This is why I put stuff on apple pay/paypal subscription. Easy to remember to check a few times a year rather than going through credit card bills.
Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
501–510 of 677 posts
Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
#502Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, was just going to say this is Planet Fitness' whole value prop .. Cheap enough that the lie you tell yourself that you will go more next month is easily worth $10 / month.
Planet fitness hasn't been $10 for a while now. Their cheapest plan is something like $12.99 and with fees it's up to $18 or so. And that was 5 years ago.
mine is literally 10.99 a month and something like $20 annual fee once a year. I lift late so it works out well for me, but I realize that's not true for everyone.
Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
#503The 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…
Sounds just like gyms!
Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
#504It'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…
That's passing the buck. All of those suggestions you have apply to these companies as well. It's just that when they are lazy, they get to leech off of everyone else and make money from it, where they hide behind the "complexity" of their systems. It's absurd that you place the blame on the victims of this.
There's so much bullshit required a lot of the time in canceling things or even knowing that you were signed up for something in the first place. Just purchasing something these days will automatically sign up yourself up for endless emails from that and other companies, even if you unchecked the so-called newsletter option. There are so many dark patterns that sign people up for things that they didn't even they got signed up for. I have absolutely been signed up for something, either by accident or a dark pattern, that I didn't realize until latter. It wasn't due to laziness, me lamenting others, or some bad habit. It was due to being effectively tricked and legally scammed.
Companies have used software-based services as a sort of trojan horse, and they absolutely take advantage of people who don't understand technology.
Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
#505Earlier quoted context omitted.
I completely understand the original point and also agree with it wholeheartedly, but you misunderstand the reason for my comment. The user I responded to made a separate comment elsewhere in this thread, and I highlighted their comment in this chain we're in as evidence that they should be well aware of why the point in their other comment doesn't always work out the way they would like. The fundamental business mod…
I don't see the conflict between the two comments. You can lambaste people for not even trying to cancel a subscription they don't want while recognizing that many subscriptions depend on light users. Light users are not people who want to cancel their subscription but can't because of shenanigans, they're just light users. It's not "the other side of their business", you can have a heavy/light user model while not p…
[deleted]
Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
#506Earlier quoted context omitted.
I completely understand the original point and also agree with it wholeheartedly, but you misunderstand the reason for my comment. The user I responded to made a separate comment elsewhere in this thread, and I highlighted their comment in this chain we're in as evidence that they should be well aware of why the point in their other comment doesn't always work out the way they would like. The fundamental business mod…
I don't see the conflict between the two comments. You can lambaste people for not even trying to cancel a subscription they don't want while recognizing that many subscriptions depend on light users. Light users are not people who want to cancel their subscription but can't because of shenanigans, they're just light users. It's not "the other side of their business", you can have a heavy/light user model while not p…
[deleted]
Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
I completely understand the original point and also agree with it wholeheartedly, but you misunderstand the reason for my comment. The user I responded to made a separate comment elsewhere in this thread, and I highlighted their comment in this chain we're in as evidence that they should be well aware of why the point in their other comment doesn't always work out the way they would like. The fundamental business mod…
I don't see the conflict between the two comments. You can lambaste people for not even trying to cancel a subscription they don't want while recognizing that many subscriptions depend on light users. Light users are not people who want to cancel their subscription but can't because of shenanigans, they're just light users. It's not "the other side of their business", you can have a heavy/light user model while not p…
>I don't see the conflict between the two comments.
There isn't. I haven't said that there is.
>You can lambaste people for not even trying to cancel a subscription they don't want while recognizing that many subscriptions depend on light users.
Yup. Never said one couldn't do that, either.
>Light users are not people who want to cancel their subscription but can't because of shenanigans, they're just light users. It's not "the other side of their business", you can have a heavy/light user model while not playing these shenanigans with customers.
Sure. Still not really what I'm getting at, though.
I simply pointed to their comment here as evidence that they understand how gym memberships work, thereby being aware of how convoluted many of them can be when it comes to canceling them, which stands counter to their comment elsewhere in the thread. It's that simple, and I don't know how to make myself any clearer at this point.
Feel like I'm just repeating myself now - not sure if it's a poor explanation on my part or others just aren't grokking it for reasons on their end, but I'll reevaluate and see how I can be clearer in the future.
Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
#508Earlier 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…
It’s asymmetrical. On one side you have the consumer who wants to save $10 by canceling a service they don’t use. On the other side you have highly paid software engineers, data scientists, and product managers who have tens of thousands of dollars riding on meeting their metrics for subscriber retention. For example, Amazon implemented their “Iliad flow” to make it hard to cancel Prime.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/06/ftc-sues-amazon-...
I don’t think it is entirely fair to demand personal responsibility when the adversary has so much more resources and incentives for making it hard to cancel.
This personally affected my friend. English was not their first language and they were tricked by Amazon into signing up for Prime. The extra charges and difficulty of canceling caused much distress for their limited budget.
Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
#509Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why? That's much worse. Congratulations, HNer — you're more tech savvy than my mom. Perhaps you're volunteering to help vulnerable seniors like her navigate the Hobbesian nightmare of subscriptions? I applaud your initiative, but if you're new to this, let me caution you: they don't always understand or follow the advice you give them precisely. Even if they are trying their best.
Funny, I guess it can be difficult. I do manage all the accounts and finances for a >>90yr old family member, but it is easier because I manage all of it.
Kudos for taking that on!
Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel
#510I can't wait for services like Privacy to enter the mainstream. It's coming. (I'd like to think that it's coming.) When 90% of your user base is using super-easily-createable disposable credit cards from valid BINs that self-destruct after your free trial's over, the way free trials work will have to change.
I liked the one Pennsylvania bill introduced where subscription services have to email you that they're about to charge you again.
Throws a wrench into the "was hoping you forgot about it, now ask/argue with customer support on the phone" dark pattern.