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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

#341

Post by seattle_spring »

nunez wrote: post #197
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 agree. It's absolutely crazy. I think about this every time I see someone pull out their massively stacked wallet full of cards. I couldn't live like that. However, it's not entirely the people's fault. Credit card providers make it really easy to sign up for their cards but make it really difficult to do things like "add an alert that texts me whenever a purchase above $0.01 is made" or "alert me when my 0% APR pr…

> . I think about this every time I see someone pull out their massively stacked wallet full of cards. I couldn't live like that.

Some folks in this situation are likely just optimizing for rewards / points / sign-up bonuses. I've had more than 10 cards at a time and definitely have my financial "house" in order. I get many free several-thousand-dollar trips per year to boot.

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

#342

Post by lazide »

behringer wrote: post #147
lazide wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This with dignity? Or do you also ask for handouts everywhere you go?

Taking free money isn’t asking for handouts.

Taking free money is (in this case) someone you know handing you $100 and saying ‘merry Christmas’ or whatever.

Sure, you could throw it on the ground and say ‘f you’.

But these are existing customers who already give you money and are presumably happy with your service.

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

#343

Post by rectang »

brvsft wrote: post #271
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…

These comments are so blatantly absurd considering in all the cases we're talking about, the user signed up for the service initially. Even if it's a trial, the user is forced to make it abundantly recognized that they will be charged money when the trial is over because they are forced to input credit card information or authorize use of Apple Pay or some other similar service to enter the trial. I can understand su…

The big change between the subscriptions of yore, e.g. magazine subscriptions in the days before the internet, and the subscriptions of today, is that payments used to be push and now they are pull. The magazine used to have to beg and plead with you to send them a check, but now vendors can set up an automatic debit continuing into perpetuity.

The regulatory environment has not caught up (although the article explains how it's starting to). It turns out that recurring pull payments tend not to be cancelled, resulting in a system where massive overpayments for actual services consumed are the norm. This is not economic efficiency leading to useful consumer innovation, it's rewarding the players who lodge the darkest dark patterns. Occasionally that includes, as described elsethread, the illegal practice of "just straight-up not honoring the 300 page contracts that they had written" — although unethical practices such as making it deceptively difficult to cancel are presumably more common than outright lawbreaking.

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

#344

Post by jjulius »

paxys wrote: post #181
tehjoker wrote: post #165

Earlier 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.

>... if you are not getting value out of a subscription (that you signed up for), go and cancel it.

You're not wrong, necessarily, but the world isn't as black and white as you would like it to be. There is nuance to things, and not every subscription is as easy to cancel as you seem to think it should be.

I cancelled my NYT subscription about a year before California required them to make it a one-click process. I had to sit on the phone with them for 90 minutes in order to make it happen. Various holds, multiple reps pushing different "packages" for me rather than just outright cancelling. I literally had to argue with them in order to make it happen.

I had the time then. I didn't mind, though I sure was annoyed as hell. These days, with the job I have, and my outside-of-work life situation being what it is, 90 minutes isn't exactly an easy chunk of time for me to block out just so I can cancel a $25/month subscription. I could end up finding time for it, sure, and that - to your point - is absolutely on me. But it's not as easy to do that now as it was when I'd signed up for it years back. And you know, deep down, just as well as I do, that shit isn't ever as black and white as your attitude would like it to be. You can call it an "excuse" all you want, but that's a disingenuous take.

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

#345

Post by lazide »

wolverine876 wrote: post #186
lazide wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Taking all legal free money is wise, or even just non-idiotic?

If someone you know (a customer, in this case, with an existing relationship) wants to keep paying you, why go out of your way to say no?

unless there is a specific reason you think they screwed up - like they say they want to cancel, but hit the wrong button or something.

Or you know they’re dead and can’t cancel.

Otherwise it just inconveniences them if they want it, since you cancelled it out from under them.

Bad business, and probably rude unless there is a concrete reason you have to believe otherwise.

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

#347

Post by themacguffinman »

eropple wrote: post #326
themacguffinman wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It screws over other use cases because it changes the economics of these streaming services. Monthly subscriptions for media, especially ones like Netflix, account for bingeing followed by dead periods amortized into the monthly price. Only counting active periods will break that amortization and the monthly price increases as a result. If someone doesn't binge and their lifestyle includes watching things more consis…

You know, you're right, it would affect that use case. On the other hand, "I would have to pay a higher amount of money for my teevee if they stopped bleeding people for no services rendered" is a really funny thing to get on the the Personal Responsibility bicycle about. Like, you could've just said "I don't want to pay more" and I guess that'd be mildly unfortunate for you, maybe I could've found some sympathy for…

It appears like rationalization to you (edit for context: the parent comment said it was rationalizing before it was edited) because you've already made up your mind about the malicious intent of companies who use this model. The reality is that companies can't know if they're "bleeding people for no services rendered" because of bingeing behavior. Someone watching a lot then staying off for a few months is difficult to distinguish from someone who has forgotten about their subscription for a few months.

The easiest and most efficient way for a company to know that you're not providing value to them is by cancelling your subscription. I agree that companies making this difficult is bad, but many services don't make this difficult. Instead, you're asking them to read the mind of their customers which is not easy. Netflix does treat extreme periods of inactivity (IIRC more than a year I think?) as a reasonable signal that you've forgotten about it.

> You get to exercise so much more Personal Responsibility when you aren't free-riding off other people, even.

I don't think you're really understanding the point. People who don't exercise any personal responsibility over their finances are the ones who are free-riding off people who do. That's because when you don't manage your finances and you refuse to shoulder the cost for that, the time & effort and complexity it costs to accommodate that has to be paid by someone who isn't you.

Edit: I'm not sure there's anything I can say to sway your mind about this since you've really honed in on the emotional angle to this but I think it's worth pointing out that this isn't really a moralizing thing to me, I have been and know many people who fall short, I don't treat it morally. It's largely about resource allocation and behavioral incentives. Asking central organizations like a corporation to infer the correct thing for lots of consumers is very difficult and costly, it's overall much more efficient to ask consumers to signal their desires themselves, it's why markets tend to be more efficient. Making consumers pay the cost of mismanaging their finances also discourages them from doing it, increasing efficiency.

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

#348

Post by jjulius »

sahila wrote: post #337
jjulius wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. But, see... >No one is looking out for you. ... that's just it, isn't it? Nobody's looking out for you. We send kids to public school from ages five to eighteen, but at a broad level, we do not have a requirement for any of that education to be about how to take c…

But you can teach yourself, like how most everyone who is looking over themselves financially did. Learning doesn't end with schooling, and for most they know that, doing dance, art, and sport classes for example all on their own. It’s just that financial literacy isn’t a priority.

If it's not a priority for people, and we understand that there is an incredibly wide range of circumstances that everyone is in, much of which don't allow for easy fiscal education, access to it, or time for it, it should be pretty darn obvious that it should be a part of our basic education system. Am I to take your response as a suggestion that we shouldn't bother introducing this subject matter as a requirement at the public school level?

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

#349

Post by davchana »

rx_tx wrote: post #308
rectang wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My tech-hating mom is currently spending hours, maybe even days setting up billpay through her bank so she doesn't have to give companies her credit card info for subscriptions. She's been burned too many times trying and failing to cancel subscriptions. But reading suggestions like yours, apparently it's all on people like my poor mom to outwit corporations with multi-million-dollar budgets dedicated to screwing her…

would a service like privacy[dot]com which generates custom one-off credit card numbers with custom spend limits be useful? (Not affiliated, I just use them from time-to-time exactly for that purpose)

Privacy.com is awful. You forgo the credit card protections, they need full access to a checking account, you can't do chargebacks, you lose any cashback methods.

Use a virtual card from your credit card Many banks offer these now a these days (Capital one does, with all cards, in app or in browser, no need for extension).

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

#350

Post by jchw »

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…

Note that you are currently making excuses for blatant dark patterns for some reason. I dunno why we're doing that. People should definitely push harder to not waste money, but entities should not abuse their position to try to push them into passively allowing it. There's so many things you need to take care of in life that I don't imagine most people ever really get to give as much attention to all of the facets of their lives as they need to, and finances are only one of them. The fact that someone is effectively stealing your money and forcing you to trade it for time and effort you could spend doing anything else is criminal. (I mean, literally, it should actually be criminal. If I don't want to be subscribed, fucking unsubscribe me. That means you Planet Fitness after I moved to California.)
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