this kind (cancelling subscription) benefits everyone but certain companies. I don't want to waste my time due to someone's misguided free market ideology. Even if navigating endless bureaucracy does make me feel smart.
That said, I hate the tendency of regulators to outright ban certain activities. Everyone should be free to throw their money away (by e.g. making risky investments), after signing a lot of very scary forms and showing that they really mean it.
Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
#225The 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…
What would you want business to do ? See that customer is not active then go ahead and remove their subscription?? Lmao then you will have customers asking why did you stop my account. Clearly you have not faced customers before.
OP doesn't say remove subscription, just charge $0 for months where users don't use the service.
Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
#226Earlier 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.
There ought to be some legislation to modify the credit card system such that all your recurring subscriptions are managed through your payment provider (say credit card web portal) so you can see a list and cancel them with one click.
I have one credit card I only use for recurring charges. That helps me easily see how much I spend each month and notice when yearly charges happen, etc. Some services will even rebate if you cancel soon after the yearly charge happens.
Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
#227And when you do try to cancel, you have to chat or call somebody. I'm looking at you SiriusXM.
I had XM (before the Sirius merger) and cancelled it >10 years ago. The process was difficult enough that I would never even remotely consider signing up for them again. If it had been more painless, I may have resubscribed at some point. Instead, they've completely poisoned their brand with me permanently. I've heard enough horror stories about other classes of subscription-type things (gym memberships, newspaper su…
> I always wonder if companies think through the consequences of their aggressive "retention" efforts.
Probably not beyond the next quarterly results.
Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
#228> Their average response was $62. When they were given more time to guess again, they increased their estimate to $96. They were still way off. The correct answer was $273.
I have been in rooms at SaaS companies where the fact that people forget to cancel the subscription was described as an important benefit of the subscription model, and a reason to set the price at something easily overlooked.
People are terrible at estimating or keeping track of their subscriptions, myself included. A couple years ago I painstakingly audited all my recurring subscriptions. Painstaking because I had to go through all my bank and credit account statements for a year looking for the services that billed yearly or semi-yearly rather than monthly. I had also drastically underestimated what they cost me, by about a factor of two in my case. I think of myself as being very frugal about this kind of thing, so it was a surprise.
But then I was able to save myself almost $1000 a year just by eliminating some unused subscriptions I had sort of forgotten. Not forgotten entirely, but services I sort of failed to think about as costs, because the monthly spend for them individually was so low. But once I thought about them as a yearly cost, and then about the total yearly cost for all these little services, that successfully (and more accurately) reframed the situation.
I didn't find unsubscribing or cancelling to be particular onerous. I do use Privacy.com now, which would make it both easier to track and theoretically easier to cancel. Ironically, Privacy.com is a monthly subscription (at the tier I use) but it is definitely worth it.
I told people about the $1000 a year "raise" I got by just trimming dead weight. I told them they should do the same exercise—make a spreadsheet, have a column that multiplies the monthly fee by 12, and think about it as a yearly cost instead—and they were all, uniformly, without exception certain that they already knew what they spent, and it wasn't really very much.
My advice: do the exercise anyway, it is worth it.
Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
#229I’m here for the recommendations for apps to cancel subscriptions
Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
#230It'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…
Requiring someone to call to cancel your service is almost always a shady business practice to make it difficult enough that it's not worth their time. If it takes you less than 5 minutes to sign up, it should take you less than 5 minutes to cancel. If you can sign up without talking to someone, you should be able to cancel without talking to someone.
That type of practice could use some sort of regulation.