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Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

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

#451

Post by skeaker »

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…

> What's wrong with people putting on their adulting pants and actually being responsible?

What's wrong with asking businesses to simply not charge you if you don't use the service? You can play the blame game all day, but that doesn't actually give us any reason why not. "Cars shouldn't have seatbelts because you can just not crash your car" is a similar line of thinking that also doesn't make very much sense. Why shouldn't the car manufacturer take some level of responsibility?

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

#452

Post by robertlagrant »

ozim wrote: post #395
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 who have no legs, can’t they just put their adulting pants and start walking? Cool that you are mentally and physically fit, I am as well. But there are lots of people who struggle with range of mental disorders or disabilities. Some might have depression some might have ADHD, some might just be much more forgetful so they might think it is good to check account balance but 30 mins later they…

If you think that services should start unsubscribing people just in case they have ADHD, that seems a very odd way round to think. They're just businesses. I don't think it's reasonable to assume they can know what you want or intend.

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

#453

Post by robertlagrant »

dotnet00 wrote: post #199
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…

It's a perfectly reasonable point that the company has all the information necessary and has the ability to automate a system which charges you only when you actually use the service, or hell, even just a system that emails you a reminder for not using the service you're paying for (Amazon kind of does this regarding their Music service as part of Prime, and I love them for it, even though I still don't use it). They…

> and do their taxes manually

This isn't a great comparison. Looking through a bank statement once a month and clicking "end subscription" takes a few minutes for anyone. Doing your taxes manually is much more difficult. This is the easiest economic decision to choose to stop partipating in in the history of the earth.

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

#454

Post by robertlagrant »

wolverine876 wrote: post #231
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…

> People need to have personal responsibility. Do people need to have personal responsibility when they operate a business? Why is responsibility any less there? I think it's irresponsible to exploit other people's mistakes (unless they are a competing business, and not always then either). It happens incidentally sometimes at minimal cost, but at high cost or when it can be avoided, it's the businessperson's respons…

> Why is responsibility any less there?

It's not. They should be ensuring the service being paid for is available. That's their responsibility.

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

#455

Post by sheepscreek »

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…

I only blame businesses when they make it hard to cancel a subscription. Here’s a couple from my list: Adobe and Audible. The latter cause they don’t let you keep your “credits” if you cancel.

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

#456

Post by Krasnol »

robertlagrant wrote: post #448
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…

> which take money for services they don't deliver They are delivering a service. > This particular behavior is little better than taking money and simply refusing to provide service No it's not. > No matter how awful or shameful, people say 'it's business' and those magic words absolve every evil No, they don't.

It is quite concerning that this comment is so high up.

It is lazy, doesn't provide any additional explanation for their reasoning. It is useless and basically just says "no".

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

#457

Post by vimsee »

robertlagrant wrote: post #448
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…

> which take money for services they don't deliver They are delivering a service. > This particular behavior is little better than taking money and simply refusing to provide service No it's not. > No matter how awful or shameful, people say 'it's business' and those magic words absolve every evil No, they don't.

I see that you disagree with the parent comment. I would like to know why. Could you provide some details as well?

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

#459

Post by christophilus »

vimsee wrote: post #457
robertlagrant wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which take money for services they don't deliver They are delivering a service. > This particular behavior is little better than taking money and simply refusing to provide service No it's not. > No matter how awful or shameful, people say 'it's business' and those magic words absolve every evil No, they don't.

I see that you disagree with the parent comment. I would like to know why. Could you provide some details as well?

Not the op, but, if you pay me $5/month for a VPS, and you never do anything but let it sit idle because you forgot about it, and you don’t notice that you’re still paying me $5 / month… how exactly does that make me evil?

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

#460

Post by Hasu »

themacguffinman wrote: post #347
eropple wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

People who fail to cancel their subscriptions are not free-riding off anyone, they're paying $X per billing period.

> Asking central organizations like a corporation to infer the correct thing for lots of consumers is very difficult and costly

Usage based billing isn't that hard. It's just less profitable.

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